is not persuaded out of the cosy confines of her private life easily, but she will step back into the fray for Erdem Moralioglu and the Duchess of Devonshire. The period-drama favourite journeyed to Derbyshire’s Chatsworth House – one of the stately locations for 2005’s , starring Knightley herself as a deliciously defiant Elizabeth Bennet – to see the opening of , an through Moralioglu’s lens. Erdem, as fans will know, made the former Mitford girl affectionately called “Debo” the , after he fell for the “push and pull” of the two sides of her eclectic personality.
Deborah was a keen Elvis fan, who loved rare-breed chickens and cast a spell over legions of men, but ultimately decided to marry a duke and did by the name of Andrew Cavendish. She threw herself into restoring Chatsworth, the Devonshire family seat known as the “palace of the Peaks”, with the same gusto she had for collecting insect jewellery. At the time, Candida Lycett Green reported for British , that the country pile the size of Harrods needed “2,592 lightbulbs to light its 297 rooms (of which 48 are gigantic), 1,000 metres of passages and 17 staircases”, while the various animals living in the 105 acres of grounds required hands-on care.
“Debo is always up to the minute, state of the art, looking forward to tomorrow,” said Lycett Green of her infectious zest for life, zero pretensions and exquisite turn of phrase. It is not a reach to imagine Knightley herself playing the , who h.