There is such a long tradition of heroic adventurers, off on their travels. Early on there was Don Quixote and there are innumerable books categorised under (picaresque) fictional biography, right through into modern times with variations on a theme. There is the contemporary US by David Nicholls or Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin (incidentally shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020); or right back to Candide by Voltaire, which I read at school and which was my first encounter with this kind of novel. Not, of course, forgetting the adventures of the indomitable Phileas Fogg and his adventures penned by Jules Verne in Around the World in 80 Days.

The delightful aspect of this novel is that you observe a boy, Cashel Greville Ross, growing into a man and facing all kinds of adult challenges along the way, as he dabbles in a variety of professions, travelling the world, assimilating experiences. I further liked how this felt like a kind of Whac-a-Mole progression because, as a reader, you never know where in the world he would pop up next. From Ireland via London to Ooty in India and back to the Low Countries before heading to Italy.

“From Ostende all Europe lay before him…”

Leaving the army behind him, Cashel is intent on writing a book about his adventures, but he gets as far as Pistoia (where reputedly the pistol was invented) and he questions the breadth of vocabulary to describe what he sees on his travels (after all it is difficult finding a variety of descriptive terms and superlatives to convey the intensity and colour of travel, never mind the horrors along the way). He began to realize that perhaps travel books were only interesting when things went wrong or were arduous, or when expectations weren’t lived up to.

He doesn’t think much of Nice – at that point the city was back in the Kingdom of Piedmont – and then he zips back and forth between France and Italy for a while, where he becomes romantically involved and hobnobs with famous people. Further adventures around Italy ensue and then he then spreads his wings further afield as his journey continues.

The novel has several of Cashel’s drawings and there are footnotes, all giving the illusion of the novel being Cashel’s biography. And that he is a real person! It is an inventive device and this is a very readable and well researched novel, full of detail and whimsy.

Historical Storytelling of the highest quality with great imagination.
This is the biography of Cashel Greville Ross a fictional character born in 1799. From humble beginnings he lives an interesting and eventful life.
The story interweaves real events as we follow Cashel as he takes part in the Battle of Waterloo and meets a number of historical characters such as Lord Byron and Shelley. The common thread running through the novel is his love affairs.
The novel covers so much ground, so many events in many countries so it is always an interesting read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Boyd doing for the 19th, what he has so magnificently done for the 20th

William Boyd has written several wonderful novels which chart the shape of the twentieth century, through an invented central character whose life sometimes twines within real occupiers of world stage history and culture. And he often plays with his readers’ sense of ‘is this real, or is this invention’. Sending the reader (inevitably) to Google to search for a biography of a person….who turns out to be Boyd’s fertile and exuberant invention

And so it is here, as pleasurably, though in a further off time, as in Any Human Heart.

Here, his central character, the wonderfully named Cashel Greville Ross, born at the very end of the 18th Century, is absolutely influenced within late Romanticism. He is himself of a romantic and idealistic nature, emotional and imaginative – and then encounters that late Romantic jet-set in their romantic, celebrity, shocking and Romantic influencer setting – the Byron, Shelley (Percy Bysshe and Mary), Clare Claremont et al, setting. What a delight for anyone steeped in the fashions, literature and also scandalous individual histories of the period.

Because Boyd is such a splendid weaver of stories, even if someone is completely ignorant of the history, society, culture et al of the period, it really wouldn’t matter. This is a thoroughly well told tale.

There are various rugpulls and shocks in store for Cashel along the way, both in his own individual life and where a wider historical world collide. This is, after all, the time where Britain was slap bang in the middle of fracture with our nearest European neighbour, and an old Gallic versus Anglo-Saxon enmity. Napoleonic wars loom large.

A wonderful read. Not to mention a re-read. One to return to when yearning for someone who can tell a story and flesh out memorable characters worth meeting again

I haven't read a William Boyd book in years, but this reminded me how much I enjoyed Any Human Heart.

