These memoirs, by DD Home’s second wife, Madam Home, were first published in 1877. DD Home’s letters and diaries were a who’s who of 19th century society. His autobiography, Incidents in My Life, published in 1863, detailed his public life, his psychic life, and some would argue, his tragic personal life, including his struggle with TB as well as the death of his wife Alexandria de Kroll and their son Greigore.

Many of the amazing accounts in Incidents in My Life left out names in order to protect friends from ridicule. In Madam Home’s book she reveals many of the names and stated: ‘The fact that many of these names are now for the first time published, will prove to what degree Home carried his consideration for others, suppressing their names in order to spare them from ignorant abuse, and tranquilly encountering the host of calumnies that were directed against him in consequence.’

DD Home has been called ‘the greatest physical medium in history’. He has been accused of fraud by sceptics, but never found to be anything but genuine by anyone who studied him seriously while he was alive. The list of people who sat with Home is impressive. Count Alexis Tolstoy (cousin of Leo Tolstoy), Alexander Dumas, Lady Shelly, Sir Francis Galton, James M Gully (an eminent doctor whose clients included Charles Darwin), Sir William Crookes (President of the Royal Society), and the Emperor Napoleon III and the French royal court.

During one conversation, the Duke de Morny told the emperor that he felt it a duty to contradict the report that the emperor believed in spiritualism. The emperor replied: ‘Quite right, but you may add when you speak on the subject again that there is a difference between believing a thing and having proof of it, and that I am certain of what I have seen.’ Napoleon later stated, ‘Whoever says that Home is a charlatan is a liar.’

Julie de Gloumeline, also known as Madam Home, was Daniel Dunglas Home’s second wife; they were married in 1871.