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As Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh – the three privileged Guinness sisters, darlings of society in Dublin and London – settle into becoming wives and mothers, they quickly discover that their gilded upbringing could not have prepared them for the realities of married life.
For the eldest, Aileen, in Luttrellstown Castle outside Dublin, being married offers far less than she had expected; for outspoken Maureen, in the crumbling Clandeboye in Northern Ireland, marriage means intense passion, but fierce rows; while Oonagh’s dream of romantic love in London is shattered by her husband’s lies.
And as 1930s Britain becomes increasingly politically polarised, the sisters’ close friends, the Mitfords, find themselves under the media glare – causing the Guinness women to examine their own lives.
Inspired by true-life events, The Guinness Girls: A Hint of Scandal is a sweeping, epic novel of Ireland and Britain in the grip of change, and a story of how three women who wanted for nothing were about to learn that they couldn’t have everything.
Emily Hourican is a journalist and author. She has written features for the Sunday Independent for fifteen years, as well as Image magazine, Conde Nast Traveler and Woman and Home. She was also editor of The Dubliner Magazine. Emily’s first book, a memoir titled How To (Really) Be A Mother was published in 2013. She is also the author of novels The Privileged, White Villa, The Outsider and The Blamed. Her first novel about the Guinness sisters The Glorious Guinness Girls was published in 2020. She lives in Dublin with her family.