Amazing Grace The Great Days of Dukes Author:E. S. Turner "A fully-equipped duke costs as much to keep up a two Dreadnoughts. They are just as great a terror and they last longer". — So said David Lloyd George, the fiery Welsh duke-baiter in 1909. Amazing Grace surveys the dukes of Great Britain in their prime, chiefly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dukes were expected to bring "... more »;something extra to the grand manner," writes E.S. Turner, "something which unmistakably conveyed that here was a man who owned Belgravia or Eastbourne or Ben Lomond". He offers an anecdote led study of "godhead, eccentricity, noblesse oblige, self-indulgence and landlordism"; but his eye for the outrageous does not prevent him from paying tribute to those dukes to whom humanity has been much indebted.
In these pages can be found a Duke of Somerset who cut #20,000 from a daughter's inheritance because she sat down while he slept; an heir to the Duke of Richmond who embarked on the Grand Tour within minutes of contracting a marriage of convenience; and a Duke of Northumberland who defiantly assured a Coal Commission that he owned all the minerals in his lands right down to the centre of the earth.« less