Improbable Pioneers of the Romantic Age The Lives of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford and Georgina Gordon, Duchess of Bedford

The story of how the 6th Duke of Bedford and his second wife, Georgina Gordon, became intimately involved with the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment, the joys of Romantic poetry and painting - and the leading figures of both worlds

This book tells the story of two very different people, John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford (1766-1839) and his second wife, Georgina Gordon (1781-1853), their unlikely marriage and its improbable results, as, together, they began to explore the new worlds of aesthetics and science that were being opened up by the discoveries of the Enlightenment and the sensibilities of the Romantic Age.

The book explores how different their early lives were and the initial years of their marriage as they established themselves as Duke and Duchess; the Duke’s pursuit of horticultural and botanical science both at Woburn and as a sponsor of plant hunters abroad; the Duchess’s celebration and re-creation of vanishing aspects of traditional Highland life; their connections with such key figures as Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir William Hooker and Charles Darwin - and the central role played in their lives by the artist Edwin Landseer.

Their legacy stands to this day as a lasting testament to their pioneering spirit, improbable though it may have been, and the influences of the Romantic Age that animated their lives.

Keir Davidson is an experienced landscape designer, specializing in waterfalls of natural rock. He created gardens in Japan and then worked for eighteen years in the United States, building a 250-acre private botanical garden in New York State. For more than twenty years he has been associated with Woburn Abbey and the Bedford family, initially as a designer of waterfalls and subsequently as a landscape historian. He is the author of Woburn Abbey: The Park and Gardens, published in 2016 by Pimpernel Press.