Portrait of a Cavalier

William Cavendish, first Duke of Newcastle was a man with human appeal and versatility.

Prominent though he was in the Civil War, his military reputation has been buried under Clarendon’s oft-quoted, dismissive judgement blindly accepted by subsequent historians.

But those northern campaigns, ending so tragically on Marston Moor, are only part of a colourful life-story running from Elizabethan days to beyond the Restoration.

Grandson of the legendary Bess of Hardwick, Newcastle expressed his own passion for building at Welbeck, Bolsover and Nottingham, while his other enthusiasms included music, literature, art, science, horses and, it is now evident, women.

A courtier under James I, he earned the friendship of Charles I and his queen, who entrusted him with the future Charles II’s education.

He was intimate with the philosophers Hobbes and Descartes, painters such as Van Dyck, and numerous writers from Jonson to Dryden.

Poet and playwright himself, man of action, reputedly the foremost horseman in Europe and author of a major book on the subject, he presents a character of fascinating diversity.

In building up this absorbing and outstandingly readable portrait, Geoffrey Trease has investigated a mass of little-known material, some of which, letters and poems from the family papers, is published here for the first time.

Portrait of a Cavalier is an enlightening biography that helps create an in-depth and very real impression of a man often overlooked.