George IV (The English Monarchs Series) - hardcover

What becomes of a controversial Prince of Wales, embroiled in a messy marital separation in which popular opinion thinks the wife virtuous and wronged and the husband an adulterer? Charles, the current Prince of Wales, could do well to read this study of George, Prince Regent in the 1810s and king himself--acceding to the throne at the age of 58--from 1820 to 1830. He might not find the experience too unpleasant either: where previous biographies and studies have tended to characterise George as "dissolute, pleasure-loving dilettante and a feeble, ineffective monarch", Smith sets out to tell the whole story, and gives us his strengths as well as his weaknesses. The business with his wife, Caroline, for instance: although George did have a mistress, and the Princess of Wales was extremely popular, the marriage had genuinely broken down and there were many instances of George's kindness to his estranged wife. George's spendthrift nature had a good side too, in his patronage of many arts and artists.

Smith is able to show that many of the brickbats hurled at his reputation were hangovers from his wilder youth and don't reflect his later maturity. Indeed, Smith's is the first biography of George to deal comprehensively with the fuller political context of the man's life and reign. This will surely become the classic account of George as king. --Adam Roberts