Winner of the Plutarch Award

Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

Shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize

From the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, an extraordinary historical biography of the meteoric rise and fall of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.

As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skillful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. In a gripping narrative of the Stuart court, he became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.

With a novelist’s touch, Lucy Hughes-Hallett transports us into a courtly world of masques and dancing, exquisite clothes, the art of Rubens and Van Dyck, gender-fluidity, same-sex desire in 17th-century England, and appallingly rudimentary medicine. Witch hunts coexisted with Descartian rationality and public opinion was becoming a political force. Falling from grace spectacularly, Buckingham came to represent everything that was wrong with the country.

From kidnappings and murder plots to men weeping in Parliament over civil liberties, The Scapegoat navigates love, war-fever and pacifism in a society on the brink of cataclysmic change. In this immersive and authoritative account of a powerful royal favorite, Hughes-Hallett summons an era that still resonates today.

This meticulously researched biography illuminates the dramatic life of the man who defined an era:

• A Royal Favorite’s Rise and Fall: Follow George Villiers’s extraordinary journey from King James I’s lover to the most powerful—and hated—man in England, charting his dazzling ascent and spectacular downfall.
• Intrigue in the Stuart Court: Explore a world of political maneuvering, murder plots, and shifting allegiances as Buckingham navigates the treacherous landscape of Jacobean and Caroline England.
• Same-Sex Desire and Gender Fluidity: Discover a vivid portrait of 17th-century courtly life where same-sex relationships and gender-fluid expression were an open, and powerful, part of the social fabric.
• An Immersive Historical Narrative: Written with a novelist’s flair, this award-winning account transports you to a society on the brink of civil war, bringing a pivotal period of British history to life.