232 pp, 9" H. B&w illustrations. "The atmosphere of a Court is enclosed and artificial. The monarch has in the past enjoyed a wide degree of power without a corresponding sense of obligation or responsibility; and for the courtiers, whose position depended on their agreeableness, flattery has always been at a premium just as frankness has been inhibited. How do men and women react in circumstances where normal standards of behaviour are inapplicable? This is the question which, by implication, Ralph Dutton answers in this book. Since his survey covers the three centuries from Henry VII to George VII it is natural that, in so many different courts and under the reign of so various a series of kings and queens, Court Life should appear in most of its possible forms. But in the moral forcing house of the Court a constant element, from 1485 to 1760, has been the tendency for personal virtues and defects of character to become exaggerated to an extent seldom met with in the prosaic outside world. As to the Courts themselves: the Coronations, Drawing-rooms, Progresses, Births and Funerals; the favourites, mistresses and politicians, and the palaces in which they met, intrigued and lived: as to all these, they provide Mr. Dutton with a rich topic on which to exercise his accustomed gifts for description, quotation and deprecatory comment." Light wrinkling at top/bottom of spine, very light edge and corner wear, bump at top corner of front board - migrates as a small bump at top corner of pages up to approx. page 40, small store label at bottom of front pastedown. Dust jacket has minor wrinkling at top/bottom of spine and flap-folds, minor browning at top edge of flaps, small crease at bottom corner of rear flap.