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The Scapegoat

The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham

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The Scapegoat

By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
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About this listen

*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, 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

©2024 Lucy Hughes-Hallett (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers Europe Great Britain Historical Politicians Politics & Activism Royalty Thought-Provoking War

Critic reviews

‘This fabulous biography is long overdue … Historians need anthropological as well as psychological skills, and these Hughes-Hallett possesses in abundance, along with an easy, wry wit’ Guardian

‘Pacing is dramatic: punchy, factual round-ups move along in tense, shifting montage, interspersed with disquisitions … Like its subject, this biography is a prodigy, an almost bewilderingly skilful portrait of James I’s reign in all its glittering strangeness’ Spectator

‘[Biographers] skydive where professional historians fear to tread, and Lucy Hughes-Hallett – winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and Duff Cooper Prize – is among the most fearless’ Literary Review

‘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’ Jenny Uglow, author of A Gambling Man

‘More a cluster of evocative vignettes than a conventional biography … rendered in luxuriant detail are the flamboyant personalities, material magnificence and complex hierarchies that comprised court culture’ History Today

‘Spectacular … a book which is so full of gripping detail that I am sure the subject himself would find it impossible to put down’ Philip Hoare, author of Albert & the Whale

‘Lucy Hughes-Hallett has spun the results of meticulous research into a compelling narrative about the personalities and passionate relationships that led inexorably to the English Civil Wars’ Sheila Hale, author of Titian: His Life

‘This electric life of Buckingham captures the splendid weirdness of the Stuart … but it does so, like all great histories, with a subtle glance at our own time' Daniel Swift, author of Bomber Country

‘Atmospheric … cuts through centuries of disapproving historical hearsay and brings us up close to the man behind the pearl-encrusted doublet’ Charles Nicholl, author of The Lodger

All stars
Most relevant
There is never a dull moment in this fascinating and unusual biography. I learnt a huge amount about an unfamiliar period of British history centred around a fascinating hero and about the society in which he lived.

Gripping story beautifully read

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Easily one of my top reads of all time. This is a gorgeously put together book and beautifully paced. It doesn't rush. It encompasses Stuart family history, art history, military/naval history, political development and debate, ideas & learning of the time and more. So much from first hand sources. What a story. Really felt for King James not having known the details of his life in Scotland. What a time to have been alive.

a beautifully researched and considered story

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having watched on sky Mary & George which was about the rise of the duke of Buckingham through his mother's clever manipulation it was interesting to read a version of events.

how the mighty fall

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Lucy Hughes-Hallett reads her own work beautifully which is particularly important when an audio book runs for more than 24 hours! Her voice is mellifluous and the narration well paced.

And what a jam-packed account of the career of George Villiers this is!Twenty-six years younger than King James 1st, Villiers was created Duke of Buckingham and High Admiral thus becoming one of the most powerful men in England, and, in his own words, the King’s darling and devoted ‘dog’. After the death of King James, Buckingham continued as the favourite of Charles 1st , both relationships being fully documented here in the generous quotations from intimate and passionate letters.

The history of Buckingham’s political career is full and clearly explained, but what I enjoyed most about Scapegoat is what sets it apart from other conventional histories , and that is the author’s inclusion of so much cultural detail.

The many paintings amassed by Buckingham, James and Charles are an example. The descriptions are vivid and the significance of each is interpreted. Interesting too are the accounts of the purchase of the art works and of their labour-intensive transportation back to England.

Existing histories no doubt record Buckingham’s extravagant dress and demeanour, but Hughes-Hallett immerses the reader in a colourful kaleidoscope of all the fabulous silks, fabrics and embroideries , densely studded with sparkling jewels and decked with strings of pearls , with which he was swathed, telling us also where and how these accoutrements were sourced and assembled.

The suffering of the men I who crewed the ships and of the troops involved in Buckingham’s over-ambitious and ill-fated expeditions is no doubt well-known, but the author’s details of the rancid food served up from the previous expedition which poisoned many of the men, along with his cruel rejection of their pleas for help, are particularly powerful.

I also enjoyed the inclusion of contemporary written works illustrating the unpopularity of Buckingham in his later career. Ben Jonson’s play Sejanus was performed with the classically educated audience’s full awareness of the parallel between Buckingham and the fall of Sejanus, the favourite of Emperor Tiberius. The author’s digression on John Donne’s delivery of his sermons illustrates her explanation of the crucial importance of parliamentary oratory .

But did Lucy Hughes-Hallett really choose this inappropriate title for her book? Surely not! Or was she perhaps unsuccessfully intending to echo John Aubrey’s Brief Lives? Buckingham was 36 when he was assassinated – a brief life in today’s terms, but not remarkably so in 1628. Secondly, Buckingham’s early career could be described as brilliant, but not his life. Most importantly, despite the author’s unconvincing argument in one of the final chapters, Scapegoat is not appropriate term for a a man whose personal reckless ambition was responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of the starving and diseased of men.

So, full marks overall, but nul points for the title!

an excellent cultural history!

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Amazing. The book gives such a rich and nuanced insight into this extraordinary man’s life. I loved that so many of the characters around him were described in such detail. I learned so much. A faultless and beautiful narration too. Best book I’ve listened to for a good while.

Absolutely the best book I’ve read (listened to) for a good while.

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