Lucy Moore has produced an absolutely fascinating and totally absorbing book about one of the most interesting characters of the 18th Century. Lord Hervey (a relation of the Marquis of Bristol) was a wit, courtier, and politician - right-hand man to Walpole, (the first Prime Minister), and Royal confidente. But despite fathering eight children, he was also bi-sexual and his affair with Stephen Fox, (unlce of Whig leader Charles James Fox), ultimately helped bring about his downfall. These are very real characters that Moore writes about, and as she brilliantly demonstrates, human character and motivations have changed very little since then. Also, it becomes perfectly clear that people loved a public scandal then as much as we do now. But the book is so much more than just a biography - by the end I felt I had learned something about court life, the politics of the age, letter writing and it's importance, as well as attitudes towards homosexuality and various other aspects of day-to-day life at that time. As a piece of social history, this is hard to beat.