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The court favourite who became the most hated man in England

Lucy Hughes-Hallett traces the brief, dramatic career of the handsome Duke of Buckingham – scapegoat for the early Stuarts’ extravagance and incompetence

19 October 2024

9:00 AM

19 October 2024

9:00 AM

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham Lucy Hughes-Hallett

4th Estate, pp.640, 30

The Duke of Buckingham, wrote Alexandre Dumas, lived ‘one of those fabulous existences which survive… to astonish posterity’. In the summer of 1614, a young man from a modest gentry family was invited to a hunting party in Northamptonshire to meet a very special guest. George Villiers was affable, not terribly bright and superlatively beautiful.

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