"This is a wonderful book: beautiful, heartbreaking and absolutely fascinating"
- Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess
"A great big Christmas pudding of a book, almost over-stuffed with rich and colourful life."
- Simon Callow, The Guardian
"This brilliant prismatic book conjures up not simply a man...but the spirit of an age."
- Susannah Clapp, The Observer
A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'