Curzon sympathetically presents the life stories of the princesses, but perhaps with too much sympathy and not enough admiration for the overall gumption shown by these women, and amazing inventiveness given the highly public constraints of their life style.

The bizarre hitch to the story is that largely due to George III’s bouts of mental illness during the crucial years of the six princesses’ debuts, only one of the six, the oldest, actually did manage to marry during the king’s lifetime. The other five continued to live with their mother, Queen Charlotte, in a frustrating perma-Princess existence which they referred to as “the nunnery.”