Miranda Seymour
Plucking Roses
The Fortune Hunter: A German Prince in Regency England
By Peter James Bowman
Signal Books 232pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
A prince he did a-wooing go, in 1826, in search of a wealthy English bride. Nothing unusual about that in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, when an entire army of Europe’s finest crossed the Channel to twirl their moustaches – ‘whiskered aliens’, harrumphed an outraged British gentleman of the press – and to show off their waltz steps in a country never known (despite the recent endeavours of Anton du Beke) for its dainty footwork.
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