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King George IV

Reign: 1820-1830
Legacy: Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Marble Arch, London鈥檚 West End, Regent鈥檚 Park, Brighton Pavilion, Regent鈥檚 Canal, London Zoo, King鈥檚 College, National Gallery

George IV was decadent, dissolute and debauched and led the kind of hedonistic, extravagant lifestyle that makes today鈥檚 oligarchs and celebrities look like choirboys. During his long stint as Prince of Wales and later Prince Regent he was the ultimate caricature of the playboy party prince and his enormous appetite for profligacy, gluttony and licentiousness enraged parliament, delighted satirists and allegedly earned him a monumentally regal 56-inch waist.

But despite the king鈥檚 best efforts, there was more to him than wine, women and gambling. He was not only a prolific patron of architecture and the arts but a paragon of fashion, style and taste. Moreover, in the Regency, he leant his title to one of the most enduring cultural movements of the 18th and 19th centuries and helped found both the National Gallery and King鈥檚 College. Even the famously irascible Duke of Wellington - far more at home on a battlefield than in a ballroom - dubbed him the 鈥淔irst Gentleman of Europe鈥�.

Critical to the king鈥檚 architectural influence was his friendship with and patronage of the great Regency architect John Nash, arguably the most successful public private partnership in British construction history. Together they created Buckingham Palace, London鈥檚 Regent鈥檚 Park and its spectacular terraces, Regent Street and Brighton Pavilion and laid the foundations for an unbuilt summer palace that eventually became London Zoo.

By developing crown and commercial lands in central London the duo forged much of the urban character of the West End today and transformed London from a renaissance capital into an imperial metropolis. Paris is often considered the epitome of the formally planned classical city. But the sweeping urbanism of Haussmann鈥檚 Grand Boulevards was directly inspired by the parks, streets and terraces of Regency London produced 50 years earlier.

When the king died The Times, with barely concealed euphoria that today鈥檚 Murdoch-press would never dare emulate, declared: 鈥淭here never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures.鈥� What they couldn鈥檛 possibly know at the time was that, despite his deep personal flaws, George IV had arguably had the biggest direct impact on English and European architecture and urbanism of any British monarch before him or since.