Mentioned in despatches at Bunker Hill, brother to the Duchess of Argyll and the Countess of Coventry, John Gunning occupied an enviable position in Georgian society, but in 1792 his whole life started to unravel.

The Apology, published in 1792, gives a first-hand account of Gunning's many seductions (including apparently 2 duchesses, 14 countesses, 4 viscountesses and 7 baronesses) and purports to explain the so-called 'Gunning Mystery, ' the authorship of forged love letters between his daughter Elizabeth and the Marquess of Blandford. It also tells how the General, described by Lord Kenyon as 'an hoary, abominable, degraded creature, ' betrayed the man who had rescued him from a debtors' prison by seducing his wife. But is the Apology itself a forgery? Although there are indications that it may be, this memoir displays an extremely good understanding of the Gunnings, perhaps too good to be the work of an outsider.

In this new, annotated edition, Gerrish Gray unearths prosecutions for other forgeries (and capital offences at that) perpetrated by one of the suspects in the Gunning Mystery. He suggests that these may point to the true culprit.