Books: The Regency Years By Robert Morrison

 

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Recently I visited London. It´s a fascinating metropolis with a lot history. In preparation I read the book "The Regency Years" by Robert Morrison (amazon). The author covers an era in England in the early 19th century. Then King George III was to ill to rule so his son George, Prince of Wales, replaced him as his proxy (prince regent) till his father´s death when he became King George IV.

This era was accompanied by a population explosion, swift economic growth,  driven by industrial evolution, and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, which terminated the expensive wars between England & France. Peace and rapid economic growth supported a lot of political, sociological & cultural changes. It was the time of Jane Austen, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Beau Brummel, Walter Scott, Lord Byron and other artists.

Morrison writes lively and reports a lot of amusing & interesting episodes, mixes information with entertainment. He describes the controversy around the prince regent, who was "widely despised and too often oblivious in matters of state", but otherwise "in matters of taste and style left a profound impact on his era, for in his love of both elegance and excess, violence and restraint, learning and lasciviousness". If a monarch could be called a bohemian, this man was one.

George`s regency certainly benefited from the new peace and the economic upswing, which gave the prince regent the means to reshape his world. The monarch - and his architects John Nash & John Burton -  gave London a new look, they created Regent Street, a majestic thoroughfare in the heart of the metropolis, and new parks, including the Regent Park - maybe the first case of deliberate city planning. The prince regent`s taste & support for art. literature, music and sciences inspired - and financed - many creative thinkers.

The new political & economical climate encouraged authors like Mary Shelley, who´s Frankenstein novel might be the nucleus of science fiction, and bohemians like the poets John Keats & Lord Byron, who had the reputation as a womanizer, but preferred boys and was fond of strong men like Napoleon Bonaparte, even though that the French tried to subdue England (or because of that?). Theaters like Covent Garden & Drury Lane and other forms of entertainment boomed and fashion flourished. The Regent Years also reduced sexual censorship & oppression and gave way to a short lived sexual revolution till the prudish Victorian Era began.

 "The Regency Years" reads almost like a novel. I had much fun and I learned a lot - not just about England and the describe period. Highly recommended!