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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 
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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 IIâs court 
(2/5)
(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 âan Amphibious Thingâ who âNow trips a lady, and now struts a Lordâ! (4/5)
But acid-tongued Hervey always gave as good as he got: our curator Matthew Storey describes his letters and diaries as âfabulously bitchyâ 
(5/5)
(5/5)
