The story of Harriot Mellon is a unique, individual and perceptive insight into a vanished world of deprivation and privilege. Joan Perkin's book is the amazing story of a remarkable woman: Harriot Mellon, the poor child of strolling players in the late eighteenth century, who rose to become a star at Drury Lane in the heyday of Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan, and the protegee and second wife of Thomas Coutts the royal banker. Annoyed by his three...