Noble Savages is the story of the four Olivier sisters: Margery, Brynhild, Daphne and Noel. Daughters of the Fabian Sir Sydney Olivier, governor of Jamaica, they were raised at the centre of the Fabian milieu, and expected to be independent and unhindered by convention. At Cambridge all four were introduced to Rupert Brooke and formed the Neo Pagan group. The youngest, Noel, would prove the love of Brooke’s life, and joined the tiny minority of female doctors before the First World War. Her sister Daphne became a pioneering educationalist who set up Britain’s first Steiner school.

Inspiring love and awe in many, they proved again and again to be ahead of their time, refusing to be restricted by the expectations of others. This book brings them in from the margins, and straddles the colonial leisure of the Caribbean, the bucolic life of Victorian progressives, the frantic optimism of Edwardian Cambridge, the bleakness of war, their links with the Bloomsbury Group, and a host of evolving philosophies for life over the course of the twentieth century.