How the Country House Became English By Stephanie Barczewski - book review

Blenheim Palace. Chatsworth House. Downton Abbey. The English landscape is littered with names that project a certain image of Englishness. Like those names I just listed, this image blends reality and fiction, and is maintained by its consistent manufacture on screen, in literature and as tourist attractions.

To many inside this country, and beyond, the country house is a dominant feature in the cultural fabric of England. It’s up there with tea, rolling green hills and the Royal Family.

How did this happen? In her new book, Stephanie Barczewski sets out to answer this question of ‘How the Country House Became English’.

Chatsworth House (2014)

An essential for fans of English country houses

I have visited well over 100 English country houses in my life, many on multiple occasions. I’ll never look at them the same way again having read this book. It’s brought into focus many of the questions I ask of a property, which until now haven’t considered the broader context of local and national history.

Until now I’ve tended to look at each house in isolation. Now, even though I’ll continue to enjoy features such as priest holes, abbey ruins, classical columns and Grand Tour souvenirs, I’ll also have a new appreciation of the house as a whole.

This book is not light reading, but it is rewarding and worth the effort. Barczewski is Professor of Modern British History at Clemson University, South Carolina. This is her second work on country houses. It opens with a discussion of how the TV series Downton Abbey, Brexit and the work of The National Trust have nurtured nostalgia, helping to shape perceptions of Englishness.

Houses that embody history

In her book, Barczewski highlights how English country houses reflect ‘moments of disruption in English history’. Notably, the Dissolution of the Monasteries from the 1530s onwards, and the English Civil War, 1642–1651.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries saw massive upheaval in land ownership. Nearly one thousand religious institutions were closed, with ownership of vast tracts of land passing from the church to private individuals.

Many grand houses were built either in or from the ruins of abbey churches, cloisters and other monastic buildings. The Reformation also spawned a host of priest holes—secret spaces built into houses where Roman Catholic priests could hide during searches.

Over a century later, the English Civil War brought damage and destruction to country houses across England, and many properties were confiscated. The end of the war, and the restoration of the monarchy, saw estates returning to their owners and some houses being rebuilt.

These disruptions were followed by a period characterised by Barczewski as the ‘non-revolution’ in England. This is from the Glorious Revolution in 1688 through the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when England endured long wars with Revolutionary France. In this period English country houses came to represent continuity—and it’s when many of today’s classical houses were constructed.

Athelhampton House (2016)

The Englishness of the country house

Barczewski spends three chapters discussing the relationship between English country houses and the many foreign influences on it. She makes the point that, with rare exceptions, there is no such thing as a ‘British country house’. Those in Scotland and Wales remain largely distinct.

Most of today’s English country houses were built after 1600, as Britain became an increasingly imperial power. The Americas and India exerted some influence, as did the Grand Tour, which took so many of the wealthy to southern Europe.

The twentieth century transformed the condition of English country houses. Many were demolished, while a host of others became heritage sites with the expectation they would present a comfortable view of history.

She closes this section by saying:

This book argues that such expectations are the result of the invention of the ‘English’ country house in the nineteenth century. After the French Revolution contributed to the elevation of political stability and cultural continuity as key components of English identity, English country-house architecture became more isolated from the continent and more referential to national history.

A wealth of stories and information

Kingston Lacy (2016)

This isn’t a book about architecture. It’s about English country houses, their origins, histories and occupants.  To illustrate the discussion, it contains a rich collection of stories about the history of specific English country houses, which are as much about people, politics and religion as they are about design and construction.

On a personal note, I was pleased to see considerable discussion of Kingston Lacy, an English country house local to us in Dorset. Besides being a glorious property, its story is rooted in the destruction and upheaval of the English Civil War. The house itself is presented as distinctly English, with continental influences.

Read more about Kingston Lacy here. 

If, like me, you’d like to deepen your understanding of the great many English country houses you’ve visited, or would like to visit, this book is essential reading.

The book has 70 pages of appendices, references and an index. The appendices include lists of all English country houses with priest holes, that are built on or from monastic sites, and that were damaged or destroyed in the English Civil War. There are a good number of black and white illustrations.

Andrew Knowles researches and writes about the Regency and late Georgian period. He's also a freelance editor and writer for business. He lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with his wife, Rachel.

Learn more about Regency History. Sign up for our newsletter.

If you found this article interesting or useful, and you want to encourage us, help us to keep our research freely available by buying us a virtual cup of coffee.  Click the button below.

