'Tim Blanning's riotous biography... is impossible to read without thinking of picaresque
characters such as Fielding's Tom Jones and Thackeray's Barry Lyndon... [an] irresistible feast
of a biography of the now oft-forgotten Polish king... whom he gloriously brings to life' -
Simon Sebag-Montefiore The FT 'The wonderful story of one of the worst monarchs in European
history told with enormous wit and scholarship by a supremely talented historian. If you have
the slightest interest in Germans Poles porcelain jewels the Enlightenment military
disasters or the pleasures of fox-tossing then this is the book for you' - Dominic Sandbrook
From the acclaimed author of The Pursuit of Glory and Frederick the Great a riotous biography
of the charismatic ruler of 18th-century Poland and Saxony - and his catastrophic reign.
Augustus is one of the great what-ifs of the 18 th century. He could have turned the accident
of ruling two major realms into the basis for a powerful European state - a bulwark against the
Russians and a block on Prussian expansion. Alas there was no opportunity Augustus did not
waste and no decision he did not get wrong. By the time of his death Poland was fatally damaged
and would subsequently disappear as an independent state until the 20 th century. Tim
Blanning's wonderfully entertaining and original new book is a study in failed statecraft
showing how a ruler can shape history as much by incompetence as brilliance. Augustus's
posthumous sobriquet 'The Strong' referred not to any political accomplishment but to his
legendary physical strength and sexual athleticism. Yet he was also one of the great creative
artists of the age combining driving energy exquisite taste and apparently boundless
resources to master-mind the creation of peerless Dresden the baroque jewel of jewels.
Augustus the Strong brilliantly evokes this time of opulence and excess decadence and folly.
