Romantic

Soldier. Farmer. Felon. Writer. Father. Lover.One man, many lives.Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss. Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is. This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.From one of Britain's best-loved and bestselling writers comes an intimate yet panoramic novel set across the nineteenth century.'Picaresque, big-hearted and moving, this is Boyd at the top of his game' Guardian'There are few reading pleasures as great as giving in to a William Boyd novel' Sunday Times'One of our best contemporary storytellers' Spectator'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Sebastian Faulks

The Romantic by William Boyd was the novel I enjoyed most this year. It's incredibly ambitious, its hero moving from Co Cork to London, then from Waterloo to Zanzibar, and at one point even joining the East Indian Army, but it was such an easy, indulgent read, [One of the] most enjoyable new novels I read this year . . . [it] offers deep pleasure to those who love novels, instruction to anyone setting out to write one, Boyd is as magically readable as ever, and, as always with his whole life novels, there is an invigorating air of spontaneity, William Boyd's The Romantic is disguised a an historical biography - The Real Life of Cashel Greville Ross - but is actually an utterly engrossing adventure story . . . Cashel, we understand, is searching for himself, but in the process he provides romance, entertainment and enlightenment for his readers. How better to spend the relaxed days around Xmas than following his footsteps, Storytelling is what floats my boat and William Boyd's The Romantic, a return to his "whole-life" novels, has it in spades. Following our hero Cashel Greville Ross (Boyd is big on names) from Ireland to the Battle of Waterloo, then India, Italy, New England, Africa and beyond, it has enough engrossing variety to fill several books, not just the one

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. He is married and divides his time between London and south-west France. His most recent novel, Trio, was a Sunday Times bestseller.