All photos © Andrew Knowles - RegencyHistory.net

Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt - an eyewitness history by Jonathan North - book review

Did Napoleon’s troops fire cannons at the pyramids of Egypt? And what was his army doing there?

Those were questions provoked by the teaser trailer for the 2023 movie Napoleon. The second of these questions is answered by this new book by Jonathan North, Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt.

The book’s subtitle, ‘An Eyewitness History’, promises a wealth of firsthand accounts from the French invasion and occupation of a corner of North Africa. It delivers on that promise. This is a compelling account of that French adventure, told in the words of many who were there.

Napoleon at Arcole from The Life of Napoleon
Bonaparte by W Sloane 1896

An introduction to Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt

While it’s titled the ‘Invasion of Egypt’, Jonathan North’s book covers the full period of the French occupation. Napoleon and his army arrived in July 1798 and the survivors left three years later, in 1801. Bonaparte himself effectively abandoned his troops in late 1800, sailing back to France, somehow evading the British Royal Navy.

The expedition was sent by the Directory, the committee that ruled revolutionary France. Their star general, Napoleon, proposed it, with a view to opening a land route to India.

It was also to be a scientific expedition, taking scholars to examine the marvels of ancient Egypt. Their discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian writing, helped to open up the field of Egyptology.

Napoleon and his army landed in Egypt on 1 July 1798 and was immediately engaged in fighting the occupying Mamelukes, rulers of Egypt under the distant auspices of the Ottoman Empire.

‘The boats were rowed to the shore and a mass of cavalry showed itself and seemed ready to wade into the sea to oppose the landing. A few rounds of artillery saw them off,’ wrote 18- year-old soldier Joseph Laporte.₁

The Battle of the Pyramids on 21 July inflicted a heavy defeat on the Mamelukes, allowing Napoleon to enter Cairo and commence his occupation of Egypt.

Despite sweeping in as victorious invaders, in only days the French became a beleaguered garrison. On 1 August 1798 a British fleet, under Horatio Nelson, defeated the warships of the French fleet that had transported the army across the Mediterranean, at the Battle of the Nile. The victory put the British in command of the sea, making it unlikely that the plan to reach India could be fulfilled.

‘We realised that any communication with Europe would now be impossible,’ wrote Captain Etienne Louis Malus in his journal. ‘We began to lose hope that we would ever see our homeland again.’₂

The Destruction of L'Orient at the Battle of the Nile
1 August 1798 by G Arnald (1825-7)
at National Maritime Musuem Photo A Knowles (2022)

Occupation and assimilation

Napoleon set up a French administration of Egypt that included some of the local rulers, and established a scientific Institute. During their time in Cairo the French attempted to replicate something of their culture from home, including street cafes. Some adopted a local style of dress, partly because of the climate.

The French invasion force was almost exclusively male. It wasn’t long before soldiers began to find mistresses among the local population. General Menou married a Muslim woman and converted. He seemed to be one of the few who would have preferred to remain in Egypt indefinitely.

Most did not feel the same way. Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a young scholar, wrote:

The soldiers yearn for the delights of France. Their hatred for Egypt stems from being denied essentials. They have only water to drink. They cannot be attracted to women who hide themselves in veils.₃

North’s book goes into considerable details about the challenges faced by the French as they experienced life in a different climate and culture. Scorpions, slavery, plague, mirages and mummies are all discussed, often in the words of eyewitnesses.

The end of the Egyptian adventure

To help protect Egypt, Napoleon’s army ventured into Syria and reached the Holy Land in 1799. Unable to capture the city of Acre, defended with British help, he had to turn back.

By now Napoleon sought a return to France, knowing he would be welcomed by the people. His departure was kept secret from almost all his officers and when they discovered he’d gone, many felt abandoned in a strange, unwelcoming land.

The remaining French army, significantly reduced by death and disease, began looking for its own way home. They continued to fight off local revolts and attacks by the Ottomans. On 21 March 1801 they were defeated by the British at the Battle of Alexandria, after which many were repatriated to France in British ships.

The British kept many of the artefacts discovered by the French in Egypt, including the Rosetta Stone.

A page-turning eyewitness account

This is my kind of history book—a strong story illustrated with an extensive tapestry of quotes from those who experienced it firsthand. Letters, journals and reports provide a rich seam of material which North has used to great effect.

I would like to have heard more from those being occupied. How did they feel about this French army inserting itself into their world? I’m guessing that sources for this are limited, hence their scant use.

