“Jane was a living, writing, talking paradox. She was an elitist who championed the undergo, a lover of ceremony and ritual who wanted to destroy the status quo, a republican who relished her peerage, a rebel at home in the realm, the barricades and the drawing-room were her natural habitats. … Oscar revered his mother and father, but his resemblance to his mother goes to the core of what made both of them remarkable, and prone to calamity.”