¹ To these four volumes can be added Tony Claydon, Europe and the making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 2007); Brendan Simms and Torsten Riotte, The Hanoverian dimension to British history, 1714–1837 (Cambridge, 2007), to which Andrew Thompson, Nick Harding, and the reviewer have also contributed essays; and Brendan Simms, Three victories and a defeat (London, 2007).

² E.g. Philip Carter, Men and the emergence of polite society, Britain 1660–1800 (Harlow, 2001).

³ Private communication; see also R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan court: Queen Anne and the decline of court culture (Stanford, CA, 1993).

⁴ Philip Woodfine, Britannia's glories: the Walpole ministry and the 1739 war with Spain (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 129–30.

⁵ Admiral Boscawen to Mrs Montagu, 6 Nov. 1756, in Elizabeth Montagu, the queen of the bluestockings, her correspondence from 1720–1761, by her great-niece Emily J. Climenson (2 vols., London, 1906), ii, pp. 95–6.

⁶ Lewis Namier and John Brooke, eds., The House of Commons, 1754–1790 (3 vols., London, 1985), iii, p. 75.

⁷ Information on the Boscawens has been collated from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004–8 online); Romney Sedgwick, ed., The House of Commons, 1715–1754 (3 vols., London, 1970); Database of court officers 1660–1837, /www.luc.edu/history/fac_resources/bucholz/DCO/DCO.html; Office-holders in modern Britain, www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/office; Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral's wife, being the life and letters of the Hon. Mrs Edward Boscawen from 1719–1761 (London, 1940).

⁸ N. A. M. Rodger, The insatiable earl: a life of John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich, 1718–1792, insatiable earl (London, 1993).

⁹ Stephen Conway, review of George II: puppet of the politicians?, Jeremy Black (review no. 659): www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/conway2.html, accessed 8 May 2008.

¹⁰ Unlike Sellars and Yeatman's Cavaliers – wrong but romantic.

¹¹ A foretaste is provided by Joanna Marschner, ‘Queen Caroline of Anspach and the European princely museum tradition’, in C. Campbell Orr, ed., Queenship in Britain: royal patronage, court culture and dynastic politics, 1660–1837 (Manchester, 2002).

¹² Holger Hoock, The king's artists: the Royal Academy of Arts and the politics of British culture, 1760–1840 (Oxford, 2003).

¹³ Jeremy Black, George II: puppet of the politicians? (Exeter, 2007).

¹⁴ Susanne Groom and Lee Prosser, Kew Palace: the official illustrated history (London, 2006), pp. 44–55; Frances Vivian, A life of Frederick, prince of Wales, 1707–1751: a connoisseur of the arts, ed. Roger White (Lampeter, 2006); Veronica P. M. Baker-Smith, Royal discord: the children of George II (London, 2008); idem, A life of Anne of Hanover, Princess Royal (Leiden, 1995).

¹⁵ This point was debated between Torsten Riotte and Andrew Thompson in Torsten Riotte, review of Andrew C. Thompson, Britain, Hanover and the Protestant interest, 1688–1756 (review no. 628): www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/riotte.html, accessed 1 Nov. 2007.

¹⁶ Abigail Green, Fatherlands, state-building and nationhood in nineteenth-century Germany (Cambridge, 2001).