The book contains a number of illustrations and maps, along with a detailed bibliography. The index only seems to include names of people—not places or key subjects. There’s a separate list of the around 40 eyewitnesses whose words are included in the book (presumably all translated).

This book has a high, and sometimes gruesome, body count. Thousands died, both soldiers and civilians. Battles, executions, revolts, raids, assassinations and plague all contributed to the carnage, and both sides carried out massacres.  

I recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in the history of Napoleon or that of France or the Middle East in the period. It’s packed with fascinating details and has certainly helped me better understand Bonaparte himself, along with how Egypt became a subject of fascination during the Regency period.

Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt is available from Amberley Publishing.

Andrew Knowles researches and writes about the Regency and late Georgian period. He's also a freelance editor and writer for business. He lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with his wife, Rachel.

Learn more about Regency History. Sign up for our newsletter.

If you found this article interesting or useful, and you want to encourage us, help us to keep our research freely available by buying us a virtual cup of coffee.  Click the button below.

Notes – all quotes from Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt

1. p49

2. p99

3. p114

All photos © A Knowles RegencyHistory.net

Book review: Victorian Entrepreneur William Schaw Lindsay by Bill Lindsay

This book sits on the very edge of the time period I usually write about, which is late Georgian through the Regency. William Schaw Lindsay was born in the middle of the Regency, but almost his entire adult life was during the reign of Queen Victoria.

However, its appeal to me was the business angle. Early Victorian commercial life was not that different to that of the Regency period. Neither was life aboard a merchant ship, which William Schaw Lindsay experienced and described, during the 1830s.

Victorian entrepreneur

In 1833 William Schaw Lindsay was an unemployed 17-year-old living rough in Liverpool docks. An orphan, far from his Scottish home, he applied to ship after ship for work. Time after time he was refused, sometimes violently.

In 1877, some 44 years later, William Schaw Lindsay was an invalid sitting beside the River Thames near London. Aged 61, he’d been unwell for over ten years. But in the three decades between being alone in Liverpool and suffering a stroke, he transformed his life, and that of many others.

He rose from having nothing to becoming one of the world’s wealthiest ship owners, a Member of Parliament, and an influencer in maritime laws. He also wrote extensively, publishing his ‘magnum opus’ in the 1870s - the four volume History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce. 

A lively biography told as if by Lindsay

The author, Bill Lindsay, is descended from the ship-owning entrepreneur featured in the book.

The introduction states:

Lindsay’s journal provides fascinating first-hand insights into merchant shipping in Victorian days, mismanagement of the Crimean War, and European involvement in the American Civil War.

The author has chosen to adopt what I consider to be an unusual approach. William Schaw Lindsay’s birth is written in the third person, but the story quickly flips to being told in the first person.

We’re told that all the information in the book is drawn from William Schaw Lindsay’s journals and other writings. However, there seem to be no direct quotes from those writings. The author has chosen to tell the story in the first person, based on these sources, but rewriting them for a modern audience.

This is understandable, given the Victorian prose style would not suit a 21st century audience. However, it means we rarely hear directly from William Schaw Lindsay himself. For me, as a lover of primary sources, this was frustrating.

That said, the tale is a lively one, particularly the opening sections that cover William Schaw Lindsay’s sailing days. He rose from ship’s boy to captain in just a few years, experiencing first-hand the rigours of sailing on a merchant ship in the 1830s.

Fascinating Stories from Victorian England

There are some wonderful stories inside the book. They’re enjoyable to read and could be useful to those researching life at that time. These include:

The drama of a parliamentary election in the 1850s. These were highly disruptive to the community. Crowds got drunk, windows and furniture were smashed, and coaches were overturned. The buying of votes was open, and the winning margins were slim.

Bride ships and coffin ships. The former were vessels employed to take batches of women to Canada, where there was a shortage of marriageable women. Coffin ships were sent to sea in an unseaworthy condition by owners hoping they’d sink, leading to an insurance payout.

Trials of the Crimean War. A number of William Schaw Lindsay’s ships supplied the British forces in the Crimea. He also adopted a dog that remained faithfully beside its dead Russian master, until it was removed by a British soldier. The war lowered his opinion of British military logistics - in just one of many errors it shipped 500 tables to the army but left all the legs in England.

The American Civil War. William Schaw Lindsay met Abraham Lincoln and many other American leaders in the years before the war. His shipping business meant he had a close interest in transatlantic trade, and as a Member of Parliament he had involvement with British government officials. He supported the southern cause.

