George IV - Stella Tillyard

George IV spent most of his life waiting to become king: as a
pleasure-loving and rebellious Prince of Wales during the sixty-year
reign of his father, George III, and for ten years as Prince Regent,
when his father went mad.

'The days are very long when you have
nothing to do' he once wrote plaintively, but he did his best to fill
them with pleasure - women, art, food, wine, fashion, architecture. He
presided over the creation of the Regency style, which came to epitomise
the era, and he was, with Charles I, the most artistically literate of
all our kings. Yet despite his life of luxury and indulgence, George
died alone and unmourned.

Stella Tillyard has not written a
judgemental book, but a very human and enjoyable one, about this most
colourful of all British kings.