Among the three recommendations on the back of the jacket of this biography is one from Christopher Hitchens, himself the author of a provocative and lively book on the Elgin Marbles. Susan Nagel, he writes, has brought off the feat of ‘showing again that behind the most ginger guy there is a guilesome girl’. The uncharacteristically slangy phrasing of the compliment suggests, rightly as it turns out, that here is a book not so much for the serious student of history as for the devotee of historical novels.

Literary Review

Dec 2004

Categories

Francis King

A Pause in Dying

We Are Amused

Love in Visiting Hours

The Wind of Change

Going For Gold

Dirty Stories

Hell’s Antechamber

Trollopes Abroad

Beyond The Nile

Size Everything

Mussel Man

Portrait of a Writer

A Very Greek Affair

Drama Behind The Lines

Sweet Hart

The Girls She Might Have Been

Peaking Early

Cosmopolis

Make It Short

Why the Welsh Went to Mexico

Judge And Be Judged

Dressed To Kill

Winning the Jackpot

No Man Is An Island