A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game

FROM THE CELEBRATED AUTHOR OFTHE LUNAR MEN?A THRILLING PORTRAIT OF CHARLES II AND THE STUART RESTORATION From the acclaimed biographer Jenny Uglow, a look at Charles II and the first decade of the Restoration: a time of glamour and gossip, charade and risk. Charles II was thirty when he crossed the English Channel in 1660. Though his Restoration was greeted with maypoles and bonfires, there was no going back; no way that he could ?restore? the old. As the country was rocked by plague, fire, and war, people searched for new ideas by which to live. Exactly ten years later, Charles would stand again on the shore at Dover, laying the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin Louis XIV. The Restoration decade was one of experiment: from the science of the Royal Society to the startling role of credit and risk, from the shocking license of the court to the failed attempts at toleration of different beliefs. Negotiating all these, Charles, the ?slippery sovereign,? laid odds and took chances, dissembling and manipulating his followers. Yet while his grandeur, his court, and his colorful sex life were on display, his true intentions lay hidden. A Gambling Manis a portrait of Charles II, exploring his elusive nature through the lens of these ten vital years'and a portrait of a vibrant, violent, pulsing world, in which the risks the king took forged the fate of the nation, on the brink of modernity.Uglow, Jenny is the author of 'A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game', published 2009 under ISBN 9780374281373 and ISBN 0374281378.