Izabela the Valiant

Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man’s world.

Her aristocratic position enmeshed her in high politics and close encounters with Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Joseph II, Marie-Antoinette and Tsar Alexander I, and earned her the enmity of Catherine the Great. She lived through revolution and no less than five wars, in which her cherished homes were devastated, her possessions looted and her children scattered. Caught up in tempestuous love affairs which led her to nervous breakdown and the brink of suicide, exploited by her lovers, she remained undaunted and liberated herself through education. And, unusually for her time, she became a caring mother devoted to her children.

She learned much by travelling extensively around Europe at a time of political and ideological change, and her observations, particularly on Georgian Britain, are remarkable. She gradually won the admiration of learned men and intellectual honours. She pioneered schooling for children of the poor and developed her own educational methods. Fascinated by the power of objects to kindle memories and arouse emotions, she was an avid collector of anything with a sensuous association and built two unique museums to act as teaching aids.

This is a story of triumph over adversity and betrayal. It was not achieved by her looks: ‘I have never been beautiful, but I have sometimes been pretty,’ she wrote. It was achieved by force of character and resilience.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR NAPOLEON:

‘Napoleon is an out-and-out masterpiece and a joy to read’
Antony Beevor

‘The emperor has had few biographers who address this shooting star with Zamoyski’s narrative power and nuanced judgment’
Max Hastings, Sunday Times

‘Zamoyski’s research is meticulous, his writing sublime…. This is probably one of the truest biographies of Napoleon…. this book undoubtedly needed to be written’
Gerard DeGroot, The Times

‘The real value of this wonderful biography – elegantly written, exhaustively researched and compellingly argued – is the insight it gives us into Napoleon the Man’
Saul David, Daily Telegraph

‘The refreshing distinction of Zamoyski as a biographer is that he humanises Bonaparte…In portraying the person behind the many myths that have accrued around his name, Zamoyski acts as a skilful picture-restorer, scraping away layers of lies, exaggerations and misconceptions to reveal the man in his true, unvarnished colours’
Nigel Jones, Spectator

'Always elegant in style and original in analysis, Zamoyski, a master of the sources and the culture and politics that created his subject, produces a fresh, nuanced, beautifully written, gripping and outstanding biography of Napoleon’
Simon Sebag-Montefiore

'A lifetime's diligent research and profound thinking about Napoleon and his times has gone into this hugely readable, highly enjoyable and well-balanced biography. Zamoyski is at the top of his game as a biographer'
Andrew Roberts

'Adam Zamoyski has retold a story that we thought we knew and made it fresh. Stripping away two centuries of mythology, discarding the apocryphal stories and legends, he finally brings us the real Napoleon'
Anne Applebaum