The Magnificent Lady Craven

On 30 May 1767, much against her will at the age of sixteen, Elizabeth Berkeley was married to William Craven, 6th Baron Craven. After thirteen years of marriage, seven children, and affairs reported on both sides, the couple parted permanently in 1780. She then travelled on the continent and maintained a romantic relationship with Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. During her years at the Ansbach court, Lady Craven formed an amateur theatre at court. When the Margrave's wife and Lord Craven died, she and Alexander were married and settled in England.

Snubbed by her new husband's cousin, George III, and by Marie Antoinette because of her louche reputation, she nevertheless created Benham Park with Capability Brown and numbered Dr Johnson - who described her as 'glamorous and fascinating' - Horace Walpole, William Beckford and Charles Pigott among her friends and acquaintances. Her life was gilded, scandalous, and lived to the full. Her travel writing was as good as any male writer's, and as a a female outsider she could enter where men could not - into the harems of the east for example. Tellingly, Joshua Reynolds could not finish his portrait of Elizabeth with her daughter: perhaps because he could not reconcile the loving mother before him with her celebrity image as fashionable hostess and female playwright.