The Lucky King

George I (Penguin Monarchs)

George I was not the most charismatic of the Hanoverian monarchs to have reigned in England but he was probably the most important. He was certainly the luckiest. 
 
Born the youngest son of a landless German duke, he was taken by repeated strokes of good fortune to become, first the ruler of a major state in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and then the sovereign of three kingdoms (England, Ireland and Scotland). 
 
 Tim Blanning's incisive short biography examines George's life and career as a German prince, and as King. Fifty-four years old when he arrived in London in 1714, he was a battle-hardened veteran, who put his long experience and deep knowledge of international affairs to good use in promoting the interests of both Hanover and Great Britain. When he died, his legacy was order and prosperity at home and power and prestige abroad. Disagreeable he may have been to many, but he was also tough, determined and effective, at a time when other European thrones had started to crumble.

Tim Blanning is the author of a number of major works on eighteenth century Europe, including The Pursuit of Glory : Europe 1648-1815, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture and Joseph II. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. His latest book, Frederick the Great, won the British Academy Medal 2016.

George I was not the most charismatic of the Hanoverian monarchs to have reigned in England but he was probably the most important. He was certainly the luckiest. Born the youngest son of a landless German duke, he was taken by repeated strokes of good fortune to become, first the ruler of a major state in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and then the sovereign of three kingdoms (England, Ireland and Scotland). In these new dominions he presided over the transition from the political turmoil of the seventeenth century to the calm stability of the next. 
 
Fifty-four years old when he arrived in London in 1714, he was a battle-hardened veteran who had fought with distinction against the Turks in the East and the French in the West. Now in charge of a major European power, he put his long experience and deep knowledge of international affairs to good use in promoting the interests of both Hanover and Great Britain. When he died, his legacy was order and prosperity at home and power and prestige abroad. Disagreeable he may have been, especially in his brutal treatment of his family, but he was also tough, determined and effective. 
 
Tim Blanning's incisive short biography gives full attention to George's career as a German prince and shows how it both helped and hindered his new role as the first Hanoverian King of England.

King of Prussia

Frederick the Great

'Highly readable and deeply researched' - Andrew Roberts 
 
'Masterful ... brilliantly brings to life one of the most complex characters of modern European history' - Sunday Telegraph 
 
'It is sure to be the standard English-language account for many years. It instructs; it entertains; and it surprises' - Philip Mansel, The Spectator 
 
 
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, dominated the eighteenth century in the same way that Napoleon dominated the start of the nineteenth. He was a force of nature, a ruthless, brilliant, charismatic military commander, a monarch of exceptional energy and talent, a gifted composer, performer, poet and philosopher, and a discerning patron of artists, architects and writers, most famously Voltaire. From the very start of his reign he was an intensely divisive figure - fascinating even to those who hated him. 
 
Tim Blanning's brilliant new biography captures Frederick's vitality, complexity and flawed genius better than any previous writer. He also recreates a remarkable era, the last flowering of the old regime that would be swept away almost immediately after Frederick's death by the French Revolution. 
 
Equally at home on the battlefield or in the music room at Frederick's extraordinary miniature palace of Sanssouci, Blanning draws on a lifetime's immersion in the eighteenth century to present him in the round, with new attention paid to his cultural self-fashioning, including his sexuality. Frederick's spectre has hung over Germany ever since, both as inspiration and warning - Blanning at last allows us to understand him in his own time.

Tim Blanning's masterly biography guides the reader through all these wars and chicaneries with great skill and dry-eyed objectivity

It is sure to be the standard English-language account for many years. It instructs; it entertains; and it surprises

Tim Blanning is that rarest of scholars, as deft in his command of government and grand strategy as he is in his handling of philosophy and opera, and is rightly regarded as one of Britain's (indeed Europe's) finest historians. This biography finds him at the height of his powers and offers major reassessments of almost every aspect of Frederick's career

Potsdam, where the founding father of Prussian autocracy built the prettiest of palaces and picked the loftiest of guardsmen, [is] freshly and fascinatingly described by Tim Blanning

A similar mastery of topic is evident from the first lines of Tim Blanning's Frederick the Great: King of Prussia (Allen Lane), a virtuoso study of an exceptionally complex man who, through force of personality, helped to shape an equally complex moment in European history.

A superbly wise and accomplished biographer

Tim Blanning's Frederick the Great, is as enthralling on its subject's horribly abusive upbringing as on his bold, sometimes foolhardy military campaigns. Blanning is particularly acute in inquiring, without, prurience, into the notorious question of Frederick's sexuality.

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, dominated the 18th century in the same way that Napoleon dominated the start of the 19th - a force of nature, a caustic, ruthless, brilliant military commander, a monarch of exceptional energy and talent, and a knowledgeable patron of artists, architects and writers, most famously Voltaire. From early in his reign he was already a legendary figure - fascinating even to those who hated him. 
 
