When Marion "Joe" Carstairs died in 1993 the age of 93, she was largely forgotten. During the 1920s she held the world record as the fastest female speedboat racer. But as journalist Kate Summerscale discovered, when researching an obituary for the Daily Telegraph, Carstairs was also a notorious cross-dresser who favored women and smoked cheroots.

Supremely self-confident, she inherited a Standard Oil fortune and knew how to spend her money - on fast boats and cars, on her female lovers, and on a Caribbean Island, Whale Cay, where she reigned over a colony of Bahamians. There, far from her bohemian past in London and Paris, she hosted a succession of girlfriends and celebrities, including Marlene Dietrich, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Through it all, she remained devoted to Lord Tod Wadley, a little doll who became the bosom companion of one of the twentieth century's great eccentrics.