Audiobooks by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham

From the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, an extraordinary story of the meteoric rise and fall of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham. 'Lord Buckingham rockets off the page of this gloriously epic, seductively detailed biography' OLIVIA LAING As King James I’s favourite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, right-hand man 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 skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. 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 and appallingly rudimentary medicine. Witch hunts coexisted with Francis Bacon’s empiricism 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, Hughes-Hallett summons an era that still resonates today. - 'The Scapegoat brilliantly dramatises the complex and glittering Duke of Buckingham and the political and sexual intrigue of the court of James I. Hughes-Hallett combines the instincts and talents of a novelist with a historian's vivid sense of period and social change’ COLM TÓIBÍN ‘This is an absorbing, even thrilling journey through the dark and tangled networks of Stuart England. Perhaps you think we have sunk to new lows in the twenty-first century? Read this outstanding work of biography, and learn’ DIANE PURKISS ‘A flamboyant character, an epic rise and tragic fall, brought to life with intelligence, tenderness and profound scholarship’ ADAM ZAMOYSKI ‘Buckingham’s rise and fall is as old as Tiberius’ love for Sejanus and as contemporary as a celeb crash-and-burn. Hughes-Hallett is a matchless historian with an unfailing eye for the revealing detail’ SUE PRIDEAUX ‘A true Jacobean drama, except bloodier and sexier. Lucy Hughes-Hallett writes with gusto and insight’ PAUL THEROUX

Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Author), Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Narrator)

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Writers on Walks: A BBC Radio 3 Collection: 30 Reflections from Exploring on Foot

22 writers talk about their memorable excursions and the act of walking, and share their creative observations In these six series, taken from BBC Radio 3's The Essay, an array of novelists, poets, journalists and biographers chart the varied and inspiring walks they have taken around Britain and elsewhere. Here are treks taken at daybreak and after dark; in winter and in spring; in the footsteps of the past; and - in the case of Robert Macfarlane - along the ridges of the South Downs. Dawnwalks and Night Walks find Nicholas Shakespeare, Nicola Barker, Kamila Shamsie, Ian Sansom, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Owen Sheers, Janice Galloway and John Walsh taking early morning and late-night strolls around locations ranging from their back garden and local cemetery to Manhattan, Paris, Tasmania and the Antarctic. Springwalks and Winterwalks feature Michele Roberts, Ross Raisin, John Walsh, Kirsty Gunn, Philip Hoare, Deborah Levy, Christopher Hope, Scarlett Thomas, Erica Wagner and Owen Sheers, as they sample the transforming qualities of spring and the wonders of winter. From Poland and the Languedoc to Hampstead Heath and the Yorkshire Wolds, they delight in the details of the landscape and reflect on what it means to them. Strange Strolls sees Jenn Ashworth, Michael Donkor, Stephanie Victoire, Nat Segnit and Sophie Coulombeau embarking on walks of entertaining eccentricity, revisiting favourite places including Wandsworth Bridge, the Blue Ridge mountains of Appalachia and Ibiza. And in A Five-Day Journey, Robert Macfarlane walks the length of the South Downs in monsoon rain and in sunshine, discovering its chalk trails and its ghosts. He ponders the relationship between paths and stories; explores the poet Edward Thomas' love affair with tracks; considers the concept of the Aboriginal Australian songline; re-imagines the life of artist Eric Ravilious; and contemplates the sometimes eerie relationship between walking, collecting and creation. Intimate, evocative and immersive, these 30 uplifting programmes transport us to a wealth of wonderful places, and offer fascinating personal insight into the inner worlds of our walker-writers. Production credits Produced by Duncan Minshull, Ciaran Bermingham and Tim Dee First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the following dates: Dawnwalks Nicholas Shakespeare 28 March 2016 Nicola Barker 29 March 2016 Kamila Shamsie 30 March 2016 Ian Sansom 31 March 2016 Lucy Hughes-Hallett 1 April 2016 Night Walks Nicholas Shakespeare 27 October 2008 Owen Sheers 28 October 2008 Janice Galloway 29 October 2008 Kamila Shamsie 30 October 2008 John Walsh 31 October 2008 Springwalks Michele Roberts in Poznan 31 March 2014 Ross Raisin in the Yorkshire Wolds 1 April 2014 John Walsh 2 April 2014 Kirsty Gunn in Sutherland 3 April 2014 Philip Hoare in Sholing 4 April 2014 Winterwalks Deborah Levy on Hampstead Heath 18 February 2013 Christopher Hope in Languedoc 19 February 2013 Scarlett Thomas 20 February 2013 Erica Wagner 21 February 2013 Owen Sheers in Poland 22 February 2013 Strange Strolls Jenn Ashworth - The Abiding Mental Riches of Preston 10 February 2020 Michael Donkor - On Westminster Bridge 11 February 2020 Stephanie Victoire - Dark Hollow Falls 12 February 2020 Nat Segnit - The Other Ibiza 13 February 2020 Sophie Coulombeau - Walking Matilda 14 February 2020 A Five-Day Journey Marking 2 November 2009 Haunting 3 November 2009 Singing 4 November 2009 Flying 5 November 2009 Collecting 6 November 2009 © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd.