A Classic Rags-to-Riches Story From Victorian England

It’s interesting to see, almost at first hand, how a penniless orphan became one of Britain’s leading shipping magnates. Of course, we’re hearing his version of the story, but there’s no boasting about achievements and no sense of thrusting ambition.

William Schaw Lindsay was one of those influential and well-connected Victorians who stood in the shadows of others. He met Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was in Parliament with two of Britain’s most famous Prime Ministers - Disraeli and Gladstone. Through his journals he told his own story, and now we can read it.

The book contains several appendices, including a list of ships he owned, voyages of the Tynemouth during the Crimean war with details of cargo, and a list of his considerable property on his death.

William Schaw Lindsay is published by Amberley and is available here.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew, who wrote this review.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage us and help us to keep making our research freely available, please buy us a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

Book review: The Yorkshire Coiners - the true story of the Cragg Vale Gang by Steve Hartley

On 9 November 1769, William Dighton was shot and killed in Halifax, Yorkshire. It was a planned assassination of a Supervisor of Excise—an official responsible for ensuring the collection of tax.

Dighton was the victim of the Cragg Vale Gang—criminals who operated what was perhaps England’s largest clipping and coining operation. That is, they created counterfeit coins from gold shaved off genuine coins.

Steve Hartley, author of The Yorkshire Coiners is a descendant of David Hartley, or ‘King David’, leader of the Cragg Vale Gang. He’s spent years researching the gang’s activities from various documents and, in his words, this book:

…brings together the facts from these and other sources and places them in chronological order, so that the events relating to the Coiners can be seen in the order they occurred.

It’s important to note these words because this book is very much a reference work. It’s not an easy-to-read account of the Cragg Vale Gang story.

What’s in the book

It’s a relatively short (125 pages) book organised into 25 brief chapters. Each chapter has a narrative that presents facts from original sources, including local newspapers, letters and court records.

There are a number of photographs, such as buildings once lived in by characters featured in the history, along with portraits and documents.

The author has strung the sources together into a narrative that’s strictly chronological. I found there was not much in the way of additional insight or observation, except in the final chapter, where there’s an attempt to tie up some loose ends.

Most of the sources are summarised, with occasional direct quotes.

Almost all the material in the book relates to the activities of the clippers and coiners, what they got up to, and how they were treated by the law enforcement bodies.

What’s not in the book

Other than a few brief descriptions, the book does not go into detail about clipping and coining, nor about the regional or national context in which the Cragg Vale Gang operated.

There’s no real discussion of the background culture, or explanation of how the gang may have functioned.

This is unsurprising, given the book’s focus on describing the contents of primary sources. However, I would have liked to have read more about the society the gang was operating in, and their methods.

How did coins find their way into the hands of the gang, what did they do with them and how were the clipped coins, and counterfeits, fed back into circulation? There are some clues in the book, but these issues aren’t examined.

Nor did I find any real discussion of the attitudes of society towards the criminals. Were their crimes considered to be largely victimless and therefore tolerated by many? Were they respected or feared by their community?

The book did not set out to address these issues, so I should not have been disappointed.

However, I feel the book did not fully live up to its subtitle, The true story of the Cragg Vale Gang. Yes, it focused on the truth (at least as reported in newspapers and other documents), but it was not organised in a way to tell a story.

There are, in fact, several stories: the origins of the gang, Dighton’s murder and the subsequent manhunts, the trials and executions, and the official response, which went as high as King George III himself.

A story still waiting to be told

Lack of documentary evidence always limits the historian’s scope for telling a story, without resorting to embellishing it with fiction. In this book, Steve Hartley has chosen to stick to the facts as he found them, sharing them in chronological order.

This book is a useful resource to anyone researching clipping and coining in the Georgian era, particularly the Yorkshire gang it describes.

But in my opinion, an easy-to-read account of the Cragg Vale Gang is still waiting to be written.

The Yorkshire Coiners is published by Amberley Books and is available here.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew, who wrote this review.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage us and help us to keep making our research freely available, please buy us a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

Everyday Life in Victorian London by Helen Amy - book review

Rachel writes: Although not Regency, it’s helpful to know something about the periods immediately before and after. This book takes a look at everyday life in London in the Victorian era, which started in 1837. 

Andrew's review:

It’s tricky to write a book about everyday life in Victorian London, the city that became the capital of a global empire. That’s because there is no such place as Victorian London. The London of 1837, when Victoria ascended the throne, was very different to that of 1901, when she died.

