‘The Scapegoat’ by Lucy Hughes-Hallett review

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake.

I n spring 1622 King James VI & I’s favourite, George Villiers, then marquess of Buckingham, toured Fontainebleau Palace with the Flemish artist and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens. Admiring Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, the Englishman ‘asked if he might have it’ but was firmly rebuffed. ‘Unaccustomed to having his requests denied, Buckingham was put out, but the day was otherwise pleasant.’ Evincing Buckingham’s audacity as well as his connoisseurship, this instance is one of numerous scenes vividly recreated in Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s The Scapegoat. More a cluster of evocative vignettes than a conventional biography, her life of Buckingham is presented in more than 100 chapters, with some – such as ‘More Advice on Bargaining’ – extending to barely 100 words, while others – such as ‘Houses’ – supplying a chronological list of property acquisitions. As Hughes-Hallett indicates at the outset: ‘This book is about big things – peace and war, Parliament and despotism. It is also about small things – babies, jewels, anemones … aiming to make a collage that conjures up a life in all its complexity.’

Reading The Scapegoat sometimes feels like reviewing the author’s informal working notes. Hughes-Hallett’s prose style shifts from narrative description to imaginative speculation; when discussing how Buckingham and Prince Charles sought to extricate themselves from Philip IV’s court in Madrid in July 1623, she presents ‘two possible guessed-at versions of their all-night conversations’.

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