CBR18 Bingo: Right – As favorite to both James I and Charles II of England, the Duke of Buckingham served as the right hand of the king in helping govern the kingdom.
When George Villiers caught the eye of James I of England, it was the start of a brilliant rise in politics and society for him. However, his close association with the increasingly unpopular crown would also lead to his downfall.
I mostly think of James I as the king who was obsessed with witch-hunting, Charle II as the English king who lost his head, and the Duke of Buckingham not at all, so I learned plenty from this book.
Despite its length, it’s definitely a page-turner. Hughes-Hallett does a great job of humanizing people from five centuries ago, showing you how their actions are perfectly logical – indeed, how anyone you know today – might have done the same if they were living and moving in the same frameworks. Considering that that framework is a court where your ability to leap really high was a skill to include on your resume, this is a pretty impressive achievement.
There’s pretty complex political maneuvering going on in the English, French, and Spanish courts, but the way Hughes-Hallett breaks the story down into chapters by theme, not just strictly chronological, made things easier to follow.
I did think the parts of the book going into Buckingham’s patronage of the arts were less compelling, but I understood why it was included, since it seems to have been a major part of his own view of his legacy. The book also ends somewhat abruptly – I thought it would have been useful to include a chapter about the long-term repercussions to the rest of Charles II’s reign, especially since the pattern set by his behavior here is what ultimately caused his execution at the hands of the English people.
I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by Hughes-Hallett herself. Usually I’m wary of author-narrated books as I feel they don’t always have the range of professional narrators, but I thought she did a good job.
