James, Duke of Monmouth, the adored illegitimate son of Charles II, was born in exile the very year that his grandfather was executed and the English monarchy abolished. Abducted from his mother on his father's orders, he emerged from a childhood in the backstreets of Rotterdam to command the ballrooms of Paris, the brothels of Covent Garden and the battlefields of Flanders. Pepys described him as 'the most skittish, leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in action, vaulting or leaping or clambering'.
Louis XIV was his mentor, Nell Gwyn his protector, D'Artagnan his lieutenant, William of Orange his confidant, John Dryden his censor and John Locke his comrade. He inspired both delight and disgust, adulation and abhorrence and, in time, love and loyalty almost beyond fathoming and Anna Keay brings him to glorious life, matching rigorous scholarship with a storyteller's gift to enrapturing effect.
His story is one of the bond between father and son, the power struggle between King and Parliament and the conflict between love and honour. His life, culminating in his fateful invasion, provides a sweeping history of the turbulent decades in which England as we know it was forged.
