The only child of Tory peer Lord Kilmartin, 32-year-old Harriet is a very modern woman. She'd be modern now, so in 1923 she is really quite something!
Expensively educated but with little parental influence, Harriet knows her own mind and views life as something to be enjoyed, not endured. An adventurous spirit, she has travelled and read broadly.
Harriet’s a practiced manipulator with a fierce intellect - she gets what she wants. And right now she wants a cover. Lord Kilmartin wants her married and he wants her to behave. Harriet will concede on the first point, but not the second!
She is steely with a cutting wit, but she does not deploy it without reason. Loyal to her friends Harriet will circle the wagons in a crisis. She will become Edmund's closest ally and defend him when Bairstow or Clem attempt to push him in directions that suits their own ambition but not his.
Harriet has a wide circle of fast friends. She is central to it and it is central to her. Harriet will be the moderniser pitted against Clem's desire to hold the line and she is a worthy opponent.
"Harriet is the product of the post war generation - the Bright Young Things - when life was about living for the moment! She’s a social whirl; she drinks, she dances and she says what she means. I showed a friend a picture of me as Harriet, who exclaimed “she looks like the type of girl I want to drink gin and get drunk with!” - a great description for Harriet!
Harriet is more than happy to give the countryside a whirl!
"I’ve always been fascinated by this period, so was thrilled to get to play the part of someone who came from this time and who embraced it so absolutely. [To prepare] I re-watched Stephen Fry’s glorious Bright Young Things, which is great at giving a depiction of the wonderful and new energy of the time and The Great Gatsby (with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow). I also read up a lot on women and fashion of the time, how they both changed and changed each other - how hand in hand a new female silhouette came to be, both physically and metaphorically."