THE WORLD OF “PRINNY”

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33189, 31 March 1973, Page 10

THE WORLD OF “PRINNY”

Regency London. By Stella Margetson. Cassell. 152 pp. Devoting a separate volume to each of the main phases in the city’s history, Cassell’s “London Series” has already described the Roman, Medieval and Elizabethan periods. Now, anticipating at least one and perhaps three volumes yet to appear, comes a portrait of the city during the period which takes its name from the Regency of George Augustus, Prince of Wales (1811-20), but actually began earlier, c. 1806. and extended through the reigns of George IV and William IV into the first years of Victoria, ending about 1840. Regency London was an opulent and fashionable city, its reputation made, either then or later, by such men as Beau Brummell. the arbiter of fashion, John Nash and Sir John Soane, the architects, Turner and Constable, the painters, and Keats, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt and Byron, the poets and critics. But above all it was the world of “Prinny,” the Regent himself. The first of the Hanoverian monarchs to show much in

the way of intelligence or good taste, and certainly the first and only one to combine wit and good looks, George IV, as he later became, took a real and deep interest in the arts, and in combination with John Nash brought about a revolution in town planning. Though Regents Street has been mangled beyond recognition. Regents Park and its terraces have been preserved, and in Cumberland Terrace and its neighbours can still be seen the vision that the architect and his patron had of a new London. The author of two popular studies of leisure and pleasure in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Stella Margetson is well qualified to describe the Regency period. As a Londoner by birth and residence she brings the more important qualifications of enthusiasm and local knowledge. Her account of the city during this most vigorous period is likely and well-informed, and though marked by a certain chattiness her style suits’ the purpose of the series, which is popular rather than scholarly.