Lucy Hughes-Hallett

*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 ‘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. - ‘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

*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. 'Lord Buckingham rockets off the page of this gloriously epic, seductively detailed biography' OLIVIA LAING

Not since Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber have old stories been made to feel so electrically new. Not since Wim Winders’ Wings of Desire have the numinous and the everyday been so magically combined. It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable. Each of these startlingly original stories is set in modern Britain. Their characters include a people-trafficking gang-master and a prostitute, a migrant worker and a cocksure estate agent, an elderly musician doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife, a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she’ll ever find love. They’re ordinary people, preoccupied, as we all are now, by the deficiencies of the health service, by criminal gangs and homelessness, by the pitfalls of dating in the age of #metoo. All of their stories, though, are inspired by ones drawn from Graeco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folk-lore. The ancients invented myths to express what they didn’t understand. These witty fables, elegantly written and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals.

From the author of the "sophisticated and erudite" Peculiar Ground (Boston Globe) comes a collection of classic, witty fables, elegantly updated for our modern times.It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable.Each of these startlingly original stories is set in modern Britain. Their characters include a people-trafficking gang-master and a prostitute, a migrant worker and a cocksure estate agent, an elderly musician doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife, a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she'll ever find love.They're ordinary people, preoccupied, as we all are now, by the deficiencies of the health service, by criminal gangs and homelessness, by the pitfalls of dating in the age of #metoo. All of their stories, though, are inspired by ones drawn from Graeco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folk-lore.The ancients invented myths to express what they didn't understand. These witty fables, elegantly written and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals.

"Sophisticated and erudite. . . . Hughes-Hallett is a natural heir to A.S. Byatt, delivering a densely patterned novel that shimmers with human interest as it probes our cultural story."--Wall Street JournalThe Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement--a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders--migrants fleeing the plague--find no mercy.Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood's walls.Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history--and by one patch of peculiar ground.

`One of the best novels of the year so far' The Times A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR `Unlike anything I've read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful' Tessa Hadley `I just enjoyed it so very much' Philip Pullman

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for NonfictionWinner of the Costa Biography Award**Washington Post Best Books of 2013****Economist Best Books of 2013**This fascinating life of Gabriele d'Annunzio--the charismatic poet, bon vivant, and virulent nationalist who prefigured Mussolini--traces the early twentieth century's trajectory from Romantic idealism to Fascist thuggery. D'Annunzio was Italy's premier poet at a time when poetry could trigger riots. A brilliant self-publicist, he used his fame to sell his work, seduce women, and promote his extreme nationalism. At once an aesthete and a militarist, he enjoyed risking death no less than making love, and he wrote with equal enthusiasm about Fortuny gowns and torpedoes. In 1915 his incendiary oratory helped drive Italy into the First World War, and in 1919 he led a troop of mutineers into the Croatian port of Fiume, where he established a delinquent utopia. Futurists, anarchists, communists and proto-fascists descended on the place, along with literati and thrill-seekers, drug dealers and prostitutes. Three years later, when the fascists marched on Rome, they belted out anthems they'd learned in Fiume, while Mussolini consciously modeled himself on the great poet. Lucy Hughes-Hallett's compelling biography is a revelation both of d'Annunzio's flamboyant life and of the dramatic times he helped to shape.

WINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION WINNER OF THE 2013 DUFF COOPER PRIZE WINNER OF THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2014 WINNER OF THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR The story of Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, daredevil - and Fascist.

From the author of â??The Pikeâ?? â?? winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction â?? a compelling story of heroism told through eight famous lives that span from Achilles to Sir Francis Drake.