HARDWICK HALL

From the second Hardwick Hall heaves into view there’s no doubting whose show it is. High on the parapets the initials E.S. appear fourteen times, each crowned with a ducal coronet. Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury knew how to make a statement. Confidence, however, is not the same as unpleasantness and for 400 years Bess of Hardwick has endured a hard rap.

“She was a Tudor woman who had power but has been judged through history for having it,” says Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, co-curator of , an exhibition currently showing in Hardwick Hall’s Long Gallery. “She was a formidable woman in the sense of being strong and capable and inspiring,” continues Lipscomb, “but also kind and generous and thoughtful. That second half