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Rating: 
Summary: No revisionist breakthroughs here, but a lot of fun
Review: George IV or the Prince Regent is the caricature monarch of English history. In the age of the scything cartoonist, the larger than life Prince was the ideal subject through his loves, sense of melodrama and overblown antics. David, wisely in my opinion confines himself to the period before his ascendancy to the throne, after which George, by virtue of his gout and his unpopularity became a subdued, sorry figure. David whisks us through all the major episodes, Mrs. Fitzherbert, his doomed marriage, the infidelity of both spouses and his eternal opulence and theatrics. There is such a wealth of literature both on the Prince and the Regency, that a new approach or a fresh insight is virtually impossible, particularly from a biographical standpoint. Hence the best an author can do under the circumstances is provide a rollicking read and a fun, lively approach and David measures up to the task. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book about a perenially endearing cartoonlike figure. No revisionist breakthroughs here, but a lot of fun.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad and silly person
Review: He started off pretty, but it was only skin deep. He was vain and greedy. He was particularly irksome to both wives (secret and catholic Mrs Fitzherbert, "respectable" but dizzy Princess Caroline). But no-one is all bad - he loved his daughter, enjoyed parties and built a few memorable buildings. What a waste of a life. Despite the horrible cover, this is a solid book on the Prince Regent which will be read (or glanced at) by regency buffs the world over.
Rating:
Summary: Sad and silly person
Review: He started off pretty, but it was only skin deep. He was vain and greedy. He was particularly irksome to both wives (secret and catholic Mrs Fitzherbert, "respectable" but dizzy Princess Caroline). But no-one is all bad - he loved his daughter, enjoyed parties and built a few memorable buildings. What a waste of a life. Despite the horrible cover, this is a solid book on the Prince Regent which will be read (or glanced at) by regency buffs the world over.
Rating:
Summary: Little new is revealed in this
Review: I am ambivalent at best about Saul David's book "Prince of Pleasure".On the good side I think he is very readable and I did enjoy a great deal of this book. Unfortunately I don't think he brought up much to shed new light on the Prince and indeed some of the matters on which he emphasised he failed to distinguish between rumour and innuendo, and what was actual provable fact - the supposed love children of the Prince Regent's sisters for instance. Other people have presented far better researched and more compelling arguments on these things than he did. The book left wondering what there was really new in this that Christopher Hibbert has not discussed in his 2 volume biography of the Prince Regent Published some 25 years ago? If there was anything new about the Prince I think it was mostly window decoration. Also I was somewhat disturbed by a number of errors of fact in the book - none of which really destroyed or influenced the subject of the book as they were on peripheral issues - but nevertheless annoying - for instance he said the Earl of Barrymore (better known as Hellgate) had been shot by the soldiers in his regiment - untrue. He died in an accidental shooting when his sporting gun went off in his carriage. David implies that Harriette Wilson made a fortune from her memoirs - also not true. I also found it hard to agree with some of the interpretations he put on various quotes from people - to prove that the Prince had had an affair with Harriette Wilson for instance - or his assertion from a very ambiguous quote that Beau Brummell was Gay. David does have a very neat way of blending in the elements of history with the life of the Prince Regent which I also found very enjoyable. I wish he would footnote a bit more so it was possible to see where he drew his information from. One final quibble I have with this book is that "Prince of Pleasure" is a title that is already used by J B Priestley's 1969 work on the Prince Regent and the Regency period. This was a popular book and well known. I wondered if David had read it, but it doesn't turn up in his bibliography - a fact I find surprising for he must have come across it in his research. It just seems a bit cheeky to use the same title in a book on exactly the same subject and not acknowledge it. In the end I am left wondering what he has added that was not already known about the Prince Regent. Still it is interesting and readable.
Rating: 
Summary: Jane Austen's monarch....
