Book Description

For the great majority of his long life, Benjamin Franklin was a loyal British royalist. In 1757, having made his fortune in Philadelphia and established his fame as a renowned experimental 'scientist', he crossed the Atlantic to live as a gentleman in the heaving metropolis of London. With just a brief interlude, a house in Craven Street was to be his home until 1775. From there he mixed with both the brilliant and the powerful. He counted David Hume, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Priestley, Edmund Burke and Erasmus Darwin among his friends. He had access to successive Prime Ministers and even the King. However, Benjamin Franklin was also an American colonial representative. Though he long sought to prevent the break with Great Britain, his own actions would finally help cause that very event. On the eve of the American War of Independence, Franklin fled arrest and escaped by sea. He would never return to London. George Goodwin brilliantly describes the energetic, engaging but sometimes enigmatic Dr Franklin in the world's greatest city during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. He relates how Franklin formed close and firm friendships among those who shared his spirit of enquiry, whether in London coffee house clubs, at the Royal Society, or on his summer travels around the British Isles and continental Europe. But Goodwin also shows that others, including members of the London-based Penn family, some American colonials and an increasing number of British aristocratic politicians, regarded Franklin very differently. The early 1760s saw Britain's elevation to global superpower status with victory in the Seven Years War - with debts to match - and the succession of the young active George III. These two events brought a sharp new edge to political competition in London and a redefinition of the relationship between Britain and its colonies. They would profoundly affect Franklin himself and his ambitious son William. By 1775 they would both be back in America but on opposite sides. With a unique focus on the fullness of Benjamin Franklin's life in London, this is an enthralling portrait of the man, the city and the age.