{"product_id":"the-scapegoat-the-brilliant-brief-life-of-the-duke-of-buckingham-isbn-9780062940131","title":"The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Plutarch Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, an extraordinary historical biography of the meteoric rise and fall of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor 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 skillful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. In a gripping narrative of the Stuart court, he became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith 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 in 17th-century England, and appallingly rudimentary medicine. Witch hunts coexisted with Descartian rationality and public opinion was becoming a political force. Falling from grace spectacularly, Buckingham came to represent everything that was wrong with the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom kidnappings and murder plots to men weeping in Parliament over civil liberties, \u003ci\u003eThe Scapegoat\u003c\/i\u003e navigates love, war-fever and pacifism in a society on the brink of cataclysmic change. In this immersive and authoritative account of a powerful royal favorite, Hughes-Hallett summons an era that still resonates today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis meticulously researched biography illuminates the dramatic life of the man who defined an era:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA Royal Favorite’s Rise and Fall:\u003c\/b\u003e Follow George Villiers’s extraordinary journey from King James I’s lover to the most powerful—and hated—man in England, charting his dazzling ascent and spectacular downfall.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eIntrigue in the Stuart Court:\u003c\/b\u003e Explore a world of political maneuvering, murder plots, and shifting allegiances as Buckingham navigates the treacherous landscape of Jacobean and Caroline England.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSame-Sex Desire and Gender Fluidity:\u003c\/b\u003e Discover a vivid portrait of 17th-century courtly life where same-sex relationships and gender-fluid expression were an open, and powerful, part of the social fabric.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eAn Immersive Historical Narrative:\u003c\/b\u003e Written with a novelist’s flair, this award-winning account transports you to a society on the brink of civil war, bringing a pivotal period of British history to life.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOlivia Laing, author of Everybody\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A book which is so full of gripping detail that I am sure the subject himself would find it impossible to put down\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePhilip Hoare, award-winning author of The Sea Inside\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDaniel Swift, author of the Bomber Country\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'A delicious account of English politics in the decades after Elizabeth....Great men and politics history at its best.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A delightfully fleet-footed double biography of both Buckingham and the topsy-turvy Jacobean era he helped shape? - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTelegraph (UK)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePaul Theroux, bestselling author of Burma Sahib\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A flamboyant character, an epic rise and tragic fall, brought to life with intelligence, tenderness and profound scholarship\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAdam Zamoyski, bestselling author of Napoleon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Scapegoat\u003c\/em\u003e is...a wise and poignant examination of same-sex love and gender fluidity in seventeenth-century England. And, because the absorbing narrative is, in part, constructed of short, thematic chapters on topics such as magic, horses, plague, dancing, and other touchstones of the times, it offers a glittery immersion in the whole early modern epoch.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnne Somerset, author of Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"The Scapegoat\u003c\/em\u003e 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\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eColm Tóibín, author of Long Island\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCharles Nicholl, author of The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Like its subject, this biography is a prodigy, an almost bewilderingly skillful portrait of James I’s reign in all its glittering strangeness.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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”  - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJenny Uglow, author of Sybil \u0026amp; Cyril\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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 21\u003csup\u003est\u003c\/sup\u003e-century? Read this outstanding work of biography, and learn” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDiane Purkiss, author of The English Civil War: A People’s History\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890726236389,"sku":"NP9780062940131","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062940131.jpg?v=1730233941","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-scapegoat-the-brilliant-brief-life-of-the-duke-of-buckingham-isbn-9780062940131","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}