From its dawn in the 1660s to its twilight in the 1960s, Cliveden was an emblem of elite misbehaviour & intrigue. Conceived by the Duke of Buckingham as a retreat for his scandalous affair with Anna-Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the house later served as the backdrop for the Profumo Affair, which would bring down a government & change the course of British history. In the three hundred years between the Countess & Christine Keeler, the house was occupied by a dynasty of remarkable women: Elizabeth Villiers, an intellectual who brokered the rise & fall of governments; Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, a minor German royal who almost became queen of England; Harriet Duchess of Sutherl&, the glittering society hostess turned political campaigner; & Nancy Astor, the consummate controversialist who became the first woman to take a seat in parliament. Under the direction of these women, Cliveden provided a stage for political plots & artistic premieres, hosted grieving monarchs & republican radicals, was idealised as a family home, & maligned as a threat to national security. The Mistresses of Cliveden is by turns a historical epic, a political thriller, a family drama, & an intimate history of the relationships between people & place. Above all, it is a story about sex & power, & the ways in which exceptional women have evaded, exploited, & confronted the expectations of their times.