www.opheliafield.com
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From the reviews of The Kit-Cat Club:
‘[Field] has a native gift for historical retrieval so that we see the past in close-up, as it were, as well as in wide view’
The Times
‘It is a testament to Field's skill that the members of the Club come to life in such vivid and dynamic ways. There is a great deal of panache and pungency alongside the unfussy explication of the finer points of Georgian political intrigue’
Scotland on Sunday
‘A fascinating and elegant book…giving a full and brilliant picture of one of the most interesting periods in English history’
Scotsman
‘Magnificent…After reading this stimulating book, it is shocking to realise that the Kit-Cat Club has had to wait so long for its influence to be recognised. Field offers rich compensation, in a book that is both instructive and engrossingly readable’
Guardian (Book of the Week)
‘Highly intelligent…Field argues persuasively that the club transformed both politics and English cultural identity’
Observer
‘A hugely enjoyable study of male friendship’
Independent on Sunday
‘Field's clear and scholarly account of both the politics and the personalities shows how one man's idea that began in a pie shop became “the cultural institution, literary clique and political think-tank” that helped shape a nation’
Independent
‘This enterprising club required an enterprising commentator, and in Ophelia Field it has found one’
Irish Times
‘This is a wonderful book, which puts most popular history to shame by its intelligence, clarity and powerful story-telling…a brilliant portrait of England at the beginning of the modern age’
Mail on Sunday
‘What particularly distinguishes this book is the humane perspective in which the writer places her protagonists…As an essay in group biography her book presents an authoritative portrait of a genuinely revolutionary era’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Elegantly written and deeply researched…A fitting memorial to a remarkable body of men who contributed so much to British politics and culture’
Sunday Times
‘No record of what was said at the Kit-Cat Club meetings survives. The author turns this to her advantage, allowing the book to meander eruditely, rather like an 18th-century conversation’
Economist
‘What a wonderful subject Ophelia Field has found, and how adroitly she has handled it’
Spectator
‘This tale of the bawdy and bustling world of literary gossip and infighting, Tatler, politics, booze and Fleet Street in the 1690s is a must-read’
City A.M.
‘Vivid and massively detailed’
Time Out
‘[A] bold and hugely entertaining book’
Standpoint
‘The sort of brainy, literate history that most publishers have forsworn. It reminds you of an England where values were not determined by retailers…The Kit-Cat Club is a wonderful subject for a book and Field has handled it beautifully’
New Statesman
By the Same Author
The Favourite: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough
Copyright
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Visit our authors' blog at www.fifthestate.co.uk
This Harper Perennial edition published 2009
1
First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2008
Copyright © Ophelia Field 2009
Ophelia Field asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007287307
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