The Scapegoat

The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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English

Fourth Estate
01 February 2025

Biography: historical, political & military; Biography: royalty; History; European history; Early modern history: c 1450 to c 1700

‘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 2024From 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

By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Imprint: Fourth Estate
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 46mm
Weight: 960g
ISBN: 9780008126575
ISBN 10: 0008126577
Pages: 640
Publication Date: 01 February 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike, a biography of Gabriele d'Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction, the Costa Biography Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Paddy Power Political Biography of the Year Award. Her other books are Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions which was published in 1990 to wide acclaim, and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen, published in 2004, which garnered similar praise. Cleopatra won the Fawcett Prize and the Emily Toth Award. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is also a respected critic who has reviewed for all the major British newspapers, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London.

Reviews for The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham

Praise for The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War ‘Hard to beat … a biographical tour de force … a rich, voluptuous treat … a triumph, the biography of the year’ Robert McCrum, Observer, ‘Books of the Year’ ‘[The Pike] dramatically extends biography’s formal range to encompass a daunting theme’ TLS, ‘Books of the Year’ ‘This is a magnificent portrait of a preposterous character … deplorable, brilliant, ludicrous, tragic but above all irresistible, as hundreds of women could testify. His biographer has done him full justice’ Francis Wheen, Daily Mail ‘A cracker of a biography, an extraordinary story of literary accomplishment, passionate war-mongering and sexual incorrigibility… In less skilled hands this could have been a disaster; in fact it works wonderfully well’ Spectator, ‘Books of the Year’ ‘Beautiful, strange and original … an extraordinarily intimate portrait’ New Statesman ‘Hugely enjoyable … Hughes-Hallett has a great talent for encapsulating an era or an attitude …That almost 700 pages flew by bears testimony to how pleasurable and readable those pages were’ Sunday Times