A celebrated pianist, Violet Gordon Woodhouse became the foremost clavichord player of her day and the first artist to record and broadcast harpsichord on the radio. She was also key to the revival of pre-Romantic music. Her private life was equally unorthodox: she lived in a “a surprisingly harmonious” ménage à cinq – known, less than affectionately, by contemporaries as “the Woodhouse circus” – with four men, including her legal husband, John Gordon Woodhouse. The intentionally childless marriage, allowed VGW to pursue music full-time. As well as the devotion of four “husbands,” she was also adored by Dame Ethel Smyth, Christabel Marshall, and Radclyffe Hall, who dedicated The Forgotten Island to this “mistress of stylish showmanship”.