
The Scapegoat
The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
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Narrated by:
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Lucy Hughes-Hallett
About this listen
From 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 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 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 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.
©2024 Lucy Hughes-Hallett (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
England's unique republican experiment - imposed on Scotland and Ireland, too - may have been shortlived, but it has had a lasting impact on British monarchy, politics, religion and culture, and on the story the British continue to tell about themselves. It is a period that, for a long time, history chose to forget, or recalled as a failure. Here, in thrilling detail, Alice Hunt brings the republic and its extraordinary cast of characters, from politicians to poets and prophets, back to life.
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Great intelligent revealing of history
- By Ted Baehr on 04-24-25
By: Alice Hunt
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Bess of Hardwick
- Empire Builder
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of The Sisters, a chronicle of the most brutal, turbulent, and exuberant period of England's history. Bess Hardwick, the fifth daughter of an impoverished Derbyshire nobleman, did not have an auspicious start in life. Widowed at sixteen, she nonetheless outlived four monarchs, married three more times, built the great house at Chatsworth, and died one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in English history.
By: Mary S. Lovell
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Making the Presidency
- John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic
- By: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
- Narrated by: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The United States of 1797 faced enormous challenges. The father of the new nation, George Washington, left his vice president, John Adams, with relatively little guidance and impossible expectations to meet. Adams was confronted with intense partisan divides, debates over citizenship, fears of political violence, potential for foreign conflict with France and Britain, and a nation unsure that the presidency could even work without Washington at the helm. Making the Presidency is an exploration of the second US presidency, a period critical to the survival of the American republic.
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A non-comprehensive deep cut on Adam's Presiency
- By DB1089 on 09-22-24
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Foundation
- The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors: The History of England, Book 1
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.
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The Most Annoying Narrator EVER
- By JudieBee on 12-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Battle for the Island Kingdom
- England's Destiny 1000-1066
- By: Don Hollway
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In a saga reminiscent of Game of Thrones and The Last Kingdom, Battle for the Island Kingdom reveals the life-and-death struggle for power which changed the course of history. The six decades leading up to 1066 were defined by bloody wars and intrigues, in which three peoples vied for supremacy over the island kingdom. In this epic retelling, Don Hollway (The Last Viking) recounts the clashes of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Normans, their warlords and their conniving queens.
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Wonderfully told
- By Matt on 08-03-24
By: Don Hollway
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The Waiting Game
- The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens
- By: Nicola Clark
- Narrated by: Nicola Clark, Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women.
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One of the best!
- By Patt LaPierre on 01-13-25
By: Nicola Clark
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King of the North Wind
- The Life of Henry II in Five Acts
- By: Claudia Gold
- Narrated by: Jonathan Oliver
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Henry II had all the gifts of the gods. He was charismatic, clever, learned, empathetic, a brilliant tactician, with great physical strength and an astonishing self-belief. Henry was the creator of the Plantagenet dynasty of kings, who ruled through eight generations in command of vast lands in Britain and Europe. Virtually unbeaten in battle, and engaged in a ceaseless round of conquest and diplomacy, Henry forged an empire that matched Charlemagne's.
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Amazing work
- By Zachary on 05-22-25
By: Claudia Gold
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Summer of Fire and Blood
- The German Peasants' War
- By: Lyndal Roper
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords.
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A Lost History Recovered
- By C. C. Kissinger on 03-12-25
By: Lyndal Roper
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The King in the North
- The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria
- By: Max Adams
- Narrated by: Hamilton McLeod
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A charismatic leader, a warrior whose prowess in battle earned him the epithet Whiteblade, an exiled prince who returned to claim his birthright, the inspiration for Tolkein's Aragorn: Oswald of Northumbria was the first great English monarch, yet today this legendary figure is all but forgotten. In this panoramic portrait of Dark Age Britain, archaeologist and biographer Max Adams returns the king in the North to his rightful place in history.
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Fascinating
- By Wendy on 02-14-25
By: Max Adams
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Italy Reborn
- From Fascism to Democracy
- By: Mark Gilbert
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1945, post-fascist Italy was devastated by war, and its reputation in the international arena was nil. Yet by December 1955, when Italy was admitted to the United Nations, the nation had contested three acrimonious but free general elections, had a flourishing press, and was a leader in the rebuilding of Europe.
By: Mark Gilbert
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Question 7
- By: Richard Flanagan
- Narrated by: Richard Flanagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.
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Who loves longer?
- By Diane on 03-26-25
By: Richard Flanagan
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The Eagle and the Hart
- The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV
- By: Helen Castor
- Narrated by: Helen Castor
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard of Bordeaux and Henry of Bolingbroke, cousins born just three months apart, were ten years old when Richard became king of England. They were thirty-two when Henry deposed him and became king in his place. Now, the story behind one of the strangest and most fateful events in English history (and the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s most celebrated history plays) is brought to vivid life by the acclaimed author of Blood and Roses, Helen Castor.
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A thrilling read
- By Rich C on 11-30-24
By: Helen Castor
Interesting piece of history
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