William IV

Queen Victoria’s uncle and immediate predecessor was a good-humoured, simple-minded sovereign, whose bustling amiability much endeared him to his subjects, writes Joanna Richardson.

Joanna Richardson describes how the prosaic alliance arranged between the middle-aged Duke of Clarence and Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen became at length an extremely happy marriage.

R.J. White describes how all sorts and conditions of men, at every stage of transition of a rapidly changing society, crowded the early-nineteenth-century scene.