The queen of Whale Cay - Kate Summerscale

In 1993, Marion Barbara Carstairs died and Kate Summerscale, obituarist at the Daily Telegraph, stumbled upon one of the most remarkable lives of the twentieth century. 

Born in 1900, Marion soon realised she was not as other little girls and she reinvented herself as Joe, an 'invert' who dressed like a beautiful man and became a leading light of the glamorous lesbian demi-monde. She smoked cheroots, tattooed her arms and in the Twenties was celebrated as the 'fastest woman on water'- Britain's premier female speedboat-racer.

But she tired of her celebrity and in 1934 she bought Whale Cay, an island in the West Indies where she created her own kingdom, ruling over 500 imported Bahamians, and entertaining an eccentric collection of actresses, duchesses and priests. Though she numbered Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich among her conquests, her greatest love was reserved for an enigmatic twelve-inch doll, named Lord Tod Wadley, who was her constant companion through her astonishing life and death.