Carlton House

Totally, yeah.

I've started the book with a fate that was held at Carlton House by the Prince Regent because obviously he's a key figure in the whole of the period.

And we haven't had a more excessive monarch in this country.

And that fate, he had hundreds of people to dinner there.

But he wasn't skint.

When he came of age at 21, um, he was given Carlton or Carlton House in Westminster, which he then spent ridiculous amounts of money furnishing, an income of £50,000 per annum, the Duchy of Cornwall.

Now, I don't know if that was the time then as it is now, but now the Duchy of Cornwall, uh, Cornwall is actually much wealthier than the Duchy of Lancaster.

So if that was at the same time, he had more money coming in at that point, and that gave him £20,000 per annum.

An old woman in mourning silk, foil in hand, beating young men half her age with all the neat economy of someone who has been doing this for fifty years.

On the 9th of April, 1787, she fences at Carlton House before the Prince of Wales against the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the great black swordsman and composer from Guadeloupe and one of the finest fencers in Europe.

There is a painting of it.

She is fifty-nine.

London packs the rooms.

An old woman in mourning silk, foil in hand, beating young men half her age with all the neat economy of someone who has been doing this for fifty years.

On the ninth of April seventeen eighty-seven, she fences at Carlton House before the Prince of Wales against the Chevalier de Saint-George, the great Black swordsman and composer from Guadeloupe and one of the finest fencers in Europe.

There is a painting of it.