LAST CURTSEY (PB)

The well-bred daughters of Britain's aristocracy used to take part in a female rite of passage: curtseying to the Queen. But in 1958 this ritual was coming to an end. Under pressure to shine, the girls became the focus for newspaper diarists and society photographers in a party season that stretched for months. Fiona MacCarthy traces the stories of the girls who curtseyed that year, and shows how their lives were to open out as Britain itself changed irreversibly during the 1960s, and the certainties of the old order came to an end.