Brilliantly researched and written, this is the definitive history of the city of Brighton. Divided into five sections – Fishermen and Farmers, Princes and Palaces, Late Georgian, Victorian Marvels and Mysteries, Battle Scene and Transformation – it shows how Brighton grew from a small fishing village. For almost thirty years Clifford Musgrave was the director of the Royal Pavilion, the Brighton Library, Art Gallery and Museum. In 1962 Faber and Faber commissioned him to write a comprehensive history of the town. It was published in 1970 to much acclaim. This new edition, published forty years after the original publication, includes a double introduction by the late Clifford Musgrave's son, Stephen Musgrave, and the editor of Victoria County History for Brighton and author of Georgian Brighton, Sue Berry. Two letters from Graham Greene to the author are also featured.

Published to accompany a major exhibition at The Queen's Galleries in London and Edinburgh, this book provides new insights into George IV as a collector. Although George led a life bounded by convention, he was a genuine connoisseur who was able to form an unrivalled collection of paintings, porcelain and furniture. These he presented and displayed in a series of architecturally adventurous spaces. His acquisitions continue to form the backdrop to royal ceremony, a legacy that is one of the principal pillars of today's magnificent Royal Collection.

This lively history of Europe’s royal families through the 18th and early 19th centuries reveals the decadence and danger of court life. As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history. Meanwhile, in France, Revolution stalks the land. Life in the Georgian Court pulls back the curtain on the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia, and the epoch-defining royal family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover. Beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Historian Catherine Curzon reveals the private lives of these very public figures, vividly recounting the arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and the scandals that rocked polite society. Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, King George IV makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage, and Marie Antoinette begins her final journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell. Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.

Donated: The Margaret A. Bailey Art Collection.