top of page

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

In The Scapegoat, multi-award winning biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett tells the extraordinary story of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham. As King James I’s favourite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and bedfellow. Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. Falling from grace spectacularly, Buckingham came to represent everything that was wrong with the country. In this immersive and multifaceted account, Hughes-Hallett summons an era that still resonates today.

Scapegoat - Power and Personality in the Court of King James I

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize, The Costa Biography of the Year Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Political Biography of the Year Award. It was named in the Sunday Times as 'biography of the decade'.  Her other books include the cultural histories Cleopatra and Heroes, a novel - Peculiar Ground - and Fabulous, a collection of short stories.   

bottom of page