The Trials of the King of Hampshire: Madness, Secrecy and Betrayal in Georgian England [Paperback]

AGuardianbest history book of 2016

Eccentric, shy aristocrat … or mad, bad and dangerous to know?

Neighbour Jane Austen found the 3rd earl of Portsmouth a model gentleman and Lord Byron maintained that, while the man was a fool, he was certainly no madman. Behind closed doors, though, Portsmouth delighted in pinching his servants so that they screamed, asked dairy-maids to bleed him with lancets and was obsessed with attending funerals. After he’d lived this way for years, in 1823 his own family set out to have him declared insane. Still reeling from the madness of King George, society could not tear itself away from what would become the longest, costliest and most controversial insanity trial in British history.Elizabeth Foysteris a Fellow and Senior College Lecturer at Clare College, Cambridge. She explores the sort of subjects that are often left out of the history books – childhood, married life, sex, relationships with siblings and parents, masculinity, old age and widowhood. She lives in Barnet, North London.‘Foyster proves to be not only a scrupulous and thorough historian, but also a delightfully inquisitive one…compelling.’‘Foyster has turned a great mound of papers lying neglected in the Lambeth Palace Library into a grippingly readable tale.’'A highly engaging book that should reach a wide public'.‘A well-informed, sympathetic portrayal of an extraordinary world.’‘Fascinating’.‘Reveals an aristocratic household turned upside down by scandal and mental illness...Unputdownable.’‘Thoroughly absorbing…heading beyond the immediate confines of its subject…the 3rd earl emerges…as a Georgian “character” to rank with Beau Brummell or Parson Woodforde’.‘One of the early nineteenth century’s most notorious lunacy inquiries and a dynasty in turmoil...If this were a novel, no one would believlC*