Augustus The Strong

Tim Blanning’s riotous biography of an often-forgotten 18th-century king provides historical perspective on the current state of Europe... [it is] so riotous it is impossible to read without thinking of picaresque characters such as Fielding’s Tom Jones and Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon... [an] irresistible feast of a biography of the now oft-forgotten Polish king... whom he gloriously brings to life -- Simon Sebag-Montefiore * The FT * The wonderful story of one of the worst monarchs in European history, told with enormous wit and scholarship by a supremely talented historian. If you have the slightest interest in Germans, Poles, porcelain, jewels, the Enlightenment, military disasters or the pleasures of fox-tossing, then this is the book for you * Dominic Sandbrook * An absorbing biography -- Ritchie Robertson * Literary Review * A highly readable, enjoyable, and insightful portrait of one of the 18th-century’s most colourful princes... few modern historians have contributed more to our understanding of 18th-century Europe as much as Tim Blanning -- Luka Ivan Jukic * Engelsberg ideas * It takes a multi-talented, multi-lingual and jovially forbearing historian to take on the biography of Augustus the Strong, the mercurial, priapic and luxury-loving Elector of Saxony and sometimes King of Poland... in Tim Blanning, however, Augustus has found his ideal biographer... Blanning’s book is beautifully and accessibly written, with just the right touch of the screwball comedy. Like Augustus himself, the book brims with vitality, while also making a convincing case about the Elector’s real forte: cultural patronage -- Suzanne Marchand * Apollo *