Charles II's reign was a period of revolutionary experimentation: in science, ar
t and sexual etiquette. For the first time in British history, Royal mistresses
- such as Nell Gwyn - played an active, public role in court life. Women sensed
new possibilities and freedoms, appearing on stage, managing their own financial
, matrimonial - and extra-marital - affairs.
Encouraged by a licentious King,
'being beautiful' could get you what you wanted. But if beauty was admired and
revered, praised by poets and idealised by artists, it was also distrusted and f
eared, pursued and possessed. Beautiful women were chased and abused, pilloried
as whores.
This equivocal nature of beauty explains the lives of some of the
most charismatic and controversial men and women in British history - those Rest
oration mistresses and degenerate libertines who lived, loved and died amidst th
e bespangled luxury of the late Stuart Court. This beautiful book, published to
accompany an exhibition at Hampton Court Palace, traces the rise and fall of the
'beautiful revolution' from the Restoration of Charles II to the death of Queen
Anne in 1714. It is also a book about beauty itself: its ambiguity, its authori
ty and its transience.
This is a timeless tale about our continuing obsession
with beauty, celebrity, power and love.
