Izabela the Valiant

Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man’s world.

Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR IZABELA THE VALIANT:
'Reading Adam Zamoyski’s authoritative and scintillating life of his great-great-great-great-grandmother, you enter the richly colourful…world of Poland in the 18th and 19th centuries… Zamoyski tells the story of a zestful, visionary, patriotic wife and mother whose chief mission was to supervise the enlightened, liberal education of her children and, by setting that example, show Polish society how to regenerate the nation…[a] highly evocative and warm-hearted portrait'
The Times
'A brilliant portrait of an extraordinary woman and a history of a wider Europe from Russia and Poland to France and Britain, gripping and fun, a delight from the very first page, filled with enlightened culture, eccentric idiosyncratic characters, wild love-affairs, imperial politics and the charm of 18thC Europe, written beautifully and laced with delicious details of art, sex, power, debauchery and luxury. Izabela Czartoryska was one of the great women of 18th century, magnate, collector, mother, lover and European potentate and luminary. Highly recommended!'
Simon Sebag-Montefiore
'A fascinating, often moving, family history, which also illuminates the culture, tragedy and heroism of 19th-century Poland'
David Reynolds, author of Mirrors of Greatness