In the house of Hanover

Either Lucy Worsley or, more probably, her publisher has given her book the subtitle ‘The Secret History of Kensington Palace.’ This is enticing, or intended to be so; it is also misleading.

Either Lucy Worsley or, more probably, her publisher has given her book the subtitle ‘The Secret History of Kensington Palace.’ This is enticing, or intended to be so; it is also misleading. There is no secret history, and the subject of this well researched and entertaining book is life at the court of the first two Georges, life which went on also at St James’s Palace and indeed Leicester House, where George II lived as Prince of Wales, as did his son Frederick later. Indeed the book begins with a lively account of a reception at St James’s, where, ‘beneath their powder and perfume, the courtiers stank of sweat, insecurity and glittering ambition’. (What is the stench of glittering ambition?) Kensington Palace was where the court removed to for the summer months when London was even less healthy than in winter.

Neither George I nor George II is among the best remembered of British monarchs. Some may recall that the father hated his son, which became a Hanoverian habit; others that the first George was believed, probably with reason, to have organised the murder of his wife’s lover, and that the second George died on the privy. George II is, however, notable as the last reigning British monarch to have commanded his army in battle, which he did successfully at Dettingen in 1743, and for having replied to his dying, much-loved and ill-treated wife Caroline when she urged him to marry again, ‘Non, j’aurai des maitresses’, a promise which he kept. But that’s about it. They lack glamour.