Of all the colourful characters who graced the Georgian courts, one of our all-time favourites is Lord Hervey, flamboyant courtier and devastatingly witty memoirist who died on this day in 1743. (1/5 https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten">)

A close friend of Queen Caroline, Hervey enjoyed life right the top of the Georgian social ladder, and was a regular at #KensingtonPalace and #HamptonCourtPalace. Today his diaries offer rare insight and detail into the behind-the-scenes drama at George II’s court https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🖋" title="Füller unten links" aria-label="Emoji: Füller unten links"> (2/5)

Handsome, elegant and effeminate, throughout his life Hervey had extra-marital romantic relationships with both men and women. There are frustrating gaps in our understanding, however, as since the 18th-century some sections of his diaries have been torn out and destroyed. (3/5)

In his own lifetime, too, reception to his bisexuality and androgynous appearance was often confused, and sometimes hostile. In a notorious attack, Alexander Pope described Hervey as “an Amphibious Thing” who “Now trips a lady, and now struts a Lord”! (4/5)

But acid-tongued Hervey always gave as good as he got: our curator Matthew Storey describes his letters and diaries as “fabulously bitchy” https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💁" title="Person tipping hand" aria-label="Emoji: Person tipping hand"> (5/5)