Gossipy account of high society in the Regency era.: Serious historians won't find much to peak their interest in this gossip-ladden review of the Regency period, but lay readers will find it an interesting and entertaining read. The research supposedly comes from original sources, including newspaper columns about the foibles and follies of the haute ton. Admist the many amusing anecdotes, the author tries to cover all aspects of daily living in England at the time. Unfortunately, the structure of the book is such that there is a lot of repetition and I had trouble keeping track of (and interested in) the various many members of society that kept reappearing. An amusing read, but not a definitive look at the era.

A non fiction book about life in Regency in England. I was surprised by how much I know, it didn't give me a lot of new information. A society based on birth, clothes and gambling. I did like the line how incest was the issue of the day, like homosexuality raged through Victorian times. That I hadn't known. The level of debt that people simply lived with, seems telling into todays economic climate, somehow. We've done this before. And the huge stretch between rich and poor, that food would cost more than triple that of staff at an event, you know you are living before supermarkets and imports! How people would spend more then they could afford on servants livery, more than the servants earned! Those were good details. Rest of it was familiar, but interesting to revist. ( )

This book is a terribly amusing trip through high society England at a high-water mark: the Regency, in which George III was feeling a little out of it (by which I mean he was talking to trees), and so his opium-drenched, gastronormous son kept the throne warm. It doesn't talk about the royal family so much as it does about society of the time. Believe it or not, it was a relatively open, licentious time, and the Victorian era which followed was in part a reaction against the wicked rakes and dandies that had come before. Murray fills the book with wonderful anecdotes (the best way to write about history, I think) involving country house living, the London season, Mistresses and Rakes, spendthrifts, eccentric characters, bizarre traditions and manners, and more. This is one of the few books that has tempted me to read the bibliography to see if I could get my hands on the sources for this book. It has, though, been criticized for a variety of minor errors: listing the wrong name on the wrong occasion, misidentifying a date, etc. But since the book is largely anecdotal, it seems to me that this is of less consequence than if it were a straight "In 1802 X happened. The factors involved were A and B, and possibly C." Instead, the book is arranged by topics. Probably not the best book for general use, but for anyone who enjoys reading stories about/from this era, knock yourself out. Also has a great little section on Jane Austen and how she dedicated one of her books to the Prince Regent himself. ( )