Grace: The Remarkable Life of Grace Grattan Guinness

by Michele Guinness

Preparing for her husband's retirement from his parish, Michele Guinness, author of The Guinness Legend, decided to clear out the attic and in doing so rediscovered a trunk of letters, diaries, journals and notebooks, over one hundred years old, belonging to Grace Guinness, Peter's grandmother.Most famous for her unconventional marriage to renowned speaker and evangelist Henry Grattan Guinness, Grace's journals reveal an extraordinary woman who in many ways was before her a rebel against the constraints of her narrow religious upbringing, unconventional in her choice of husband, defiant of a society that frowned on a well-bred single mother going out to work, a businesswoman who ran her own hotel, and an early feminist who believed in birth control.She worked until she was in her seventies, read The Times every day, got through at least one book a week and could comment eruditely on politics, science, philosophy, theology, music and literature... This was a woman who wrote in a frank and sometimes risqué way about her life, love, hopes and fears, and encouraged others to break some of the taboos of their generation.In Grace, Michele Guinness weaves together the revealing contents of Grace's own words with her own to create a unique and inspiring interpretation of this remarkable woman's life and times.

400 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 25, 2016

Reviews

[Anne Shakeshaft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grace: The Remarkable life of Grace Grattan Guinness
Michele Guinness

This is the story of the life of Grace Grattan Guinness, the grandmother of Michele Guinness’ husband Peter. It is told mainly through Grace’s diaries and the letters she received from her husband, Henry Grattan Guinness. It is an amazing story of love, loss and determination. Henry was much older than Grace and died seven years after their marriage leaving her with two young sons to bring up alone.
It is a remarkable chronicle of life in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century , continuing right up until her death in 1967 at the age of 90. One particularly poignant diary entry was for 6th February 1918, when Grace recorded the day that some women were given the vote (those over 30 and who lived in property worth more than £5 per year). I read this entry the day before the one hundredth anniversary of this momentous occasion.

[Lily Brennan · Rating 1 out of 5]

found this book very tedious