From Uptown Girls to Downton Abbey: How American Gilded Age Heiresses Invaded the British Aristocracy

Fans of “Downton Abbey” and “The Gilded Age” will delight as Anglophile and former U.K. resident Claire Evans recounts the tales of some of the famously loaded young Americans who infused bank accounts of many stately homes, including close relatives of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana. She’ll also give travel tips if you’d like to create a Gilded Age tour for yourself.

Claire Evans is a former journalist, attorney, and college lecturer who started her love of most things British as she and her mother watched countless episodes of “Are You Being Served,” “Fawlty Towers,” and “The Vicar of Dibley” on PBS.  She went on to study abroad in London and, against the odds, she married a Brit she met in Peoria, Illinois.  They moved to England, where they lived for a number of years.  Outside of her work for a legal advice charity, Claire became a student of historical sights, pub dining, and tea shops.  Her business, Tea with Claire, grew from friends asking for travel and relocation advice.