Review: I read 'The Prince of Pleasure' by Saul David because I am fascinated with the Regency Period in England, the French Revolution, and Jane Austin's writing. Partly biography and mostly very good historical research (letters, journals, diaries), the book provides excellent background information on architecture (the Pavillion at Brighton, townhouses in London); clothing (Empire waistlines, Beau Brummel); Luddite rebellions and starving workers in Glasgow; the Duke of Wellington and Waterloo; and Nelson, the British Navy, and Trafalgar. Mostly, I read the book because I love Jane Austen and want to know all I can about her times. Saul David says that next to Walter Scott, Jane Austen was the Duke of Wales' (Prince Regent and eventually George IV) favorite novelist. Ms Austen did not reciprocate his feelings. In one of her letters, Austen said of Princess Caroline, the wife the Duke was attempting to divorce and/or put away, "I shall support her as long as I can because she is a Woman, and because I hate her husband...[If] I must give up the Princess, I am resolved at least always to think that she would have been respectable, if the Prince had behaved tolerably by her at first." When she visited Carlton House (one of the Royal residences) in November 1815, the librarian informed Austen of the Regent's admiration for her work. By this knowledge she was coerced into dedicating her next novel 'Emma' to the Prince Regent. But she had earlier expressed her poor opinion of the Prince indirectly in 'Mansefield Park.' In what David describes as a "thinly veiled criticism" she set a scene where a crises is precipated by the absence of the 'Lord' of the Manor, Sir Thomas Bertram (like George III) and the reckless follies of his oldest son Tom, "who takes over the 'regency' from his brother Edmund...[and like the Regent Prince] "loves to gamble, live well and run up debts." When Tom becomes the 'Regent' of Mansfield Park, he "prefers the ceremonial to the practical aspects of government." The subversive conclusion of 'Mansefield Park' "is that the younger son is a more suitable regent that the legal heir, while the poor female relation (Fanny Price) is preferable to them both." My goodness, it's a wonder they didn't try Ms. Austen for Sedition. But then, most readers didn't get her irony, and still don't.
Rating:
Summary: Georgie Porgie
Review: The truly odious Prince Regent, later George IV, was fat, vain, hateful to his family, cruel to his Queen and a spendthrift of the highest order: but he had great taste -- in interior decoration and clothing, food and wine. Much of what we admire of English literature, decor and architecture today blossomed during the early part of the 19th c. when George, Prince of Whales, waited and waited for his mad father, George III to succumb to prophyria. "Prince of Pleasure" does what few other books on the Regent bother to do -- it looks beyond George's excesses and flamboyance, his Chinese fantasy at Brighton, his parties for hundreds, his "secret" marriage to Marie Fitzherbert and all the other delightful gossip of history to the real political dynamics behind the boozing and building. Fox and Pitt get their due, along with Napolean and Wellington (who, with Nelson, were the superstars of their day), the lovely Duchess of Devonshire and her fast set (so well limned in the excellent "Georgianna")and other fascinating characters -- saints and sinners alike -- surrounding and surmounting "Prinny" and his very louche circle. A good compliment to Caroly Erickson's "Our Tempestuous Day," "Prince of Pleasure" is a real find for both the casual and serious reader of this period. Compare the legacy of this King of England who regularly passed out drunk in public, wore a corset and heavy make-up, frivoled away his reign and public funds on redecorating his various houses, married bigamously and tried to convict his wife of treason to get rid of her to the deadly dull Windsors sitting on the throne today, and try to remember why anyone got their knickers in a twist over "Squiggygate."
Rating:
Summary: Poor Prinny
Review: This book was the first I've read that presents a balanced picture of the Regent. He had many unattractive qualities but they were the shortcomings of someone who never really grew up, a lifelong adolescent. He had some finer traits that might have served him perfectly well if he'd been a private gentleman instead of the heir to the throne. I was particularly interested in the theory that the Regent suffered to a lesser extent the hereditary disease that most historians believe caused George III's madness.
Rating:
Summary: Why monarchy became an unpopular institution...
Review: This is a good book about a bad man. While George IV is believed to have been a style setter and taste-maker, his life was so motivated by self-indulgance and egotism that even a biographer as talented as Mr. David cannot hope but to fail in his hopeless attempt to make the subject of this books attractive.
George IV was the son of America's last king, George III. In his life there were hosts of empty headed women of easy virtue, massive tasteless building projects, flitations with radical politics, and more excess than the average Hollywood star of the moment. By his example, George IV makes Jim Morrison look like a choir boy. And what a bore he must of been as well!
Mr. David attempts to make the prince likable, but one is compelled upon a dispassionate read of the facts to conclude with Thackery that he was little more than a cad with a crown. This is the opposite conclusion to which Mr. David attempts, and hats off to him for his efforts on behalf of this poor dead king's reputation. It is kind of difficult to feel any sympathy for a man who treated his wife so poorly, drank himself to excess, spent money fecklessly and in the end believed himself (rather pathetically) the victor of the battle of Waterloo.
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