The Romantic: William Boyd

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Whatever you perceive it to be there is no doubting The Romantic is an extraordinary adventure and the one question that runs through the story is “What do we leave behind us when we die? When Kolia is invited to visit his oldest friends on their Estate in the country he anticipates a pleasant break from Moscow life. You constantly want to see how Cashel will manage to get himself out of various scrapes and I kept willing him on.

In trying to steer Ross's fictional biography around certain 'documented facts', the overall arc of Ross's life is lost, as is the overall arc of events. As we have come to expect, here is exceptional storytelling - pristine, immersive, and intoxicating. It’s a life story, from Cashel’s complicated childhood, through his exploits at Waterloo, and in the Indian Army, as a best selling novelist and a Brewer of beer in the New World and an African explorer to name but a few of his exploits, Cashel had an extraordinary eventful life.I've been disappointed with some of his more recent books but this takes me back to wonderful saga style that he is so brilliant at. It is hard to think of another contemporary author who quietly marches his readers so relentlessly towards death; and Death, appropriately enough, is the opening image of this book. Boyd is sufficiently confident in his material to portray historical incidents and characters with casual relish; the battle of Waterloo, for instance, is seen largely from the perspective of a dysentery-beset drummer.

For all the hijinks that keep us turning his pages, Boyd is ultimately an artist of diminishment – one who tracks, in The Romantic , the ways in which a seemingly “great” life, lived over an entire century, can still dwindle, inexorably, into almost nothing: “tied bundles of letters received, drafts of letters sent, some little sketches, maps and plans, some photographs . Once journalists get their hands on them,those curt, day-to-day messages can be just a tad embarrassing — as this week’s expletive-laden evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry confirms. The Romantic, always enjoyable, ranks with two of his best: The New Confessions and Any Human Heart. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs.He is an atheist and a non-racist: he risks court-martial at one point by trying to stop his commanding officer from murdering innocent villagers in Ceylon (oh yes, he spends some time in the East India Company Army too). If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. The conceit of the tale is that he is merely reworking the surviving notes, letters and mementoes of Ross into a fictionalised biography. I especially enjoyed finding out where in the British Museum could be found the Lion of Glymphonos, a particularly impressive piece of looted Greek statuary. Cashel experiences all the vicissitudes of life from becoming a bestselling author to (shades of Dickens’ Little Dorrit) being imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison for debt.