Alice Keppel, mistress to Edward VII, was a formidable, manipulative woman, whose relationship with the king placed her at the centre of Edwardian high society. Her daughter, Violet, was fascinated by her mother's glamour and power. Yet when she fell in love with Vita Sackville-West and embarked on a long, temptuous love affair, she threatened to break all the moral (or amoral) rules of her mother's duplicitious world.