Lucy Hughes-Hallett

La biografía de Gabriele d''Annunzio, un personaje fascinante: poeta, mujeriego, político, instigador de la segunda guerra mundial, pero principalmente conocido por ser uno de los ideólogos del fascismoUn hito literario. El primer libro que logra los 3 premios mas prestigiosos de ensayo: el Samuel Johnson, el Costa Book Award y el Duff Cooper Prize.¿Por que fascina la historia de DAnnuzio? DAnnunzio era una figura casi teatral, como una celebrity actual: plagio de todo, textos, ideas, modas, fue un derrochador de dinero que siempre estuvo en deuda con alguien, se corrio las juergas mas exageradas, fue un mujeriego infatigable y desprecio todos los ordenes establecidos... hasta que se convirtio en uno de los ideologos de la peor de todas las ideologias: el fascismo.Este fascinante libro relata el proceso por cual se convirtio en lo que fue: la evolucion de artista libertino e idealista romantico a revolucionario radical fascista, en paralelo, a su vez, al desarrollo de la turbulencia politica de Italia y Europa de principios del siglo XX, es decir, del nacimiento del culto al nacionalismo y del origen del extremismo politico. Asi, el libro empieza con una serie de flases que repasan toda su vida, desde su precocidad de poeta brillante con apenas 17 a...

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 LAINGAs 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

WINNER OF THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION The story of Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, daredevil - and Fascist. In September 1919 Gabriele D'Annunzio, successful poet and occasional politician, declared himself Commandante of the city of Fiume in modern day Croatia. His intention - to establish a utopia based on his fascist and artistic ideals. It was the dramatic pinnacle to an outrageous career. Lucy Hughes-Hallett charts the controversial life of D'Annunzio, the debauched artist who became a national hero. His evolution from idealist Romantic to radical right-wing revolutionary is a political parable. Through his ideological journey, culminating in the failure of the Fiume endeavour, we witness the political turbulence of early 20th century Europe and the emergence of fascism. In 'The Pike', Hughes-Hallett addresses the cult of nationalism and the origins of political extremism - and at the centre of the book stands the charismatic D'Annunzio: a figure as deplorable as he is fascinating.

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

Beginning beneath the walls of Troy and culminating in 1930s Europe, a magisterial exploration of the nature of heroism in Western civilization.In this riveting and insightful cultural history, Lucy Hughes-Hallett brings to life eight exceptional men from history and myth to explore our timeless need for heroes. As she re-creates these extraordinary lives, Hughes-Hallett illuminates the attractions and dangers of hero worship. This is a fascinating book about dictatorship and democracy, seduction and mass hysteria, politics and culture, and the tensions between being good and being great.

La afamada escritora Lucy Hughes-Hallett aborda el estudio de todas las Cleopatras de ensueño –miradas desde la historia, la literatura, el arte, la mºsica, el teatro o la cinematografía– y de las ra

Godfather to Mussolini, national hero of Italy and the WWI irredentist movement, literary icon of Joyce and Pound, lover of actress Eleonora Duse: here is Lucy Hughes-Halletts extraordinary biography of Gabriele dAnnunzio, poet, bon vivant, harbinger of Italian fascism.Gabriele dAnnunzio was Italys premier poet at a time when poetry mattered enough to trigger riots. A brilliant self-publicist in the first age of mass media, he used his fame to sell his work, seduce women, and promote his extreme nationalism. In 1915 dAnnunzios incendiary oratory helped drive Italy to enter the First World War, in which he achieved heroic status as an aviator.In 1919 he led a troop of mutineers into the Croatian port of Fiume and there a delinquent city-state. Futurists, anarchists, communists, and proto-fascists descended on the city. So did literati and thrill seekers, drug dealers, and prostitutes. After fifteen months an Italian gunship brought the regime to an end, but the adventure had its sequel: three years later, the fascists marched on Rome, belting out anthems theyd learned in Fiume, as Mussolini consciously modeled himself after the great poet.At once an aesthete and a militarist, dAnnunzio wrote with equal enthusiasm about Fortuny gowns and torpedoes, and enjoyed making love on beds strewn with rose petals as much as risking death as an aviator. Lucy Hughes-Halletts stunning biography vividly re-creates his flamboyant life and dramatic times, tracing the early twentieth centurys trajectory from Romantic idealism to world war and fascist aggression.

Not since Angela Carters 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. Its 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 shell ever find love. Theyre 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 didnt 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.

One of the best novels of the year so far The Times A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEARUnlike anything Ive read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. Its wonderful Tessa Hadley I just enjoyed it so very much Philip Pullman It is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate. Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all. Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood. From the multi-award-winning author of The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.

