Critical praise for Heirs and Graces
‘In Heirs & Graces, Eleanor Doughty maps the 796 families in Britain with hereditary titles. She sets herself the task of depicting “who they are and how they tick”. In doing so, she allows readers to consider how past hierarchies weigh on supposedly meritocratic modern Britain. The book is dense with personal stories – you will lose track of the baronets – and often enthralling.’
– Henry Mance, Financial Times, 25 August 2025
‘Today, there are 24 non-royal dukes, 34 marquesses, 189 earls, 110 viscounts and 439 barons, many, if not most, of whom Doughty has interviewed for this book. It tells us much of their family history and charts their progress under headings taken from the novels of Evelyn Waugh… There are pen portraits of various peers and much historical perspective. Fascinating nuggets gleam from the densely textured background.’
– Anne de Courcy, Spectator, 30 August 2025
‘A superb study of the aristocracy today… this is a marvellous book… courteous to its subjects, respectful but honest in its portrait of today’s generation, and unsentimental’
– Alwyn Turner, The Times, 6 September 2025 (Book of the Week)
‘Every page shows how much she [Doughty] likes other people. The congenial frankness she elicits from her many interviewees is winning. She finds charm in stubborn stupidity, and takes Madame de Staël’s line tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner when confronted by merciless acquisitiveness or the havoc caused by misused vitality.’
– Richard Davenport-Hines , Literary Review, 5 September 2025
‘Riveting, extraordinarily well-researched and funny. Heaven. I can’t recommend it enough’
– Sophia Money-Coutts , Daily Telegraph, 6 September 2025
‘Eleanor Doughty’s Heirs and Graces, a modern history of the aristocracy, is a surprisingly candid and stylish peek into that well-heeled world’
– Pratinav Anil, UnHerd, 3 September 2025
‘This is not a glossy companion to the “upstairs” of stage and television. It is a broad-ranging, scholarly attempt to understand an institution… that for the best part of 1,000 years has been a power in the land… Eleanor Doughty is a shrewd, measured analyst, her writing aided by a lively pen and wry sense of humour’
– Allan Mallinson, Country Life, 3 September 2025
‘Doughty’s expertise jumps off the page… She knows everything – where an earl sits relative to a viscount, how many there are of each. Her work is peppered with first-hand accounts, piquant details from visitors’ books, the story of every great house told brick by brick, through centuries of wealth and turbulence. If the whole saga is weighed down by its own self-regard, it takes pluck and determination to leaven it, and Doughty has those in undeniable quantities.’
– Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 23 September 2025
‘In an upstairs/downstairs scenario, the upstairs is not just above the downstairs physically, but beyond them, and in so many ways – beyond comment, beyond reproach. Happily, in Heirs and Graces, Eleanor Doughty brings our high-falutin aristocrats firmly down to earth’
– Aliya Lewis, The Idler, October-November 2025
‘Doughty does not fall into the trap of polemic and envy. This large book is beautifully written, balanced by statistics and illuminating anecdote’
– Rory Knight Bruce, The Field, November 2025
‘This near anthropological survey is peppered with amusing observations… it makes you regret that Labour has chased the hereditary lords from the House of Lords’
– The London Standard, 4 September 2025
‘An affectionate, if at times ingenuous, portrayal of British nobility, peppered with interviews and reminiscences… even the occasional display of aristocratic hauteur does not deter her’
– Adrian Tinniswood, The Critic, October 2025
‘… [an] absorbing and compendious book… one of the strengths of Heirs and Graces is bringing the intimate lives of the landed elite back into view’
– Professor Miles Taylor, BBC History Magazine, November 2025