Richard Cosway was one of the most significant multifaceted artistic personalities active in Regency Britain. He was arguably the pre-eminent pupil of William Shipley as well as a versatile oil portraitist and a sophisticated draftsman of subject compositions. He was undoubtedly the most important, influential, and fashionable portrait miniaturist active during the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth; his delicate style and flattering portrayals have come to epitomize Regency society. Cosway's flamboyant personality, eccentric mysticism, and brilliant marriage to Maria Hadfield during the 1780s brought him celebrity and notoriety. He was the principal recorder of the Prince of Wales's image from 1780 to 1808, as well as having exerted a great influence on his patron's artistic taste and collecting during that period. Perhaps Cosway's greatest achievement, however, was as a connoisseur, virtuoso, and collector - particularly of0914660195

Minley Manor was a large family house that became part of a military training establishment and then an Officers Mess for the Corps of Royal Engineers. Yet the story of Minley Manor is also a story about the Currie family, whose three generations living at Minley created a magnificent manor house in an innovative architectural style. In Minley Manor, author Major Ian C Mattison shares the untold history of Minley Manor and the Currie familys hand in making it into a hidden jewel on the borders of North Hampshire and Surrey. After coming into possession of some long-lost documents and a narrative history of the manor, Ian offers a tribute to the manor and to the Currie family. First exploring the manors compelling architectural history and design, we are beckoned to look deeper into the manor to discover the fascinating story of a family involved in the political and financial affairs of the United Kingdom and at the heart of government. Minley Manor is a story not just about the buildings, the estate, and the gardens; it is the story of four generations of the Currie family who dwelt there. The Currie family of Minley may well have been passed over in history, but the hope is that they may now take their rightful place as a dynasty who did indeed make significant and very worthwhile contributions to the very fabric of English society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Maria Hadfield Cosway was a beautiful and talented English artist, who accompanied her husband, the miniature portrait painter, Richard Cosway, to Paris, in 1786, where she was introduced to Thomas Jefferson, then American Envoy to the Court of Versailles. The future President of the United States fell in love with the young Mrs. Cosway the day they met. Their impossible love was immortalised in Jefferson's 4000-word letter, a Dialogue between the Head and the Heart, which marked the beginning of a lifelong correspondence, the record of a touching and unrequited affection. But Maria Cosway's life is not only extraordinary because of her relationship with the American ambassador. She was a celebrity artist, an exceptional musician, a Regency hostess who entertained the Prince of Wales, later an intimate of the Bonapartes, and finally a successful founder of schools. For her pioneering work in women's education, this daughter of an innkeeper was given the title of Baroness by the Austrian emperor Franz I.