"Royal William" by Doris Leslie

This is a fictionalised biography of King William IV. The third of George III's sons, William served from the age of thirteen as a midshipman in the Royal Navy; he was in New York during the American Revolution (George Washington planned to kidnap him) and her served as a captain under Nelson, attending Nelson's wedding. After leaving the sea he settled down at Bushy House near Teddington with actress Dora Jordan by whom he fathered ten illegitimate children. During the regency and after the death of the Prince Regent's daughter, William married Princess Adelaide in an attempt to father a legitimate heir. George III's second son died during the reign of George IV so when he died William became King. Since he failed to father a legitimate child, on his death the throne passed to Victoria, the daughter of George III's fourth son.

Queen Adelaide sounds interesting. Her dad was a genuinely reform-minded German sovereign: "He permitted entire freedom of the press ... He interested himself in education. He founded schools. He was a connoisseur of art and something of a poet. He invited Schiller and Paul Richter to his table." (3.1) She wanted to be a painter. Judging from the number of Queen Adelaide pubs in Britain she became extraordinarily popular in Britain; she was even a devoted step-mother to her husband's illegitimate children.

Doris Leslie's book is divided into three parts: Sailor, Squire and King. She sees William IV as a real man of the people and the first democratic monarch. In her eyes he lived his life teleologically: his everyday experiences as a midshipman (including a night in gaol after a brawl in Gibraltar) and his everyday experiences as a squire and father fashioned his behaviour as King ... even though he resisted the Great Reform Bill to the point at which the London mob attacked his carriage and wounded him with a stone.

The book has been thoroughly researched and then fictionalised. This can be comic. Dora Jordan never loses her cod-Irish brogue and there are some scenes of melodrama. It is of its time (1940); no doubt our own drama documentaries will seem stilted and forced in another fifty years.

While Claire Tomalin in Mrs Jordan's Profession has made Dora Jordan a superwoman, talented and hardworking who combines a successful career with motherhood of a large family, accepting the shadow world of being a royal mistress, Doris Leslie makes her into rather a scheming bitch who is finally jettisoned by her caring prince when he discovers evidence that she has been having an affair with one of his brothers.

Doris Leslie also falls for the incorrect notion that the ballad The Lass of Richmond Hill was written about George III's morganatic wife Mrs Fitzherbert.

She also suggests that the ageing William had tinnitus. (3.3)

She quote Macauley as saying: "I only know two ways in which society can be governed - by public opinion or - the sword." (3.3)

Great moments:

• "The secrets of the alcove ... had revealed their mysteries to many younger than himself, but the tree of knowledge that is free to all of Adam's sons was denied to the son of the King. Only his Eden lacked an Eve where Eves were plentiful. At the entrance to those luscious groves stood gentlemen whose orders were as adamant as any flaming sword." (1.2)
• "The Queen's middle-aged ladies-in-waiting were as handsome as a row of turnips and as dull." (1.3)
• "In that underworld, as far removed from the palaces as Hell from Heaven, there where hunger stalked and man did not so much exist as he fermented in his rags and his starved flesh." (1.5)
• "Byron had loosened an outburst of revolt in 'Manfred', and the men of the workers were learning to read. ... Very soon all men would read. There was talk of education for the masses." (3.1)
• "What did this democracy portend? A state controlled by working men who had not only learned to read, but to think for themselves." (3.1)

Fun as fiction, not to be taken as history. June 2020; 373 pages