PRINNY REMEMBERS by Pamela Hill
- the Private Reflections of His Majesty King George the Fourth
Thackeray cruelly wrote of George IV as no more than a tailor’s dummy. Later verdicts have been founded on this. A more recent one states that
he was
‘an undutiful son, a bad husband, and a callous father,’ without finding very much to say against his kingship.
None of the above is accurate, given the knowledge of lately revealed letters
from George Augustus himself and those of his daughter, Princess Charlotte.
George, better remembered as Prince Regent and often called Prinny, was in many
ways a secretive man despite his outward flamboyance. Hints here and there in
the Princess’s letters show him as an affectionate father in private. In public, his attitude
to her had to be ambivalent because her mother, long estranged from him by her
own choice, made common cause with his political enemies, and what has
generally been put down to caprice can be seen, knowing the facts, as
statesmanship.
This charming, gifted and intelligent man contrived, despite an appalling
hereditary illness concealed with great courage, to give his name to a
brilliant Regency and thereafter to reign as King for a further ten years.
Prinny Remembers is an attempt to reconstruct the probable thoughts and memories of this secret
man, dying almost alone at Windsor, old, ill and blind, in 1830, and put right
the biased press usually given to him.
Pamela Hill
Full-time writer Pamela Hill was educated in Scotland and originally trained to
be a teacher. She has written around 91 books in various different categories
of fiction and non-fiction, but it is her historical work which now takes
precedence. From her home in Hertfordshire she is presently working on her
latest work of non-fiction, with recent published titles including
A Tale of Strawberries – Shakespeare’s Journeys in Scotland.