During the 64 years of the queen’s reign, the city witnessed massive changes—in size, in wealth and in technology. Transport was just one area that bore witness to these advances. Trains, a novelty in 1837, were commonplace by 1901, when motorcars were making their first appearance on London streets.

Attempting to describe the everyday life of London during this era of momentous change is a major undertaking, even before taking into account the many different strata in London society. Author Helen Amy attempts the challenge in just 250 pages. The result is a series of snapshots, rather than a comprehensive treatment of the subject.

The book is divided into sections that describe different aspects of London life. Individual chapter cover subjects such as:

●     Housing

●     Education

●     The Great Exhibition

●     Religion

●     Crime

Each chapter is broken into sections. For example, the chapter on education describes a number of specific schools and colleges, the educational opportunities for the poor, and public libraries. Most sections are relatively short, giving highlights with limited detail.

I found that most of the subjects covered in the book were very practical. They related to aspects of life such as homes, schools, shops and entertainment. There’s very little about politics or the matters that might have occupied the everyday conversation, particularly among the reasonably well educated middle classes.

The author makes frequent reference to the sources of information used in the book, and I was pleased to see that she often quotes original reports and journals. These first-hand accounts, the voices of Victorian Londoners, help bring the history to life. We’re permitted to glimpse London as it was in the second half of the 1800s, through the eyes of those who lived there.

Some are observers, often reporting on the plight of the less fortunate. The section on street children allows us to hear from people such as Charles Dickens, who had genuine concern for those living on the margins of society.

Charles Dickens from The Life of
Charles Dickens by John Forster (1872)

An example of someone living an ‘everyday life’ is Hannah Cullwick, a maid-of-all-work in a household in Kilburn. An extract from her diary recounts, in detail, the many tasks she had to undertake each day:

Opened the shutters and lighted the kitchen fire - shook my sooty things in the dusthole and emptied the soot there, swept and dusted the rooms and the hall, laid the cloth and got breakfast up - cleaned two pairs of boots, made the beds and emptied the slops…₁

Unfortunately, no dates are given, so we can’t tell which period of the Victorian era it relates to.

While I know London reasonably well, I would have preferred the book to include at least one map. At the very least, this would have helped illustrate the change in size during the Victorian period. I think it would also have been useful to readers unfamiliar with the sprawling geography of the city.

I was pleased to see a number of illustrations, showing different aspects of the everyday London life that the book describes.

My opinion is that this book could be useful to someone looking for a general introduction to the many aspects of life in Victorian London. It doesn’t dig deeply into any subject, but it does highlight a wide range of different topics that could be researched separately.

The writing style is straightforward and clear, making it very accessible. The generous use of quotations from original sources ensures that you’re not simply hearing the author’s opinion. Her statements are backed by eye-witnesses from the time. The book has a reasonable bibliography but the index feels a little thin.

There are many Victorian Londons. Helen Amy makes a good stab at illustrating the various facets of them, from life on and around the River Thames, through to the various flavours of Christian churches available to the public. She closes the book with a short summary of the changes in London over Queen Victoria’s later life, concluding with a short description of the monarch’s final journey to Frogmore, where her burial marked the end of the era. 

Note

1. Quote from Everyday Life in Victorian London by Helen Amy (2023) p53.

Everyday Life in Victorian London is available from Amberley Publishing here.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew, who wrote this review.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage us and help us to keep making our research freely available, please buy us a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

The First Celebrities: Five Regency Portraits by Peter James Bowman - book review

We all instinctively know what a celebrity is. They’re talked about. They’re a character. They stand out from the crowd.

Arguably, celebrities are as old as humanity. There have always been those who attract the majority of attention. Bowman’s title challenges this, positioning five Regency characters as among the first true celebrities. He opens the book with almost sixty pages justifying his claim, and he makes a good case.

In simple terms, celebrity is about being known for who you are. Fame is about being known for what you’ve done. It’s also of the moment. Byron was a celebrity. The Duke of Wellington is famous.

Celebrity, argues Bowman, also requires a sophisticated media. The media is the stage on which the lives of celebrities can be paraded, discussed, ridiculed and dissected in print and in pictures. The rise of the British press in the late eighteenth century, and the freedom it enjoyed, presented new opportunities for individuals to be promoted to celebrity, and indeed, for them to promote themselves.

Celebrity involves a relationship between an individual and their audience. The public are hungry for personal details of someone’s life, and the object of their attention has to choose how much to share. Give away too much and reputation is at risk. Reveal too little and there’s a danger of being overlooked.