Christopher Hope, Deborah Levy, Erica Wagner, Ian Samson, Jenn Ashworth, Kamila Shamsie, Kirsty Gunn, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Michael Donkor, Michèle Roberts, Nat Segnit, Nicholas Shakespeare, Nicola Barker, Owen Sheers, Philip Hoare, Robert MacFarlane, Robert Macfarlane, Ross Raisin, Scarlett Thomas, Sophie Coulombeau (Author), Various (Narrator)

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Fabulous

Not since Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber have old stories been made to feel so electrically new. Not since Wim Winders' Wings of Desire have the numinous and the everyday been so magically combined. It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable. Each of these startlingly original stories is set in modern Britain. Their characters include a people-trafficking gang-master and a prostitute, a migrant worker and a cocksure estate agent, an elderly musician doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife, a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she'll ever find love. They're ordinary people, preoccupied, as we all are now, by the deficiencies of the health service, by criminal gangs and homelessness, by the pitfalls of dating in the age of #metoo. All of their stories, though, are inspired by ones drawn from Graeco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folk-lore. The ancients invented myths to express what they didn't understand. These witty fables, elegantly written and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Author), John Hopkins, John Hopkinson (Narrator)

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Peculiar Ground: A Novel

"Unlike anything I've read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful."-Tessa Hadley The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement-a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion. It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders-migrants fleeing the plague-find no mercy. Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood's walls. Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history-and by one patch of peculiar ground.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Author), Adjoa Andoh, Anna Bentinck, Jake Curran, Juanita McMahon, Leighton Pugh, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Maggie Ollershaw, Peter Noble, Rachel Atkins (Narrator)

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Peculiar Ground

'One of the best novels of the year so far' The Times A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Unlike anything I've read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful' Tessa Hadley 'I just enjoyed it so very much' Philip Pullman It is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate. Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all. Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood. From the multi-award-winning author of The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Maggie Ollerenshaw (Author), Adjoa Andoh, Anna Bentinck, Jake Curran, Juanita McMahon, Juanita Mcmahon, Leighton Pugh, Maggie Ollerenshaw, Peter Noble, Rachel Atkins (Narrator)

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The Pike

WINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONWINNER OF THE 2013 DUFF COOPER PRIZEWINNER OF THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2014WINNER OF THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEARThe story of Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, daredevil - and Fascist.In September 1919 Gabriele D'Annunzio, successful poet and occasional politician, declared himself Commandante of the city of Fiume in modern-day Croatia. His intention - to establish a utopia based on his fascist and artistic ideals. It was the dramatic pinnacle to an outrageous career.Lucy Hughes-Hallett charts the controversial life of D'Annunzio, the debauched artist who became a national hero. His evolution from idealist Romantic to radical right-wing revolutionary is a political parable. Through his ideological journey, culminating in the failure of the Fiume endeavour, we witness the political turbulence of early 20th-century Europe and the emergence of fascism.In The Pike, Hughes-Hallett addresses the cult of nationalism and the origins of political extremism - and at the centre of the book stands the charismatic D'Annunzio: a figure as deplorable as he is fascinating.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Author), Karoline Newman (Narrator)

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