"Already a byword for taste and extravagance by the time he became Prince Regent in 1811, George IV remains as vivid and notorious a figure today as he was in his own time. He bequeathed to his nation a glittering legacy of stunning, eclectic, and often eccentric houses and collections, and also provided the monarchs who followed him with an object lesson in how - and, more significantly, how not - to conduct oneself. In many ways a strikingly modern sovereign, he attempted to manipulate his public image to divert attention from the less savory aspects of his private life. His ultimate mistake was actually to believe in the image he had manufactured rather than in the depressing reality." "Steven Parissien brings us George IV against the cultural background of his age, showing how his behavior affected the contemporary view of both the monarch and the monarchy, and how his energies and ambitions focused upon the artistic, architectural, and social splendor with which we now associate him."--Cover.