FIRST CELEBRITIES: Five Regency Portraits

Celebrity is either a reward for personal excellence, an unhealthy mania of fans, or the vehicle for third-party enrichment and each has the capacity to surprise and frustrate the others. But when in collaboration, everyone wins - the individual attains prominence and wealth, the audience enjoys private and social pleasures of fandom, and the industry provides jobs and income to those it employs. Bowman shows how, following the outrageous fame of Lord Byron, an interest in the foibles rather than the achievements of prominent individuals was kindled and sustained by newspapers, satirical prints and society gossip. Here are five pen portraits of colourful men and women whose reputations have subsequently faded, but whose personalities represent their age and their peculiar spheres of activity - the stage, politics, diplomacy, art, literature and fashion. Harriot Mellon, the illegitimate daughter of a wardrobe-keeper in a company of strolling players, married the elderly banker Thomas Coutts. Seven years later she was the richest widow in the land and a target of ferocious abuse. Dorothea Lieven, the Russian ambassador's wife, used her intellect, dignity and a talent for flattery to entrance numerous statesmen and become a force in British politics. Richard Grenville, Duke of Buckingham, was a corrupt parliamentarian who squandered a vast income and caused the decline of the mighty Grenville dynasty. Lady Charlotte Bury was mocked by Thackeray as 'Lady Flummery' because of her execrable novels, but she was a great beauty who married for love not once but twice. Sir Thomas Lawrence deserved his eminence as an artist, but had to use all his charm and courtliness to conceal the potentially explosive secrets of his private life. Here is a cast of characters to savour that reveal the realities of the period as no Jane Austen novel could. 320pp, 16 pages of colour and other plates and other illus.