Meet the Georgians

¿The way Robert Peal describes Georgian England, you¿d be mad not to want to live there yourself¿ GUARDIANAnne Bonny and Mary Read, pirate queens of the CaribbeanTipu Sultan, the Indian ruler who kept the British at bayOlaudah Equiano, the former slave whose story shocked the worldMary Wollstonecraft, the feminist who fought for women¿s rightsLadies of Llangollen, the lovers who built paradise in a Welsh valley¿Mad, bad and dangerous to know¿ is how Lord Byron, the poet who drank wine from a monk¿s skull and slept with his half-sister, was described by one of his many lovers. But ¿mad, bad and dangerous¿ serves as a good description for the entire Georgian period: often neglected, the hundred or so years between the coronation of George I in 1714 and the death of George IV in 1830 were years when the modern world was formed, and changes came thick and fast.Across this century, new foods ¿ pineapples, coffee and pepper ¿ suddenly became available in the shops. Fashion exploded into a ri