His style is deft, light and amusing, the scope of his books fascinating and I really enjoyed this. It's a really fun romp through the 1800s. My only quibble is I got to the end and it all felt a little aimless.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

An interesting if in some parts rather long prolonged & drawn out story about one man's life & how it evolved with the chances he took due to various circumstances he found himself in. I did learn some interesting facts about various War's & other social developments The main character Cashel Greville Ross leads a life not unlike that of a River from Birth ( Spring) to Babbling Brook (early childhood) to becoming a River sometimes with Meanders in it ,sometime Whitewater & Water Falls until it reaches the Sea & it's end .#NetGalley, #GoodReads,#FB,#Instagram, #Amazon.co.uk, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/358a5cecda71b11036ec19d9f7bf5c96d13e2c55" width="80" height="80" alt="100 Book Reviews" title="100 Book Reviews"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/ef856e6ce35e6d2d729539aa1808a5fb4326a415" width="80" height="80" alt="Reviews Published" title="Reviews Published"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/aa60c7e77cc330186f26ea1f647542df8af8326a" width="80" height="80" alt="Professional Reader" title="Professional Reader"/>.

This is the story of Cashel Greville Ross, born in 1799 to a Scots governess and her Anglo-Irish employer. His many adventures take him to the Battle of Waterloo, India, farming in Massachusetts, a brief literary career and an expedition to find the source of the Nile. The character of Ross is well written, he is likeable but gullible and flawed.

Cashel Greville Ross is born in Ireland to rather unscrupulous circumstances – so much so that as a young boy, he and his family do a flit across the water to England. This is the first of his many transitions.

Our hero, after discovering some family secrets, decides at the tender age of 15 to leave home and catapults himself out into the wider world. On a whim, he signs up with the local army regiment and runs away to war, where he finds himself trudging along near Brussels to intercept Napoleon.

Of course, now that he has tasted adventure, he wants more, and oh boy, does he get it!

Over the following 450 pages or so, Cashel goes to India and then to Italy, where he befriends the poets Byron and Shelley and falls in love with the beautiful Raffaella, a married countess whom many authors would have had him settle with and live quite contentedly. But not in this one; oh no, Cashel is continuously on the hunt for his next adventure. Boyd announces at one point that Cashel “was convinced that he had arrived at his life climacteric,” but a few chapters later, he decides that, “in a bizarre, paradoxical way, he had the sensation that his life was only just beginning”.

The temptation is great for authors who place fictional characters in historical settings to have them meet famous people along the way, but here they’re woven skillfully into the plot.

This was my first novel from Boyd, but it’ll not be my last. The Romantic is a deeply humane, gently satisfying cradle-to-grave narrative.

4.5 stars

I’m ashamed to say that this was my first William Boyd, despite having several of his books in my library. I’m wondering now what took me so long, for The Romantic is a gem of a novel. A sweeping, picaresque-style story of one man’s lifetime of searching: for his identity, his place in the world and for love.

Spread across eight decades covering almost the whole of the 19th century, The Romantic is the imagined, whole-life biography of one Cashel Grenville Ross; an adventurer, whose restlessness catapults him around the world in an endless series of exploits.

Boyd cleverly intertwined Ross’s adventures with real historical events, lending his story an irresistible air of authenticity. We see him decorated at the Battle of Waterloo, take up a commission in the East Indian Army, and lead an expedition into the African interior to search for the source of the River Nile.

He crosses paths with the Shelleys and Lord Byron in Italy, seeks his fortune in America, and is appointed Nicaraguan consul in Trieste. He is variously a writer, a soldier, a farmer, an explorer, a diplomat, a smuggler, and a lover. With every iteration, I became more invested in his destiny and wished desperately for him to find contentment.

Boyd writes with an accomplished fluidity and grace that quickly becomes addictive, outshone only by his magnificent characterization of Ross, a man whose natural verve for life contrasts endearingly with his many flaws and vulnerabilities. His story is told through the voice of an independent narrator, but it carries nonetheless an extraordinary, compelling intimacy.

It also gives pause for thought. About the choices and decisions we all make in life and how each one changes the course of our destiny.

A searching and truly beautiful novel from an author who is now firmly on my auto-buy list.

I did not love this book although the idea was very good. I found it perfectly easy to read but found the detail instantly forgettable. I was disappointed as I’ve read many Boyd books and enjoyed them.

The life of Cashel Greville Ross was truly fascinating, if the author hadn't included the factual notes regarding certain events and timings it would be easy to read this a pure fiction as Cashel seems to land on his feet time and time again, overcoming many obstacles.

William Boyd does a great job of bringing to life the characters and places that formed Cashel's life.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read The Romantic.

In theory I like the idea of creating a fictionalised account of someone’s life based on diaries and other materials. A kind of dot to dot with words. This worked very well in my opinion with “The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho” by Paterson Joseph. However, when the diaries themselves are fictional and so the character is not a real one but the author asserts this I feel cheated. It is an unnecessary artifice in my view. I began “The Romantic” believing Cashel Greville had really lived. When I realised he had not, I became disillusioned with the book.

