The Prince of Wales
KING Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910 and was a customer of Berry Bros. He was a thoroughly clubbable chap who enjoyed the high life as Prince of Wales in the late 1800s.
The Prince of Wales
His parents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, were determined that the heir to the throne should have an education that would prepare Edward to be a model monarch. However, Edward chose to use his time at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge to develop his skills in charm, sociability and tact as well as an impressive appetite for good living, cigars and gambling and came to personify the fashionable elite.
Edward was also enlisted in the Army and sent to Ireland in the hope it would instil in him some discipline. However, revelations soon surfaced that some of his manoeuvres were not strictly military, to his parents’ great dismay.
More socialite than statesman
EDWARD became a leader of London society and the fashionable elite, spending his time drinking, gambling, eating, shooting, racing, sailing and eating.
The start of his year might find him as a guest in Paris on his way to Biarritz for the spring; then at Epsom and the Derby horse races in early summer; racing his yacht, Britannia, during Cowes regatta week; opening the red grouse shooting season on the Glorious 12th August, followed by autumn shoots at Balmoral and ice skating in winter at Sandringham.; entertaining Europe's aristocracy in London's Royal Palaces or in his box at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.