The Twelve Caesars

Description

In Twelve Caesars, Matthew Dennison offers a beautifully crafted sequence of colourful biographies of each emperor, triumphantly evoking the luxury, licence, brutality and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith. But as well as vividly recreating the lives, loves and vices of this motley group of despots, psychopaths and perverts, he paints a portrait of an era of political and social revolution, of the bloody overthrow of a proud, 500-year-old political system and its replacement by a dictatorship which, against all the odds, succeeded more convincingly than oligarchic democracy in governing a vast international landmass.

Matthew Dennison is the author of two critically acclaimed previous biographies: the Hatchards number one besteller, The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter (2007), and Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia (2010). As a journalist, he has been published in every national weekday broadsheet and continues to contribute regularly to Country Life, The Times, Telegraph Magazine and the Daily Express. He read English Language & Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, as Douglas Jerrold Scholar, and afterwards the History of Decorative Arts at the University of Glasgow.

Unputdownable... These histories from 2,000 years ago are riveting in their insight, their black humour and their sheer readability, give or take a few highbrow verbal flourishes. Matthew Dennison fleshes out their gaudy history with boisterous scholarship. * Daily Mail * Dennison's series of impressionistic pen portraits are compelling and imaginative. * Sunday Times * Matthew Dennison is one of those rare marvels, a historical biographer whose work has reached the bestseller lists... Each story is told with humour and personal interpretations of the facts. Then there's the glory of the language: Dennison is in love with the English language, and it shows. * Independent * The author's prose style - epigrammatic, swift, and spiced with humour - is like Tacitus in translation. Which is meant as a compliment. His relish for his material shines infectiously through his sentences. -- Thomas Hodgkinson * Spectator * Dennison's approach combines thoughtful reflection and analysis with gossipy irreverence in a bewitching cocktail... hugely entertaining. * Daily Express * Unputdownable... These histories from 2,000 years ago are riveting in their insight, their black humour and their sheer readability, give or take a few highbrow verbal flourishes. Matthew Dennison fleshes out their gaudy history with boisterous scholarship. * Daily Mail * Gossipy and insightful, making for an enjoyable introduction to this power -hungry crowd * Financial Times *