After the high-minded but censorious Victorian era, Edward’s scintillating reign had sluiced away the last dregs of Puritanism. The King had hardly been a model of virtue, but neither was he a bigot or hypocrite. Lord Granville had summarised it best when he drew a comparison between father and son. Whereas the worthy Prince Albert had been unloved ‘because he possessed all the virtues which are sometimes lacking in the Englishman’, Edward was loved ‘because he has all the faults of which the Englishman is accused’.8
