The Memoirs of Count Grammont — Volume 03

A French nobleman arrives at the English court in 1662, fresh from the Continent and hungry for adventure. What follows is the most deliciously irreverent portrait of Restoration England ever written by an outsider. Count Anthony Hamilton chronicles his brother-in-law the Chevalier de Grammont's exploits among the court of Charles II with a combination of gossipy detail and barbed wit that makes the reader feel they've been smuggled into Whitehall itself. The court has barely recovered from Cromwell's puritan gloom when Grammont descends, armed with charm, memory, and an excellent recollection of every slight. He finds a world of reinstated monarchy, political machinations, and romantic conquests, all rendered with a Frenchman's detached amusement at English customs. Hamilton's memoir is less a chronicle of events than a portrait gallery: the King himself, the Duke of York, the beauties and the rogues, all captured in profiles of varying tenderness. The book endures because it captures something true about courts, that they are theaters where everyone performs and everyone watches, and that the most entertaining spectacles occur in the spaces between politics and passion. For readers who love Restoration drama, scandalous history, or simply superb prose that manages to be both elegant and wicked.