Promo: A Most Unsettled Man by Lily Style
Today, I'm delighted to welcome author Lily Style to Ruins & Reading. We're sharing an excerpt from her fascinating biography of George Matcham – A Most Unsettled Man. Read on!
A Most Unsettled Man is currently on blog tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club. Find other enticing extracts HERE!
In Bath, balls were big business. Laying on the type of fancy fare the attendees were accustomed to would have decimated profits. Alcohol wasn't served, but cheap refreshments, comprising day old “thinly sliced stale bread, dry cakes, lemonade, coffee, and tea”, could be purchased at about ten in the evening, for approximately sixpence, from a side room with no tables and only a few chairs.
This chaotic bustle seems to have been more similar to modern-day club parties in Ibiza than the stately ensembles reenacted in costume dramas, and very different from George’s regimented upbringing in Puritanical Bombay.
It was here, amidst a sensory riot of high fashion, pressing bodies, perfume, stink, violins, haphazard dancers, and poor food, that his eyes passed over the eligible Dorothea Scrivener and were, instead, hooked by her cousin, Kitty Nelson.
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Blurb:
George Matcham, dubbed the most unsettled man alive, was born in East India Company controlled Bombay and undertook three epic overland treks between Asia and England before marrying the favourite sister of the not yet famous Horatio Nelson. Intimate details about George's life have been preserved because of his close relationship with Nelson and his famous paramour Emma Hamilton, whose rises and falls he observed first-hand.
Packed with period press clippings and eyewitness accounts, A Most Unsettled Man provides an unprecedented glimpse into the private life of a modest 18th century English gentleman, as well retelling the enduring love story of Nelson and Emma from an entirely new perspective.
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