Outrageous fortune: growing up at Leeds Castle

Leeds Castle, once home to kings and queens, was a place of spectacular opulence and luxury, and it was here that Anthony Russell spent his childhood; a childhood beyond the reaches of ordinary imagination.

Away from the extravagance, the embrace of his nanny and the strong but distant love of his mother, Anthonys childhood was often lonely and fraught with the pressures of upholding the Castle Way, unwritten rules that were, perhaps, not the best preparation for life outside the castle walls.

The polite reserve of his sheltered existence was inevitably ruptured by the arrival of the 1960s, with its new music, mores, and social freedoms; things both alluring and alarming to a young man who had spent his youth in splendid isolation.

Uniquely entertaining, Outrageous Fortune is an extraordinary memoir, an accessible and personable account of how the other half lives, and a real-life Downton Abbey.

As he documents his life at Leeds Castle, Anthony Russell gives us a vivid and intimate glimpse into a fascinating world gone by.