Charles Grey, played by Dominic Cooper
Extract from the book Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
He was only twenty-three years old, the eldest son of a general from a well connected Northumberland family. Georgiana had met him before, when he was a schoolboy at Eton, and had visited his parents at Coxheath. In the intervening period he had grown into a tall, handsome young man with an aristocratic appearance, possessing a high forehead, thick hair, melancholy dark eyes and a long nose. ‘He has the patrician thoroughbred look .... which I dote upon,’ remarked Lord Byron, when he first saw him.
Grey delivered his maiden speech in the Commons on 22 February 1787; it was sufficiently eloquent for Sir Gilbert Elliot to praise it as ‘excessively good indeed, and such as has given everybody the highest opinion both of his abilities and character .... he professes not to be of a party but I think he has a warm leaning to us.’ Following her usual practice, Georgiana quickly snatched him up into Whig society, flattering him with invitations to select dinners to meet the party grandees. For many months she tolerated his attentions with the gentle amusement she reserved for her younger admirers –
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