There are too many adventures, the only character which is developed is Cashel’s and I personally do not like the character he becomes, although later in life he mellows more to my liking. He is such a moral person in some ways (he does not approve of the killing of villagers in Ceylon, the provision of an income to Mrs Brooke but this is really to get at his father-in-law) and immoral in others, (he knows how Hogan behaves so why does he trust him? Why is he such a philanderer? ) The laudanum I can understand and the modern day equivalent is painkillers and anti-depressants.

The description of place is limited as well. Money in one form or another always arrived just as the reader starts to despair of the situation. There were no humorous episodes. Is the humour that the novel is a spoof of so many Victorian books like “Vanity Fair”? If so this passed me by until I began this review. The recurrent theme of the rogues Cashel knows returning to his life and him then trusting them again is not really convincing. Did he never learn? He never really understood the position his beloved Countess was in.

This was my first William Boyd book and I started it with high hopes but in the end I was not impressed.

I didn't enjoy this book by William Boyd as much as many of his others although his prose is unfailingly engaging and well researched. It may just be that I found its subject, Cashel Ross, a not particularly likeable man whichever stage of life he was in. Despite all that, I find it hard to criticise anything William Boyd writes!

In this fictional biography, we meet Cashel Greville Ross in Scotland in the early 19th Century. Ross goes on various adventures, many of which are woven into real events, and meets many people, several of whom are real historical figures. Such is the skill of the author in creating this intriguing, fully formed character and placing him in these real-life situations that, at times, I wondered whether I was mistaken in thinking he was fictional!

The writing, as may be expected from Boyd, is sublime and I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through 19th-century Europe. It is packed with detail and incredible characters, and I can’t recommend it more highly.

My thanks to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for the arc to review.

This novel tells the story of the life of Cashell Greville Ross, born in 1799 in Ireland. His life takes in much of what characterises the Victorian age - the battle of Waterloo, exploration of Africa, trade and war in India, emigration to America - the sense that anything is possible.

This is the second whole-life story I have read this year, straight after Ian McEwan’s Lessons. Although very different in tone, both use one man’s long life to attempt to encapsulate the history of a century. Of the two, this is the more enjoyable to read, being more picaresque in nature. The problem, for me, was the same as it was with Lessons: there is only narrative, no attempt at insight or commentary either on the individual history or the global one. So, enjoyable as it was in the reading, I didn’t feel I got very much out of it. I generally very much enjoy a good story well told and William Boyd has historically done this very well, but because there is so much story here, there is less opportunity to explore the detail. Ultimately this left me with a sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling of ‘so what?’

A good read. This book tells the story of Cachel Ross's life,, after discovering that his mother has been lying to him and discovering the truth about who his father is when age sixteen he leaves his family and joins the army as a drummer boy. As we follow his incredible journey that takes him to many different countries where he faces many challenges often with disasterous consequences he still battles on and always in his heart he never forgets the mistake he makes losing Raphaella his first true love

I really enjoy William Boyd's fiction and Any Human Heart is one of my favourite novels. The Romantic reads to me like Any Human Heart 2.0, another attempt to delineate the history of a century, in this case the 19th, through one remarkable life.

Cashel Greville Ross is born in Ireland at the turn of the 19th century. He fights at Waterloo, meets Byron and Shelley, fights for the empire in India, explores the unmapped interior of Africa, participates in the growth of the USA and much more. The most remarkable aspect of this novel to me is to watch the remarkable pace of technological progress as the 19th century unfolds.

I think this novel suffers a little from the fact that Boyd has done it before. It is extremely long and early chapters drag somewhat, at least until the relationship with Raffaela. Nevertheless, Cashel, 'the Romantic', is a loveable character and the chapters of his life are great fun, vivid, and mostly captivating. I do love the way that Cashel, like Logan Mountstuart in Any Human Heart, continues to have wonderful adventures and escapades well into his old age.

Cashel Greville Ross was born somewhere in Scotland on 14th December 1799, the same day George Washington died. He was to be relocated to County Cork, Ireland, not long into his life and in due course learned of a tragedy that had befallen his parents at that time. The story - a fictional autobiography - picks up his life from this point and follows it all the way through. And what a life it is. If I felt I’d trodden this path with Boyd before then that’s because I have: Any Human Heart and The New Confessions each followed the life of a man through the course of the 20th Century. I’d enjoyed both enormously and saw no reason why I’d feel any differently about this one, set a hundred years earlier.

