Heroes
Saviours, Traitors and Supermen (TEXT ONLY)
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1.5 • 2 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
From the author of ‘The Pike’ – winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction – a compelling story of heroism told through eight famous lives that span from Achilles to Sir Francis Drake.
Beginning beneath the walls of Troy, ending in 1930s Europe, ‘Heroes’ is a compelling evocation of heroism through eight famous lives – Achilles, Odysseus, Alcibiades, Cato, El Cid, Francis Drake, Wallenstein and Garibaldi.
Not necessarily all good – sometimes quite the reverse – but all great, they possessed a charisma, a strength of will powerful enough to persuade those around them that they alone could do the incredible and unprecedented.
It is a story of morality and dictatorship; money and sorcery; seduction and mass hysteria.
Reviews
'Vivid and highly readable, here are biographies that thrill, enthral and dazzle.' Observer
'A bold, witty and thought-provoking book.' Victoria Glendinning, Daily Telegraph
'Both rich in material and riveting to read.' Antonia Fraser, Sunday Times
'Compendious and stupendous…it will leave you quite flushed and breathless, wondering what kind of world produced such men.' Independent on Sunday
About the author
Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions which was published in 1990 to wide acclaim, Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen, published in 2004, which garnered similar praise, and The Pike, publishing in 2013. Cleopatra won the Fawcett Prize and the Emily Toth Award. Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews for the Sunday Times. She lives in London.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If you were hosting a celestial dinner party and could invite anyone from history, who would attend? Lincoln, Einstein, Shakespeare? But it might be shrewder to collect the truly mesmerizing characters who combined transcendent charisma and resolve, such as Achilles or Garibaldi. Having long pondered precisely such people, Sunday Times of London critic Hughes-Hallett would likely give a humdinger of a bash. Her fascinating, wide-ranging book lovingly plumbs the careers of seven well-chosen men to trace the history of the hero in Western culture: in addition to the two mentioned above, she includes the Athenian Alcibiades; Roman senator Cato the Younger; the crusader El Cid; the pirate Francis Drake; and war plunderer Albrecht von Wallenstein. What sets these men apart? A preternatural ability to inspire, "a disdain for the cramping compromises by means of which the unheroic majority manage their lives." To exalt scoundrels like Drake or Wallenstein is to challenge our modern dictum that all are created equal; recognizing this, Hughes-Hallett appends a cautionary coda about the antidemocratic legacy of these Nietzschean "supermen." She notes that a hero needn't be virtuous; he need only "inspire confidence and... appear, not good necessarily, but great." Compellingly portraying her heroes, Hughes-Hallett is equally brilliant in evoking both the allure and the danger of hero worship. 32 pages of photos, 16 in color.
