The language is sophisticated, the characters are well drawn and likable, and the romance, infused with funny flirtatious banter, is quite compelling. Heyer's other great skill was in writing entertaining dialogue and much of it in this book is laugh aloud funny. Brompton has caught a cold and huddles by the fireside with his feet in a mustard bath, tended by Eugenia, who furiously renounces Charles when he ventures to criticize her conduct.

Impetuous, shocking, and perfectly un -shy, Sophy quickly discovers that there is much amiss in the Ombersleys household!

In regards to Eugenia and Charles, Sophy "felt it a pity that so promising a young man should be cast away on one who would make it her business to encourage all the more disagreeable features of his character. The men really do rival Austen gentlemen, and I think Mr Darcy shall have to watch his place very carefully in my regard. Painful BUT obviously part of society then just as so many 1960s/70s “comedy” shows are racist/sexist and I find that much more offensive as society should have evolved more then – and I 100% agree about the Gringot’s goblins, they make me very uncomfortable. It does seem ridiculous to condemn a wonderful author like Heyer for an attitude that was common at the time. Eugenia says of Sophy, "It is a pity that men will laugh when her liveliness betrays her into saying what cannot be thought becoming.

And while it helps explain Heyer’s anti-Semitism, and to accept it in a way we would not (I hope) in our contemporaries, that doesn’t mean we should shrug off its appearance in her fiction as “just how things were back then. Of course, I'm taking an almost ridiculous amount of interest in these characters lives and expending worry on something that isn't even real but. As far as the antisemitism, I think it is a bit of a cop-out to claim that Heyer was simply a product of her time. Though most of the Ombersley household take to Sophy, her autocratic cousin, Charles Rivenhall, is wary of the change she represents.Sophy reminded me of Nancy Drew (including fast driving and gun-toting) but a livelier version whose investigative abilities were all directed at sorting out problematic relationships in her aunt's family. She arrives with her beautiful horse Salamanca, Tina her little Italian Greyhound and Jacko the monkey she brought for the children that she rescued. Sophy is a devious, meddlesome schemer, who manages to win our hearts, and the hero's, without ever submersing her personality. Anti-Semitism was alive, well and institutionalized up until the 1960s when the civil rights movement made discrimination of most kinds not only uncool but illegal. Bromford and Eugenia, by the cautious advice of their respective mothers, stay well clear of the house.

But while snobbery was "inherent in the social hierarchy" of the periods depicted in Heyer's novels, the author's own prejudices do occasionally surface in her writing too. Therefore, we have to say that Heyer was antisemitic and not just blame it on the era in which she was raised. For the past several years, Sophia Stanton-Lacy (known as Sophy to everyone) has lived away from England, following her diplomat father Sir Horace around Europe while the Napoleonic Wars raged on. Less forgiveable is the anti-Semitism, baffling since Heyer herself is believed to have some Jewish blood. Sophy and Cecilia nurse her through this crisis while Charlbury constantly visits to ask after Amabel’s health.I can’t even measure my giddy enjoyment of any scene in which Charles and Sophy debate, argue, attempt a civil discussion, and end up having a marvelously entertaining row. In this case it cannot be argued that its antisemitic overtones are "just a product of her time" (as they certainly were in the period depicted), since at the time Heyer's novel was written, the Nurenberg trials had just been exposing the criminal consequences of Nazi racism. Much though I love them, I must confess that, by today’s standards, her books have more than a tinge of snobbery. Now that the Battle of Waterloo is won and Napoleon has once again been exiled, her father receives a temporary post in Brazil. Because really, Sophy's a great character and, that one scene excluded, this is one of Heyer's best novels.

Georgette Heyer's Regency romances brim with elegance, wit and historical accuracy, and this is one of her finest and most entertaining .The Grand Sophy, my first Georgette Heyer, is a very entertaining book about a complete hoyden who turns people's lives upside down. Horrible stereotypical Jewish moneylender character in the latter half of the book, I mean seriously horrific awfulness. While my experience with Heyer has been "limited" to Arabella , The Grand Sophy was so much better and such a delightful read, I half suspect none of her other books compare. Sir Horace is regretting his betrothal to Sancia but declines to leave the Ombersley fireside, convinced as he is that Sophy is perfectly capable of solving all complications.