Special meeds of gratitude are due to Jenny Davenport, to Patric Dickinson, Clarenceux King of Arms, to David Gelber, Treasurer of the Society for Court Studies, and to Christopher Phipps, each of whom read preliminary versions of this biography and improved it by their suggestions. I am indebted to conversations with Philip Mansel and with the Hon. James Stourton for ideas that are dotted through later chapters. I am devotedly grateful to the Hon. Jane Ridley, whose incitement, solicitude and raillery of a fellow biographer of Le roi qui s’amuse enhanced the pleasure of writing this book.
As my endnotes indicate, I have used archives to give fresh touches: the diaries and other papers of the Marquess of Lincolnshire (lent to the Bodleian Library, Oxford and consulted by me in Duke Humfrey), followed by the diaries of Sir Almeric FitzRoy and Sir Edward Hamilton (deposited at the British Library), have been pre-eminent sources. With renewed generosity the Hon. Rupert Carington has agreed to my reproducing material from the Lincolnshire papers.
The final version of this book has been improved by the challenges, erudite details and elucidations that my friend and Penguin editor Stuart Proffitt has set or supplied. On his studio wall Lucien Freud scrawled a charcoal reminder to himself about his portrait-painting: ‘Urgent Subtle Concise’. It might serve as a motto for contributors to the English Monarchs series. The only monarch of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha never lingered over books: he would have commended the elision of subordinate themes and have grunted with approval at the crucial brevity of Edward VII: the Cosmopolitan King.