Bowman has selected five individuals to wear the mantle of the first celebrities. They are:

●     Harriot, Duchess of St Albans

●     Princess Dorothea Lieven

●     Richard Grenville, Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

●     Lady Charlotte Bury

●     Sir Thomas Lawrence

The book tells their stories, with an emphasis on their relationship with the media and, thereby, with the public.

Bowman has clearly researched his subjects in detail, from letters, diaries, memoirs and particularly, newspapers. Their stories are engaging and entertaining, written in a style that keeps you thinking and occasionally has you reaching for the dictionary. He treats them sympathetically, even the feckless Duke of Buckingham.

Harriot, Duchess of St Albans

Harriot, Duchess of St Albans
from Memoirs of Harriot, Duchess of St Albans
by Mrs Cornwell Baron-Wilson (1840)

Harriot Mellon is the ultimate rags-to-riches tale. The possibly illegitimate daughter of a wardrobe assistant in an Irish theatre troupe, she became the richest woman in England. Wealth does not lead automatically to celebrity. It was her manner of obtaining it that provoked public interest and scandalised gossip.

In 1815, aged 37, she married a banker over forty years her senior. Having secured a fortune, she then achieved an aristocratic title. This came on her second marriage, this time to a man much younger than herself.

Harriot maintained her public profile through her generosity. As she and her husband travelled the country, church bells announced their arrival to excited crowds. The Brighton Patriot stated:

The liberality and benevolence of the Duchess made her presence at all times desired by all classes.₁

Harriot Mellon is one of the twelve women Rachel profiled in What Regency Women Did For Us. Bowman’s book tells her fascinating story in more detail.

Princess Dorothea Lieven

The only non-British celebrity portrait shared by Bowman is that of the wife of the Russian ambassador, Count Lieven. He arrived in London, with his elegant young bride, in 1812. During his two decades in post he became a prince.

In 1834, on the news that the Tsar was withdrawing his ambassador, The Times stated:

The recall of Prince Lieven, or, rather of Madame la Princesse, is an ‘event’.₂

This statement summed up how many perceived the Princess. She was effectively the ambassador for Russia, because she’d developed such close relationships with many British politicians. But she was no pawn in the male-dominated game of politics.

Rather, she entranced men into feeling so comfortable that they opened up to her, allowing her to play a significant part in the shaping of Europe once the Napoleonic wars were over.

Countess Lieven was one of the patronesses of Almack’s Assembly Rooms.

Richard Grenville, Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

Buckingham, says Bowman, gave the world something to talk about for thirty years, but achieved remarkably little. Inheriting a fortune, including the palace at Stowe, he enjoyed an annual income not far short of £100,000 a year.

His life encompassed politics, the military, mistresses and a Grand Tour in the 1820s. All this was against a background of extravagant living. His massive income wasn’t enough to support his even larger appetite for spending.

The press loved to follow the details of Buckingham’s life. Of a visit to Scotland The Edinburgh Observer stated:

Had the King himself been in the party, his motions could hardly have been more minutely dwelt on.₃

Lady Charlotte Bury

Born in 1775, the young Lady Charlotte was considered the epitome of female beauty, giving her an early celebrity status. Bowman’s biography then charts her decline in status and the alteration of her celebrity, through two marriages and her transition into a novelist.

Charlotte enjoyed the confidence of royalty—the Prince Regent and his estranged wife, Princess Caroline—and mixed with the cream of society. But the high regard in which she was held was slowly stripped away over the 86 years of her long life.

Sir Thomas Lawrence

Sir Thomas Lawrence
from The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence
by DE Williams (1831)

Of the five biographies in this book, that of artist Sir Thomas Lawrence feels the least like the tale of a celebrity. Deeply talented from childhood, and celebrated well before he was ten years old, the son of an innkeeper went on to become the leading portrait artist of the Regency.

Lawrence’s story, like all the others, is well presented. It describes his commitment to his work, his entanglements with the daughters of actress Sarah Siddons, and his inability to manage his finances. While the newspapers of the day were interested in what Lawrence was up to, there’s less of a sense that the public were hungry to hear it.

You can read our profile of Sir Thomas Lawrence here. 

Note

All quotes are from The First Celebrities by Peter James Bowman which is available from Amberley books here.

Read a review of another of Peter James Bowman's books, The Real Persuasion

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew, who wrote this review.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage us and help us to keep making our research freely available, please buy us a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.