Nothing for Something

One of the best untold stories in the true crime/con artist genre. It features glamour, crime, intrigue, plot twists and a fascinating insight into life in Edwardian Britain. Violet’s story has unique parallels with many other modern fraud cases – yet trumps them all with the added drama of her staged car crash, disappearance and resulting mysteries. Recounted for the first time and in detail, this is the unbelievable true story of the Edwardian confidence trickster who fooled the world – three times. Violet Charlesworth, the beautiful young heiress to a fortune was briefly the most famous woman in the world, hunted across the globe, pursued by the press, and living the life of royalty. With country estates, fast cars, furs, fabulous jewels, and expensive tastes, she lived life in the fast lane until her lifestyle – and her creditors – finally caught up with her on a lonely, clifftop road in North Wales. Clever, resourceful, cunning, ruthless and beautiful, Violet Charlesworth had it all, until her luxurious motorcar smashed through a low wall on a dangerous bend in a moonlit clifftop road, hurling her into the waves below. As the search for her body continued, the shocking truth about her life finally emerged. In the era of the Suffragettes, Violet found another way to beat male-dominated society at its own game. Setting the bar for all female con artists to follow, she changed women’s fashion, her exploits entered the lexicon of the English language, and she rapidly became more famous than the King and the Prime Minister. She even had a racehorse named after her. She ruined lives and reputations, broke promises and shattered dreams but, like all great con artists, left us guessing until the end. And she did it all with style and panache.