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.
Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2025 Shortlisted for the 2025
Apollo Book of the Year Award 'It's been a superb year for history but Augustus the Strong
ranks up there with the very very best! I cant recommend it strongly enough' - Simon
Sebag-Montefiore '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 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.
