Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane and the Glass Armonica
About this book
In the 1770s, London was transforming from a small town on the edge of Europe to a sprawling city at the centre of a world empire where new ideas of government, commerce and science were sweeping away old beliefs and creating a new kind of celebrity such as Samuel Johnson and the comedian Samuel Foote. The social elite all knew each other intimately through a complex network of gentlemen's clubs, learned bodies and social events as they feuded and jostled to make money and rise in society, so that politics and culture were as much a matter of personal relationships as abstract principles. To this metropolis, bristling with plots and spies, flocked figures such as Benjamin Franklin, the Chevalier d'Έon and exotic "natives" from around the newly-discovered world. And into this ferment there came a new rumour that could fatally undermine the legitimacy of the king and the entire ruling house and decide the fate of the unruly American colonies.