One of the tricks the author employs is to introduce notable events and figures into his narrative. In this book we find ourself a witness at the battle of Waterloo and meet distinguished figures such as poets Byron and Shelley and John Hanning Speke, the man who discovered the source of the Nile. It’s something that I initially found disconcerting in his earlier books but in time I grew to enjoy looking out for these contrivances. What it does help to achieve, I think, is to provide some historical context and also it’s a distraction from some of the more pedestrian activities that are naturally part of the subject’s life.

Ross is a headstrong and an impulsive character, so his reaction to a situation or an idea is to rush into action. Often this means that his excitement or simply following his gut-feel can end up pushing him in some unpredictable directions. Sometimes this works in his favour but it’s a trait that also that causes him much regret and angst throughout his life. A rover by nature, he travels to mainland Europe, Asia, Africa and America as his various schemes and his travails play out. Travel and communications being what they were in the 19th Century it could take him months to reach a destination or even to get a message to someone in another continent. In consequence, his life is complicated, with a tendency for loose ends to be created.

Cashew’s relationships with women tend to be interrupted by either his roving nature or his impetuosity. But there is one woman in particular with whom he becomes so besotted that their eventual parting becomes something that forever haunts him. This is a key theme that becomes a focus of his thoughts and actions as he reaches an age where he increasingly starts to reflect on his life. Can he eventually find happiness, or at least closure? This becomes something that I found had an emotional impact on me as I neared the end of this tale. I’d enjoyed it to this point but now I was somewhat obsessed about knowing how this would all conclude.

Boyd is a supremely accomplished writer and once again he’s delivered a novel that’s grabbed me and taken me on a rollercoaster ride in the company of a man I grew to like and eventually to care for. I truly enjoyed my journey with Cashel Greville Ross with its many adventures, twists and turns, over the course of the best part of a century.

The Romantic follows the life of Cashell Greville Ross, as he begins his life in the west of Ireland, moves to Oxford, discovers what he feels is a traumatic family secret and runs away to join the Army. He is present at the Battle of Waterloo, spends time in the Indian Army and escapes to Europe. His adventures and exploits, his dramatic love life, are all covered in fascinating detail. As always, William Boyd's writing is faultless, capturing the spirit of the age but still making his subject seem contemporary and relevant to his reading audience. I highly recommend this fictional biography to anyone who enjoys a wide-ranging saga peopled with interesting characters and improbable events and found it a captivating, page-turning read.

The Romantic is a life story sweeping through the first half of the nineteenth century, the post-Napoleonic epoch of passionate, idealistic romanticism and the elevation of the spirit over matter.

The hero, Cashel Greville Ross is indeed a spirited young man and the very embodiment of a true romantic. An illegitimate son of an Anglo-Irish baronet, he rebels against his parents and the lies they have spun him and joins the army as a fourteen-year-old lad to experience the brutality of war first-hand and to witness the death of his friend. Cashel hurtles from being a hero to narrowly escaping a court martial as he takes the high moral ground in Sri Lanka and refuses to follow orders. In Pisa, he rubs shoulders with the greatest romantic poets, Byron and Shelley, and somehow manages to bring them down a peg or two for he is the real deal and they are just wishful thinkers and thrill-seekers. The life of peril, love gained and lost, adventure and misadventure continues in this captivating epic tale spanning continents and cultures.

I found Boyd’s writing smooth and utterly immersive. It drew me into Cashel’s story and wrapped itself around me and kept me turning pages and marvelling at the mystery and unpredictability of man’s heart and fate.

With all William Boyd novels, you know to expect compelling protagonists, brilliant writing and clever touches and The Romantic is no exception.

We follow Cashel Ross through the length of his long and eventful life as he crosses the globe, taking part in renowned events such as Waterloo and the search for the source of the Nile and meets historical figures such as Lord Byron and the Shellys.

Cashel remains a likeable character throughout, despite often acting reprehensibly, loving and leaving and breaking every promise he ever makes.

Having read lots of Boyd’s novels, I think that you will have a preferred type: his plot-driven novels or his character-driven ones. I fall into the former category and found the pacing of this a bit too slow, though an enjoyable yarn.

With thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher, Penguin General, UK for an arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.