Tim Blanning's brilliant biography recreates a remarkable era, a world which would be swept away shortly after Frederick's death by the French Revolution. Equally at home on the battlefield or in the music room at Frederick's extraordinary miniature palace of Sanssouci, Blanning draws on a lifetime's obsession with the 18th century to create a work that is in many ways the summation of all that he has learned in his own rich and various career. Frederick's spectre has hung over Germany ever since: an inspiration, a threat, an impossible ideal - Blanning at last allows us to understand him in his own time.

Composers, Musicians and Their Audiences, 1700 to the Present

The Triumph of Music

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Tim Blanning is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802, The French Revolution in Germany, Joseph II and Reform and Revolution in Mainz. His last book, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize for 2007.

Once musicians such as Mozart were little more than court servants; now they are multimillionaire superstars wielding more power than politicians. How did this extraordinary change come about? 
 
Tim Blanning's brilliantly enjoyable book examines how everything from the cult of the romantic to technology and travel all fed the inexorable rise of music in the West, making it the most dominant and ubiquitous of the art forms. Encompassing balladeers, the great composers, jazz legends and rock gods, this is an enthralling story of power, patronage, creativity and genius.

Europe 1648-1815

The Pursuit of Glory

'Let the nations rejoice: this history of Europe is a truly glorious book' John Adamson, Sunday Times

The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects

With five volumes now out, the Penguin History of Europe series ... is shaping up to be the best general account available, superseding all previous ones

Tim Blanning is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. His other books include The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture and The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution.

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman 
 
The Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history - from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon), and explores an era of almost unprecedented change, growth and cultural, political and technological ferment that shaped the societies and economies of entire countries.

Tim Blanning

Tim Blanning’s riotous biography of an often-forgotten 18th-century king provides historical perspective on the current state of Europe... [it is] so riotous it is impossible to read without thinking of picaresque characters such as Fielding’s Tom Jones and Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon... [an] irresistible feast of a biography of the now oft-forgotten Polish king... whom he gloriously brings to life

The wonderful story of one of the worst monarchs in European history, told with enormous wit and scholarship by a supremely talented historian. If you have the slightest interest in Germans, Poles, porcelain, jewels, the Enlightenment, military disasters or the pleasures of fox-tossing, then this is the book for you

A highly readable, enjoyable, and insightful portrait of one of the 18th-century’s most colourful princes... few modern historians have contributed more to our understanding of 18th-century Europe as much as Tim Blanning

It takes a multi-talented, multi-lingual and jovially forbearing historian to take on the biography of Augustus the Strong, the mercurial, priapic and luxury-loving Elector of Saxony and sometimes King of Poland... in Tim Blanning, however, Augustus has found his ideal biographer... Blanning’s book is beautifully and accessibly written, with just the right touch of the screwball comedy. Like Augustus himself, the book brims with vitality, while also making a convincing case about the Elector’s real forte: cultural patronage

A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco

Both King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, Augustus is one of the great what-ifs of the 18th century. He could have turned the accident of ruling two major realms into the basis for a powerful European state – a bulwark against the Russians and a block on Prussian expansion. Alas, there was no opportunity Augustus did not waste and no decision he did not get wrong. By the time of his death Poland was fatally damaged and would subsequently disappear as an independent state until the 20th century. 
 
Tim Blanning’s wonderfully entertaining and original new book is a study in failed statecraft, showing how a ruler can shape history as much by incompetence as brilliance. Augustus’s posthumous sobriquet ‘The Strong’ referred not to any political accomplishment, but to his legendary physical strength and sexual athleticism. 
 
Yet he was also one of the great creative artists of the age, combining driving energy, exquisite taste and apparently boundless resources to master-mind the creation of peerless Dresden, the baroque jewel of jewels. Augustus the Strong brilliantly evokes this time of opulence and excess, decadence and folly.

Tim Blanning

Praise for Augustus The Strong

Tim Blanning’s riotous biography of an often-forgotten 18th-century king provides historical perspective on the current state of Europe... [it is] so riotous it is impossible to read without thinking of pi ...

The wonderful story of one of the worst monarchs in European history, told with enormous wit and scholarship by a supremely talented historian. If you have the slightest interest in Germans, Poles, por ...

An absorbing biography

Tim Blanning’s riotous biography of an often-forgotten 18th-century king provides historical perspective on the current state of Europe... [it is] so riotous it is impossible to read without thinking of pi ...

The wonderful story of one of the worst monarchs in European history, told with enormous wit and scholarship by a supremely talented historian. If you have the slightest interest in Germans, Poles, por ...

An absorbing biography

Tim Blanning’s riotous biography of an often-forgotten 18th-century king provides historical perspective on the current state of Europe... [it is] so riotous it is impossible to read without thinking of pi ...

The wonderful story of one of the worst monarchs in European history, told with enormous wit and scholarship by a supremely talented historian. If you have the slightest interest in Germans, Poles, por ...

An absorbing biography

Books by Tim Blanning

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