PHILANDERING DUKE WHO MADE FAMILY’S NAME

HE WAS the heroic soldier who led Britain to victory against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo and was rewarded on his return with the title of the Duke of Wellington, a stately home at London’s Hyde Park Corner and a 7,000-acre estate in Hampshire, plus the honour of being made prime minister — twice. But according to a 2015 BBC documentary, the ‘Iron Duke’ — whose own father died in debt aged 46 — led an altogether less respectable love life, possessing a ‘veritable harem’ of female admirers that led one historian to describe him as a ‘rutting stag’. After doggedly pursuing his wife Kitty Pakenham, daughter of Lord Longford, of Pakenham Hall, County Westmeath, he reportedly decided she had grown ‘damned ugly’ four days before their 1806 wedding and after the war, as she became a recluse, went on to have several liaisons with other women, including singer Giuseppina Grassini, and actress Marguerite Weimer — both of whom had previously been Napoleon’s mistresses.