Courtiers: The Secret History of Kensington Palace
Nearly all horrible people as she describes them; it is impossible not to want to know how they all end up. As Chief Curator at the Royal Palaces, Worsley has worked with and among these characters for years. She takes as her starting point – and it’s a good one – the decorations on the King’s Grand Staircase at Kensington Palace where in the 1720s William Kent embellished the walls and ceilings with portraits of palace inmates. These portraits remain and as Worsley decodes them their characters as well as their roles serve as guides to the court’s elite, from King George I down to George III, with their wives, mistresses, children, assorted lords and ladies and a few more important if distant connections. Connection, in that place and in those days, was everything.
This is a colourful and extensive cast of characters although, despite Worsley’s efforts to humanise her favourites, none is particularly appealing. Some who have competence as well as charm, intelligence as well as integrity, seem to have been emotionally or intellectually throttled by etiquette, especially stringent in a dynasty attempting to establish itself as the rightful as much as the inevitable succession to the throne. The monarchy had gone through a long period of lateral descent; when Queen Anne’s 18 pregnancies left no surviving child, George Augustus, Elector of Hanover and through his mother a great-grandson of James I, was invited to accept the British throne. This reluctant elevation, which introduced the Georgian era, brought him little, if any, happiness; his solace lay in constant visits to Hanover.
