William IV of the United Kingdom

William IV was King of the United Kingdom and Hanover from 1830 until 1837. A former naval officer and the third son of George III, he came to the throne late in life after an unconventional domestic and political career.

His reign was dominated by the struggle over parliamentary reform, culminating in the Reform Act 1832. William tested the remaining political influence of the crown but ultimately accepted the constitutional changes that marked Britain’s transition toward a broader parliamentary system.

Roger Knight’s William IV (Penguin Monarchs) follows William from his naval career and unconventional years as Duke of Clarence to a late accession that placed him at the centre of the Reform crisis. The biography focuses especially on his handling of the Reform Act of 1832 and his later dismissal of a ministry, using those episodes to show both the residual political power of the crown and the narrowing limits within which a nineteenth-century monarch could exercise it.