May be of interest ... (I got a copy for a decent price on ebay auction site.)
"THE SERPENT AND THE STAG: The Saga of England's Powerful and Glamorous
Cavendish Family from the Age of Henry the Eighth to the Present", by John
Pearson. First published in the US in 1984 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
NY. Originally published in Great Britain under the title, "Serpents and
Stags", 1983.
From the dust cover flap:
The Cavendish family - who became the Dukes of Devonshire - not only have
been at the center of English political and cultural life for more than
four centuries but also were often remarkable figures in their own right.
Some wre as magnificent as the stag, others as cautious as the serpent, the
beasts that appear on the crest of the Devonshire arms. In this vivid,
full-scale, multiple biography, John Pearson tells their story with immense
panache.
The dynasty was founded by Bess of Hardwick, who married four times into
wealth and used it to build her own empire and her own monument, in tat
most Tudor of palaces, Hardwick Hall. Since then Cavendishes have provided
men who have been in the front ranks of politics, science, and the
encouragement of the arts. But John Pearson sees beyond the image presented
by state protraits and reveals men and wome of uncommon fascination, and
for all their grandeur, recognizably human: the hot-blooded first Duke, who
nearly ruined his career by cutting off a man's nose; the honorable Third
Duke, whose common wife took bitter exception to their son marrying an
heiress; the languid Fifth Duke with his two Duchesses; first, the radian,
passionate Georgiana Spenser; and after her tragically early death, the
Lady Elizabeth Foster, "a feline, highly intelligent adventuress," beloved
of both the Duke and Georgiana, with whom she formed an astonishing menage
a trois. And so down the line through the Victorian and Edwardian ages, up
to the present day with the Eleventh Duke and his Duchess, like their
ancestors before them, living at Chatsworth, perhaps the greatest of
English country houses.
Pearson brings his glamourous cast into the limelight with the sure touch
of a master biographer. But quite apart from the remarkable nature of their
private lives, the impact of the Cavendishes has been great and also
unexpected, from the calculation of the mass of the earth to the
establishment of the rights of Africans in Kenya, taking in many political
questions of the way. So that "The Serpent and the Stag" is not simply the
biography of an extraordinary family, but a history of England in
miniature, richly informative and never failing to entertain.