The Romantic William Boyd

Viking £20

Meet Cashel Greville Ross, soldier and farmer, diplomat, gigolo and occasional novelist. Born in Scotland in 1799, he’ll experience joys, sorrows and romantic escapades galore as he travels the world fighting at Waterloo, making merry with Byron, even searching for the source of the Nile. The novel is styled as a fictionalised biography, a conceit that adds brio to a panoramic and deeply satisfying narrative from an author on top form.

Hephzibah Anderson