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A King's Ransom: The Life of Charles Théveneau de Morande, Blackmailer, Scandalmonger & Master-Spy

Autor Professor Simon Burrows
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 2 mar 2010
If Charles Théveneau de Morande was a character in a novel, he would be considered the ultimate anti-hero. Morande's historical significance far transcends his success as a blackmailer and scandalous pamphleteer. Having extorted the French monarchy he turned coat and during the War of American Independence and throughout the 1780s was France's leading political spy in London. In addition, he was a highly successful police agent among his fellow exiles and one of the most influential journalists of his time. His enemies or victims - who invariably suffered intense damage to their reputations - included many of the most colourful figures of his day. Nevertheless, Morande survived the wrath of both Louis XV and the revolution, outlived his enemies, and died peacefully in his bed. Morande's life story is a tale of intrigue, blackmail, espionage, duels, kidnap, murder, politics, conspiracy and crime. At the same time, it offers a chance to examine some of the most important issues of French history and revolution.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780826419897
ISBN-10: 0826419895
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 8
Dimensiuni: 156 x 234 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.61 kg
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Colecția Continuum
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

Caracteristici

Offers new insights into French espionage and secret police activities in Britain on the eve of the French revolution, drawing on rich archival sources and challenges existing ideas concerning "Grub Street" pamphleteering, ancient regime scandals and scandal-mongering and the origins of the French revolution.

Cuprins

IllustrationsPrefatory notePrologue: Auto da fé 1: The Sins of his Youth2: The Armour-Plated Gazeteer3: A King's Ransom4: Figaro's Nemesis5: On His Majesty's Secret Service6: Poacher Turned Gamekeeper: Morande, Police Spy7: The Magician, the Necklace and the Poisonous Pig8: The First Revolutionary Journalist9: Afterlife. Morande in Fiction, Myth and HistoryGlossaryAbbreviationsEndnotesBibliographyAcknowledgementsIndex

Recenzii

[Morande's] life reads like the script of a film, but in this minutely researched and well-written book the author uses his extraordinary life to demonstrate the scope and importance of the world-changing events Morande lived through and chronicled.
Morande's career [is] finely illuminated in Simon Burrows's biography
Good review in Standpoint.
[An] excellent resurrection of Morande ... pacily written with a delicious sense of absurdity
Simon Burrows, in the first attempt to reconstruct [Morande's] shadowy life since 1886, pursues him relentlessly through print and archive and the mists of obfuscation that were his natural habitat, and produces a fascinating portrait of a paradoxical man who lived by his poisonous pen.
... Burrows' lively, authoritative, and comprehensive narrative will make the compelling story more widely available... In [his] exemplary biography of Morande, libertine morality and political liberalism are situated uncomfortably, but convincingly side by side.
A King's Ransom helps us understand how a corrupt and self-serving individual such as Morande came to be both a valued agent of the French monarchy and a contributor to the development of modern journalism in the years prior to 1789.
A King's Ransom is meticulously researched: the collections of all of the pertinent major and even minor libraries and archives have been examined along with primary and secondary sources. It has been over a century and a quarter since the last biography of Theveneau de Morande was written. After Simon Burrows' definitive work, future scholars will not need another. One final comment about presentation is in order: this book is refreshingly free of typographical errors (I counted only four). At a time when publishers have become more and more dependent on computers and their spelling checkers, it is evident that the editors and the author reviewed the manuscript thoroughly before publication.
After reading the biography, one could argue that if Morande had not existed, he wouldhave been a very unlikely creation in fiction, but Simon Burrows has produced a readablework on him that it is doubtful it will need a new biographical revision for some timeto come.