Scapegoat The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Political Book Awards Political Biography of the Year and the Costa Biography Award and was chosen by The Sunday Times as the biography of the decade. Her novel Peculiar Ground was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her other books include Fabulous, a collection of short stories, and the cultural histories Cleopatra and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. She is a widely respected critic and was chair of the judges of the 2021 International Booker Prize.
<p>‘A captivating study of the psychodrama of power’ <strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong></p>
<p>‘This fabulous biography is long overdue … Historians need anthropological as well as psychological skills, and these Hughes-Hallett possesses in abundance, along with an easy, wry wit’ <strong><em>Guardian</em></strong></p>
<p>‘Like its subject, this biography is a prodigy, an almost bewilderingly skilful portrait of James I’s reign in all its glittering strangeness’ <strong><em>Spectator</em></strong></p>
<p>‘[Biographers] skydive where professional historians fear to tread, and Lucy Hughes-Hallett – winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and Duff Cooper Prize – is among the most fearless’ <strong><em>Literary Review</em></strong></p>
<p>‘A triumph of historical storytelling, sharp, clear and brilliantly structured … Hughes-Hallett brings the whole Stuart court alive, not only in its dynastic ambitions, chaotic politics and religious tensions, but in its masques, art collections, doomed loves and fatal disasters’ <strong>Jenny Uglow, author of <em>A Gambling Man</em></strong></p>
<p>‘More a cluster of evocative vignettes than a conventional biography … rendered in luxuriant detail are the flamboyant personalities, material magnificence and complex hierarchies that comprised court culture’ <strong><em>History Today</em></strong></p>
<p>‘Spectacular … a book which is so full of gripping detail that I am sure the subject himself would find it impossible to put down’ <strong>Philip Hoare, author of <em>Albert & the Whale</em></strong></p>
<p>‘Lucy Hughes-Hallett has spun the results of meticulous research into a compelling narrative about the personalities and passionate relationships that led inexorably to the English Civil Wars’ <strong>Sheila Hale, author of <em>Titian: His Life</em></strong></p>
<p>‘This electric life of Buckingham captures the splendid weirdness of the Stuart … but it does so, like all great histories, with a subtle glance at our own time' <strong>Daniel Swift, author of <em>Bomber Country</em></strong></p>
<p>‘Atmospheric … cuts through centuries of disapproving historical hearsay and brings us up close to the man behind the pearl-encrusted doublet’ <strong>Charles Nicholl, author of</strong> <strong><em>The Lodger</em></strong></p>
*PLUTARCH AWARD FOR THE BEST BIOGRAPHY OF 2024*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE*
‘SUBLIME’ A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
‘STUNNINGLY GOOD’ THE TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOKS 2024
‘COMPULSIVE’ A PROSPECT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
‘BRILLIANT’ A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
From the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, an extraordinary story of the meteoric rise and fall of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.
‘A delicious, grippingly paced tale of rogues, riotous sex, regicide and realpolitik’INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS
‘This is the page-turner that Buckingham’s short, racy life deserves’DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Vivid, erudite and sympathetic … The Scapegoat shows that [Hughes-Hallett’s] eye for the seamy realities of an extraordinary life is as sharp as ever’ THE TIMES
‘Lord Buckingham rockets off the page of this gloriously epic, seductively detailed biography’ OLIVIA LAING
As King James I’s favourite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, right-hand man and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.
With a novelist’s touch, Lucy Hughes-Hallett transports us into a courtly world of masques and dancing, exquisite clothes, the art of Rubens and Van Dyck, gender-fluidity, same-sex desire and appallingly rudimentary medicine. Witch hunts coexisted with Francis Bacon’s empiricism and public opinion was becoming a political force. Falling from grace spectacularly, Buckingham came to represent everything that was wrong with the country.
From kidnappings and murder plots to men weeping in Parliament over civil liberties, The Scapegoat navigates love, war-fever and pacifism in a society on the brink of cataclysmic change. In this immersive and authoritative account, Hughes-Hallett summons an era that still resonates today.
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‘Written with such verve and invention … Fascinating book’ TOM SUTCLIFFE, BBC RADIO 4's FRONT ROW
'The Scapegoat brilliantly dramatises the complex and glittering Duke of Buckingham and the political and sexual intrigue of the court of James I. Hughes-Hallett combines the instincts and talents of a novelist with a historian's vivid sense of period and social change’ COLM TÓIBÍN
‘A flamboyant character, an epic rise and tragic fall, brought to life with intelligence, tenderness and profound scholarship’ ADAM ZAMOYSKI
‘Buckingham’s rise and fall is as old as Tiberius’ love for Sejanus and as contemporary as a celeb crash-and-burn. Hughes-Hallett is a matchless historian with an unfailing eye for the revealing detail’ SUE PRIDEAUX
‘A true Jacobean drama, except bloodier and sexier. Lucy Hughes-Hallett writes with gusto and insight’ PAUL THEROUX
‘Compulsively readable and elegantly written … [Lucy Hughes-Hallett] has brought Buckingham gloriously alive’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Crisp and vivid … The story is a tragic one, no less so for being told here with verve, erudition and empathy’ NEW STATESMAN
‘Richly multilayered … Hughes-Hallett proves herself alive to the nuances of gender and sexuality in the early seventeenth century…refreshingly light and contemporary, while at the same time suited to the seventeenth century’ TLS
‘This is an absorbing, even thrilling journey through the dark and tangled networks of Stuart England … outstanding’ DIANE PURKISS
A gripping and immersive dive into the spectacular life of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Perfect for readers of historical biographies, British history and Stuart monarchy.
Wide cultural interest in Buckingham and his relationships – a new Sky television series MARY & GEORGE will air 1st March 2024, his life was discussed in the BAD GAYS podcast and book, and there have been many fictionalised accounts over the years.
Lucy’s last non-fiction book, THE PIKE (29.2k TCM), won the SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE (now Baillie Gifford), a COSTA BOOK AWARD and the DUFF COOPER PRIZE. This is a return to her world-class blend of cultural history and biography.
THE SCAPEGOAT is novelistic, genre-busting and highly evocative, offering breakout appeal across a broader non-fiction audience.
Competition: peculiar ground;the pike;cleopatra;heroes; the king’s assassin; unruly; anne boleyn; bad gays; the favourite; wolf hall; unnatural murder. benjamin woolley; david mitchell; mary beard; haley nolan; ben miller; Huw Lemmey; Lucy Worsley; mary beard; laura cumming; hilary mantel; anne somerset; uglow
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Political Book Awards Political Biography of the Year and the Costa Biography Award and was chosen by The Sunday Times as the biography of the decade. Her novel Peculiar Ground was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her other books include Fabulous, a collection of short stories, and the cultural histories Cleopatra and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. She is a widely respected critic and was chair of the judges of the 2021 International Booker Prize.