Mistresses

The diarist John Evelyn described Charles II as addicted to women, and over a long reign plenty of women gave in to a king who was clever, polished and good-looking. His court was a hedonistic place where licence ran freely. Mistresses tells the story of the women who shared his bed, every one of whom had some influence on the politics or the cultural life of the country.

The account begins with Lucy Walter, the first mistress of the young king in exile and the mother of his first child. It moves on to Barbara Villiers, a promiscuous and ill-tempered courtier, and to Frances Teresa Stuart, who was called the prettiest girl in the world. It also covers the actress Nell Gwynn, history's best-known orange-seller, and her fellow actress Moll Davis, who bore the last of the king's fifteen illegitimate children. Louise de Keroualle, a French aristocrat who spied for Louis XIV, and the sexually ambiguous Hortense Mancini complete the group. The book also follows Queen Catherine, the Portuguese princess who was Charles's wife and never had a child, and who was left humiliated and forlorn.

Linda Porter draws on a wide range of original sources, including material held in private archives. She uses them to portray these women and the Restoration England they lived in, an age that was at once glamorous and sordid.