My Best Books

The 18th century is confusing. There were too many people with the same name – at least one William Pitt too many, with almost everyone else apparently called George or, again, William. Conversely, the same people had too many different names, changing them as they acquired peerages. To make identification just that bit trickier, all the men wore wigs, and in formal portraits usually seem to be in some kind of uniform: even if, like this book’s main subject, their actual military service was brief, leisured and risk-free. There were far too many wars and battles, some also bearing several different titles, and involving too many European countries which no longer appear on the map and were some of them too small to find even when they did exist…