Description
Book SynopsisMelvyn Bragg''s highly acclaimed, bestselling historical novel, the story behind one of the 19th century''s greatest scandals.
''This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries The Maid of Buttermere, a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine story . . . This is historical fiction with a human face''
Peter Ackroyd, The Times
''A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg''s own Cumbria''
Thomas Keneally
''A triumph . . . I am overwhelmingly impressed''
Beryl Bainbridge
''Bragg achieves the most difficult of feats, the telling of the changing perceptions and ideals of a radical age . . . He is also as powerful as ever in his description of nature''
Sunday Times
Trade ReviewA vivid and erudite tour de force
-- Penelope Lively
This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries "The Maid of Buttermere", a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine story . . . This is historical fiction with a human face -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times *
A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg's own Cumbria
-- Thomas Keneally
A detailed, eloquent and affecting panorama of truth and lies . . . thrusts [him] into the front rank * Mail on Sunday *
A triumph . . . I am overwhelmingly impressed
-- Beryl Bainbridge
Bragg achieves the most difficult of feats, the telling of the changing perceptions and ideals of a radical age . . . He is also as powerful as ever in his description of nature * Sunday Times *
A terrific tale of passion, lust, deception and moral outrage.
* Daily Mail *
Bragg writes with picturesque clarity; his prose accommodates the formality of the period, the splendidly sombre wateriness of the place and the robust passions of the people who lived there * Sunday Telegraph *
A fine novel, both sad and tragic. His background descriptions are beautiful . . . while his evocation of the early nineteenth century, and his handling of the ever-interesting topic of English snobbery is impeccable
* Irish Times *
Compelling . . . Painted on a broad canvas, packed with detail, with characters, with interesting psychological issues, and sallies into the history of the years 1802-1803 * Glasgow Herald *
Very much enjoyed; a fine subject treated with great energy and imagination, and a gusto that Hazlitt would have admired
-- Richard Holmes
An ingenious telling of a romantic tragedy
-- Gore Vidal
