At the heart of this vibrant metropolis was the effulgent figure of the King. Unlike his mother, he believed it was the business of the monarch to be visible. Queen Victoria had come to loathe London, preferring to seclude herself in what Lord Esher described as an atmosphere of ‘hushed reverence . . . deep memories . . . queenly pity . . . of personal sorrows, and of duties simply performed through long years’. In her elderly presence, statesmen were ‘half afraid to speak above a whisper’.5 Quite apart from finding it desperately dull, Edward had judged such remoteness to be politically
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