How I First Met Lady Valerie Meux

I began researching and writing Spice of the Devil during the strange, suspended spring and summer of 2020 — months of glorious weather set against the dark, grim backdrop of the Covid‑19 lockdown. With the world closed and time suddenly abundant, it seemed the perfect moment to begin.

But the roots of the book stretch back more than fifty years.

My working life started as a reporter with the Hertfordshire Mercury and County Press, mainly on the Cheshunt and Waltham Mercury and later the Lea Valley Mercury, based in Waltham Cross. Alongside news reporting, we produced features on anything and everything, and I gravitated naturally toward local history.

One local curiosity had always intrigued me: Temple Bar, the ancient gateway to London, mysteriously rebuilt in nearby Theobald's Park. Neglected, weathered and quietly decaying, it stood barely a mile from the Mercury’s office. Why was it there? How had it ended up in a Hertfordshire estate? It was firmly on my “to do” list of features — but before I could investigate, I left the Mercury for pastures new. Had I stayed, I might have uncovered the extraordinary figure behind Temple Bar’s relocation: Lady Valerie Meux. That discovery, however, would not come for another thirty years, and only then by complete chance.

I had long been fascinated by Egyptology, and in the early 2000s I began taking courses with Birkbeck College’s Faculty of Continuing Education. This culminated in a diploma dissertation in 2007. A year earlier, in 2006, Forty Hall Museum in Enfield had been contacted about a nationwide survey of Egyptian antiquities for Cornucopia — an online database of more than 6,000 collections in British museums, galleries, archives and libraries. Staff at Forty Hall recalled four Egyptian shabti figures in storage, which were subsequently examined by the British Museum.

The rediscovery of the shabtis was reported in the Enfield local newspapers. Because of this publicity, I decided to attempt to describe, identify and date these funerary statuettes, placing them within the historical development of such figures. I arranged a visit to Forty Hall Museum and went on 28 December 2006.

The Museum Development Manager at the time, Val Munday, told me she had no idea how or why the shabtis were at Forty Hall. We speculated about where the nearest private collection of Egyptian antiquities might have been. “Perhaps they came from the Meux collection at nearby Theobalds Park,” she suggested. That single remark set me on a new path. I decided I would investigate the Meux Collection.

What I found was astonishing: a strange tale involving a banjo‑playing barmaid who became a formidable collector of Egyptian antiquities, a mummy’s supposed “curse”, and even death by an elephant.

My dissertation, Spellbound in Suburbia, barely scratched the surface of the fantastic, beguiling and utterly mad life of Valerie Meux — butcher’s daughter; chorus girl; barmaid; mistress; possible blackmailer; manipulator; accused of plotting to murder her husband; social pariah; owner of a “cursed” mummy; antiquarian collector; Derby winner; patriot; property magnate; one of England’s richest women. And she also owned a brewery and could ride an elephant.

How could anyone resist?

She had also been spotted coming home from the races with her feet on an empty case of ‘G. H. Mumm’ emptied in ‘right joyous company’.

Anglo‑Irish soldier and author Lord Rossmore, a friend of Valerie, captured her perfectly: “She was a strange, fascinating creature with more than a spice of the devil in her, but a good sort notwithstanding. She was a woman who would not brook any kind of interference, and her record in the world to which she belonged was a fearsome catalogue of ‘up and at’ whoever upset her.”

That was the moment Valerie Meux took hold — and never let go.

This was a personal journey into a life stranger than fiction.

This is obviously an AI generated mock-up of The Sporting Times newspaper, known as the Pink 'Un because of the colour of the paper it was printed on. In 1878 it featured a few stories about Val Reece (one of the names Lady Valerie Meux once used) who was, seemingly, well known at the horse racing courses that ringed London. On 17 August it reported ‘Val Reece gave a ball to the jockeys Brighton. At Lewes the next day, McGeorge wondered what was amiss with them.’ This was Thomas McGeorge, race starter for the Jockey Club for twenty-five years, known at all of England’s top racecourses, Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot, Goodwood, Doncaster. The implication seems clear. Valerie had been partying so hard with her jockey friends that when they came under starter’s orders the next day, they were still the worse for wear. She had also been spotted coming home from the races with her feet on an empty case of ‘G. H. Mumm’ emptied in ‘right joyous company’.