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The prince was Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, despair of his royal mother, lover of fast horses, high stakes and beautiful women. The Lily was Mrs Lillie Langtry, tediously married, and newly arrived from Jersey, whose portrait by Millais turned her almost overnight into one of the most sought after professional beauties in London. Their affair, played out over three decades, set the unbuttoned tone of London Society. In The Prince and the Lilly, James Brough draws a spirited portrait of Queen Victoria as the autocratic matriarch. He also captures the glittering, quarrelling Malborough House set who surrounded her eldest, least satisfactory son, and the evanescent world of the London theatre. Above all, in the portrait of Lillie, he makes an absorbing study of a beautiful, ambitious and formiddable woman, who was a phenomenon of the age.