'A delicious account of English politics in the decades after Elizabeth....Great men and politics history at its best." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"I greatly enjoyed this superb chronicle of power and passion, which unfolds like the most improbable fiction, with the oddest cast of characters, the strange king and his favorite, and the court of enablers and plotters – a true Jacobean drama, except bloodier and sexier. Lucy Hughes-Hallett writes with gusto and insight." — Paul Theroux, bestselling author of Burma Sahib
"The Scapegoat brilliantly dramatises the complex and glittering Duke of Buckingham and the political and sexual intrigue of the court of James I. Lucy Hughes-Hallett combines the instincts and talents of a novelist with an historian's vivid sense of period and social change" — Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island
"Lord Buckingham rockets off the page of this gloriously epic, seductively detailed biography: a man of impossible contradictions, at once hubristic warmonger, tender lover and brilliant power-broker to two kings. Lucy Hughes-Hallett opens a spyhole into the dark, strange world of the Stuart kings, with its masques and superstitions, where a beautiful boy could rise to become the most powerful man in Britain." — Olivia Laing, author of Everybody
"A book which is so full of gripping detail that I am sure the subject himself would find it impossible to put down" — Philip Hoare, award-winning author of The Sea Inside
"A flamboyant character, an epic rise and tragic fall, brought to life with intelligence, tenderness and profound scholarship" — Adam Zamoyski, bestselling author of Napoleon
"This electric life of Buckingham captures the splendid weirdness of the Stuart age in all its treasures and corruptions, its richness and squalor—but it does so, like all great histories, with a subtle glance at our own time, of venal rulers, celebrity, rumor, and display." — Daniel Swift, author of the Bomber Country
"Endowed with a glamour and magnetism that secured him the love of two kings, Buckingham rose to power and magnificence before becoming the most hated man in the country who did much to set in motion the Stuart monarchy’s ruin. This is an enthralling reassessment of his extraordinary career." — Anne Somerset, author of Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers
"Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s atmospheric new biography of the Jacobean high-flier George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, cuts through centuries of disapproving historical hearsay and brings us up close to the man behind the pearl-encrusted doublet." — Charles Nicholl, author of The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street
“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” — Jenny Uglow, author of Sybil & Cyril
“This is an absorbing, even thrilling journey through the dark and tangled networks of Stuart England. Perhaps you think we have sunk to new lows in the 21st-century? Read this outstanding work of biography, and learn” — Diane Purkiss, author of The English Civil War: A People’s History
"A blazingly beautiful young man maneuvered into the bed of King James I by his ambitious mother: the story unfolds with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Buckingham’s meteoric rise and fall is as old as Tiberius’ love for Sejanus and as contemporary as celeb crash-and-burn. Hughes-Hallett, matchless historian with an unfailing eye for the revealing detail, richly contextualizes the authentically loving relationship between King and favorite within the bigger picture of statecraft, religion, literature, theatre and portraiture of the time. Power politics and propaganda haven’t changed much over the centuries." — Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche
"Hughes-Hallet paints a glittering portrait of 17th-century court life, where authority often flowed from intense emotional rapport with the king and could lead to stunning falls from grace. It’s a captivating study of the psychodrama of power." — Publishers Weekly
"A delightfully fleet-footed double biography of both Buckingham and the topsy-turvy Jacobean era he helped shape? — Telegraph (UK)
"Like its subject, this biography is a prodigy, an almost bewilderingly skillful portrait of James I’s reign in all its glittering strangeness." — The Spectator
★ 2024-09-27
A delicious account of English politics in the decades after Elizabeth.
Historian Hughes-Hallett, author ofGabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War, concentrates on the relations between middle-aged, unattractive but competent James I (reigned 1603-1625) and Henry Villiers (1592-1628), Duke of Buckingham, his “favorite.” The word is passe, but even today’s national leaders have a chief of staff or special advisor who owes their power to that leader alone and is often sacrificed to placate the populace. English monarchs in that era enjoyed great land wealth and executive authority but did not have absolute power and were usually short of money because taxes were temporary and required parliamentary approval. James had the enormous advantage (in our eyes) of being opposed to war and easygoing in matters of religion. This put him at odds with parliament, dominated by Puritans who considered British Catholics to be traitors and Catholic Spain a loathsome enemy. Mostly, he tried to rule without parliament. He had run through several favorites before Villiers joined the king’s bedchamber in 1615. All were handsome young men, and modern scholars now accept that James was homosexual. Villiers and James developed a passionate relationship that seemed both sincere and physical. James showered him with estates, titles, and offices, provoking jealousy from peers and salacious commentary from the populace. This had little effect until 1624, when Britain went to war against Spain with enthusiastic support from parliament, Buckingham, and young Charles, who succeeded his father the following year. Combining lively prose and skilled scholarship, Hughes-Hallett describes the catastrophic military debacles that followed. With attacks on royalty off-limits, blame focused on Buckingham, but newly crowned Charles cut short charges by dissolving parliament, beginning the interregnum that ended with civil war and his own execution long after Buckingham himself had been assassinated to widespread applause.
Great men and politics history at its best.
