During Queen Victoria's widowhood, Edward pioneered the idea of royal public appearances as they are understood today—for example, opening the Thames Embankment in 1871, the Mersey Tunnel in 1886, and Tower Bridge in 1894 [37]—but his mother did not allow him an active role in the running of the country until 1898. [38] [39] He was sent summaries of important government documents, but she refused to give him access to the originals. [12] Edward annoyed his mother, who favoured the Germans, by siding with Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein Question in 1864 and in the same year annoyed her again by making a special effort to meet Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian general and revolutionary, who was a leader in the movement for Italian unification. [40] Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone sent him papers secretly. [12] From 1886, Foreign Secretary Lord Rosebery sent him Foreign Office despatches, and from 1892 some Cabinet papers were opened to him. [12] Try our "98' Curzons!" A few fashion hints for men", Otago Witness, 3 November 1898, archived from the original on 15 September 2012 , retrieved 5 May 2010, It was actually the Prince of Wales who introduced this shape. He got them originally about eight years ago from a manufacturer called Charvet, in Paris. Main article: Death and state funeral of Edward VII The body of the King in his deathbed, May 1910 Funeral procession of Edward VII, London, 1910

Richardson, Matt (2001), The Royal Book of Lists, Toronto: Dundurn Press, p.56, ISBN 978-0-88882-238-3 Allfrey, Anthony (1991), King Edward VII and His Jewish Court, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 978-0-297-81125-1 Itinerary of the Imperial Tour 1875–1876", Royal Museums Greenwich, archived from the original on 8 April 2018 , retrieved 7 April 2018 Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910.Weintraub, Stanley (2001), Edward the Caresser: The Playboy Prince Who Became Edward VII, Free Press, ISBN 978-0-684-85318-5

Ashley, Mike (1998), The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens, London: Robinson, pp.694–695, ISBN 978-1-84119-096-9 Eldest son of Queen Victoria, he had to wait 60 long years before succeeding his mother. Small in stature (1.52m) but big in power, Victoria ruled the world’s greatest empire with authority… and austerity. The time was for morality, good manners, and decency. A deadly boredom for Albert Edward, especially as his mother does not make room for him. So why, without a real official function, languish in prudishness when the neighboring capital offers all the pleasures of life? Poet Lord Byron (1788-1824), shagged anything that stayed still long enough (including his half-sister, Augusta, and over 200 male lovers during a holiday around Greece.) Hibbert, Christopher (2007), Edward VII: The Last Victorian King, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-4039-8377-0 Roby, Kinley E. (1975), The King, the Press and the People: A Study of Edward VII, Barrie and Jenkins, ISBN 978-0-214-20098-4

Bertie the old tart

Public grief in Britain on Bertie's death at 70 was deeper than when his mother died. The press described him as a "peacemaker" who had enjoyed "one of the most brilliant and fruitful reigns in history". In Austria he was hailed as "the most influential man of the present day" and a monarch "who had been his own foreign minister". Glencross, Matthew (2015), The State Visits of Edward VII: Reinventing Royal Diplomacy for the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-137-54898-6 Svensk rikskalender (in Swedish), 1908, p.229, archived from the original on 9 July 2019 , retrieved 20 February 2019– via runeberg.org

Bradford, Admiral Sir Edward E. (1923), Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson, London: John Murray, pp.223–225 Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister, Pauline (1780-1825), took on so many well-endowed lovers that her doctors diagnosed her with an exhausted vagina. Says Clarke: "It is not always wise to trust a French politician's judgments but in this case Poincaré seems to have hit the nail on the tête." He believes if Bertie had been alive when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, he would almost certainly have stopped events escalating. "He would have assembled his oldest surviving friend in Europe, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austro-Hungary, and his nephews the Kaiser and the Tsar on a yacht or at a spa, handed out the cigars and talked firmly but amiably about the danger of a pointless war. Middlemas, Keith (1972), Antonia Fraser (ed.), The Life and Times of Edward VII, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ISBN 978-0-297-83189-1

PDF) (in Japanese). 明治聖徳記念学会紀要. pp.144, 149. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 March 2021 . Retrieved 17 August 2020. Ordinarily, a man in Edward’s position would have had two choices: lose weight or try different positions. But this being the Prince of Wales, he decided to take a third option. Edward commissioned famous Paris cabinetmaker Louis Soubrier to create what he called a “Siege d’Amour”, or “Love Chair”. Installed in Edward’s private room at La Chabanais, the elaborate gilded device allowed Edward to continue having sex without crushing his partners with his enormous girth. It was also rumoured that the chair allowed Edward to have sex with two women at once, yet while the chair does feature a second cushion on the lower level it is unclear how this was supposed to function. In a last bid to control the young prince, Albert sent him off to join the army. When his underlings put a prostitute in his bed he took full advantage and when news reached Albert (the woman in question had started styling herself Princess of Wales) it virtually finished him off.

The Edwardian Era, lasting from 1901 to 1910, is often remembered as a final age of innocence before Europe descended into the savagery of the First World War – a gilded period of refinement and elegance. This is somewhat ironic, as for most of his life the namesake of the era, King Edward VII, embodied exactly none of these virtues. Glencross, Matthew (2016), The State Visits of Edward VII: Reinventing Royal Diplomacy for the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan he had in many respects great natural ability. He knew how to be both dignified and charming; he had an excellent memory; and his tact in handling people was quite exceptional. He had a store of varied, though unsystematized, knowledge gathered at first-hand through talking to all sorts of eminent men. His tastes were not particularly elevated, but they were thoroughly English; and he showed much (though not unfailing) comprehension for the common instincts of the people over whom he reigned. This was not the less remarkable because, though a good linguist in French and German, he never learned to speak English without a German accent. [143] Join Bertie as he tries to get out of a pink party, fails to be polite for a whole day and makes a really rubbish entry into the summer fair's flower arranging competition…

Sex addict?

Edward donated his parents' house, Osborne on the Isle of Wight, to the state and continued to live at Sandringham. [69] He could afford to be magnanimous; his private secretary, Sir Francis Knollys, claimed that he was the first heir to succeed to the throne in credit. [70] Edward's finances had been ably managed by Sir Dighton Probyn, Comptroller of the Household, and had benefited from advice from Edward's financier friends, some of whom were Jewish, such as Ernest Cassel, Maurice de Hirsch and the Rothschild family. [71] At a time of widespread antisemitism, Edward attracted criticism for openly socialising with Jews. [72] [73] Actress, Tallulah Bankhead (1902 –1968) claimed that she had over 500 lovers. When the Kinsey report was published, Tallulah remarked that “the good doctor’s clinical notes were old hat to me”. a b Weir, Alison (1996), Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy, Revised Edition, London: Random House, p.319, ISBN 978-0-7126-7448-5 GCB: Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (military), 10 February 1865; [151] Great Master, 22 June 1897 [152] David Roberts was born in Liverpool. He always loved drawing from an early age and couldn’t wait to escape high school and go to art college. There he developed a keen interest in pottery and fashion and went on to study a degree in fashion design at Manchester Metropolitan University. After university he worked as a milliner and began to get work as a fashion illustrator but always felt his true calling was in children’s book illustration.