Brilliant and discursive Antonia Fraser, Sunday Times Hughes-Halletts exemplary reappraisal throws a searching light on two thousand years of male erotic fantasy Joan Smith, New Statesman Winner of the FAWCETT PRIZE and EMILY TOTH AWARD In the 2,000 years since her death, Cleopatra has been recreated over and over again by poets, artists and filmmakers, each time in a form that fits the prejudices, anxieties and yearnings of the age that produced it. To Chaucer she was the model of a good wife, while to Cecil B. DeMille she was the wickedest woman in history. In this revised edition of Lucy Hughes-Halletts award-winning cultural history, the real Cleopatra one of the most powerful women in the ancient world is skilfully revealed alongside a legion of imaginary counterparts and the sexual, racial and political messages they carry.

From the author of The Pike winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction a compelling story of heroism told through eight famous lives that span from Achilles to Sir Francis Drake. Beginning beneath the walls of Troy, ending in 1930s Europe, Heroes is a compelling evocation of heroism through eight famous lives Achilles, Odysseus, Alcibiades, Cato, El Cid, Francis Drake, Wallenstein and Garibaldi. Not necessarily all good sometimes quite the reverse but all great, they possessed a charisma, a strength of will powerful enough to persuade those around them that they alone could do the incredible and unprecedented. It is a story of morality and dictatorship; money and sorcery; seduction and mass hysteria.

Winner of the Plutarch AwardWinner of the Publishing Triangles Randy Shilts Award for Gay NonfictionShortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper PrizeFrom the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, an extraordinary history of the meteoric rise and fall of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.As King James Is 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. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.With a novelists 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 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.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.

La biografía de Gabriele d''Annunzio, un personaje fascinante: poeta, mujeriego, político, instigador de la segunda guerra mundial, pero principalmente conocido por ser uno de los ideólogos del fascismo.Un hito literario. El primer libro que logra los 3 premios mas prestigiosos de ensayo: el Samuel Johnson, el Costa Book Award y el Duff Cooper Prize.¿Por que fascina la historia de D?Annuzio? D?Annunzio era una figura casi teatral, como una celebrity actual: plagio de todo, textos, ideas, modas, fue un derrochador de dinero que siempre estuvo en deuda con alguien, se corrio las juergas mas exageradas, fue un mujeriego infatigable y desprecio todos los ordenes establecidos... hasta que se convirtio en uno de los ideologos de la peor de todas las ideologias: el fascismo.Este fascinante libro relata el proceso por cual se convirtio en lo que fue: la evolucion de artista libertino e idealista romantico a revolucionario radical fascista, en paralelo, a su vez, al desarrollo de la turbulencia politica de Italia y Europa de principios del siglo XX, es decir, del nacimiento del culto al nacionalismo y del origen del extremismo politico. Asi, el libro empieza con una serie de flases que repasan toda su vida, desde su precocidad de poeta brillante con apenas 17 años de edad, hasta su muerte en 1937 a los 74 años.Luego, la autora se centra en el final de su exilio de cinco años en Paris y su diseñado y orquestado regreso a Italia al mas puro estilo Garibaldi, para promocionar el movimiento de apoyo a la entrada de Italia en la segunda guerra mundial.

THE TIMES BIOGRAPHY OF THE DECADEWINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION WINNER OF THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR The story of Gabriele DAnnunzio, poet, daredevil and Fascist. In September 1919 Gabriele DAnnunzio, successful poet and occasional politician, declared himself Commandante of the city of Fiume in modern day Croatia. His intention to establish a utopia based on his fascist and artistic ideals. It was the dramatic pinnacle to an outrageous career. Lucy Hughes-Hallett charts the controversial life of DAnnunzio, the debauched artist who became a national hero. His evolution from idealist Romantic to radical right-wing revolutionary is a political parable. Through his ideological journey, culminating in the failure of the Fiume endeavour, we witness the political turbulence of early 20th century Europe and the emergence of fascism. In The Pike, Hughes-Hallett addresses the cult of nationalism and the origins of political extremism and at the centre of the book stands the charismatic DAnnunzio: a figure as deplorable as he is fascinating.

*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 realpolitikINDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS This is the page-turner that Buckinghams short, racy life deservesDAILY TELEGRAPH Vivid, erudite and sympathetic The Scapegoat shows that [Hughes-Halletts] 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 Is 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 novelists 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 Bacons 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 4s 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 historians vivid sense of period and social change COLM TOIBIN A flamboyant character, an epic rise and tragic fall, brought to life with intelligence, tenderness and profound scholarship ADAM ZAMOYSKI Buckinghams 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 centuryrefreshingly light and contemporary, while at the same time suited to the seventeenth century TLS