My great-grandmother Idina Sackville was known as The Bolter because, in 1918, she left her young, handsome and extremely rich husband to run off (bolt) to Africa with a near penniless man. (I written her story in my book The Bolter which will be published by Knopf on June...

It's easy to assume that an era is defined by the conventions it follows -- in fact, it is known for the rules it breaks. My mother's grandmother, Idina Sackville, broke every one of the Edwardian social rules designed to restrain women a hundred years ago. She divorced five times...