Elizabeth Grant has stood at the helm of her beauty empire for more than sixty years, regaling admirers with personal stories, notably one event that nearly killed her. When a German rocket dropped soundlessly from the sky on a peaceful Sunday in wartime London, its impact and resultant bomb blast damage took her down, damaged her face and rendered her almost deaf in one ear. A young makeup artist at Ellstree Studios, she thought herself so repulsively scarred, she could no longer face acting luminaries like Vivien Leigh, Margaret Leighton, and Robert Taylor with any degree of confidence. "I...

Memoirs of a Highland Lady is one of the most famous memoirs ever written. Since its first bowdlerised edition in 1898, it has been consistently in print. This is the first ever complete text. Written between 1845 and 1854, the memoirs were originally intended simply for Elizabeth's family, but these vivid and inimitable records of life in the early 19th century, and above all of the great Rothiemurchus estate, are full of sharp observation and wit, and form an unforgettable picture of her time.