Emma Hamilton: Scandal, Celebrity, Beauty and Seduction

This richly illustrated talk tells the remarkable story of how Emma Hamilton ascended through the ranks of British society, from utter poverty to fashion icon, ambassadress, mistress of Lord Nelson and queen of London society.

England’s Mistress: the Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Book of the Year in the Times and Independent, and shortlisted for the Marsh/English Speaking Union Prize for Biography, 2005-6. The film is in development.

Emma Hamilton’s life was a tale of rags to riches and then back to rags again. She was a courtesan, a dancer, and a muse to some of the period’s greatest painters – George Romney, Joshua Reynolds, Elisabeth Vigée LeBrun and Angelica Kauffman. She was a kept mistress – and then became the wife of Sir William Hamilton, ambassador to Naples. There she fell in love with Horatio Nelson, in the most critical time of the Napoleonic Wars.

Drawing on her five years of research in archives across the world, Dr Williams tells Emma’s astonishing, dramatic story and explores how her eighteenth-century world was both glamorous and cruel – especially for the poor. Emma’s amazing, colourful life throws new light on the eighteenth century society in which she lived, and it is a tale of poverty, war, desperation, art, fashion, glamour and incredible passion.

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