What a magnificent and malevolent Jacobean tapestry! The royal court of the first Stuart, a teeming world of petty jealousies, venomous intrigues, back-stabbing courtiers and muderous intents. A beautiful novel centered around Francis Bacon's quest to survive the treacherous waters surrounding the throne of a moronic ruler, and his fiendish determination to destroy his enemies by grooming & preparing a young and innocent George Villiers to become the king all powerful new male lover. Elegantly written & blessed with a cast of very colorful and unforgettable characters, this delightful & often humorous historical romp is also a captivating and engrossing portrait of the English homosexual world and underworld at the beginning of the 17th century! A fabulous fictional journey that deserves to be enjoyed without moderation!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Random/Hutchinson for this marvellous ARC

I requested this b9ok purely based on the synopsis and I was expecting a fairly heavy b0ok - how wrong I was? This was one of my most surprising reads of the year and I loved every moment.

This book was a surprise for many reasons, the first is that i did not when the author said that it was base of real people, so imagine my surprise when I saw the title of Bacon's next book "New Atlantis" in that moment a lightbulb went on in my head.

I really liked the story, Bacon is a funny, intelligent, haricot character, but above all human.
Throughout the book we were able to see his way of acting and thinking, how he interacted with the other characters, somehow you become fond of him and at the end of the book you realize that he is more human than you thought and that each story has two sides ( or more)
The author has a way of writing that, at least for me, connects with the main character.
I loved the ending, I liked Villers and each character, especially the last chapter, was ... wow. I really liked it a lot.

Whether this has happened in this way, in another or everything is simply an invention, I think that in the end we know that indeed Fracis Bacon did change the world.

Thanks to Netgally for the copy!

In the English court of 1613, there are two paths to success: noble blood or a pretty face. Francis Bacon has neither, so he’s had to resort to bribing the King’s loathsome little favourite Robert Carr, in order to secure an appointment as Attorney General. This new job offers some protection from Bacon’s phalanx of noble enemies, who’d love nothing more than to see him fall from grace, but almost immediately he learns of a worrying development at court. Robert Carr is due to marry the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, one of Bacon’s nemeses, and Bacon knows perfectly well that his days are numbered unless he can come up with a way to break their stranglehold over the King. Ideally, he’d dislodge the brattish Carr by finding a beautiful, amusing and irresistible boy to offer up as a new potential favourite for the King. When Bacon’s path happens to cross that of the ravishing George Villiers, he seizes the opportunity, without stopping to think of the challenges that lie ahead: the task of playing Pygmalion and the difficulties that might arise when his creation gains power of his own. Giving centre stage to one of the period’s most fascinating characters, Neil Blackmore’s novel of sexual ambition in Jacobean England achieves the tricky feat of being both historically convincing and enormously fun.

Francis Bacon once thought that he’d make his name as a writer. His youthful works were hailed with rapture across Europe, but in recent years, rather like that poor old hack Shakespeare, he hasn’t managed to produce anything quite as good. He’s tinkering with a few things on the side, including a treatise in which he hopes to debunk the pernicious Aristotle and encourage a more empirical approach to scientific enquiry, but progress is slow. Besides, he’s been busy with life at court, a life which largely involves him battering against the impenetrable exterior of this ‘world of diamond-hard lineages‘, whose fortunate scions sit inside and sneer at him. Chief among them are the Howards, the vast kinship network dominated by Suffolk and allied with Bacon’s other devoted enemy, the Earl of Southampton. Bacon knows that he’s regarded as a jumped-up functionary, even though his own father was a valued servant to the old Queen Elizabeth, but he fears that it goes deeper than that. The court may rotate around a king who openly takes a young man to his bed but, crucially, James I’s relationship with Robert Carr (and any other favourites) is couched in familial terms. He is Carr’s ‘Daddy’; Carr is his beloved ‘son’. It offers a smokescreen of respectable affection that’s just thick enough for everyone to pretend complete ignorance of what’s actually happening or, if absolutely necessary, to acknowledge it as some kind of ideal Platonic partnering. But, crucially, it also allows the courtiers to maintain their loathing for anyone who shares James’s predilections but doesn’t have the power and status to brazen it out.

Here lies Bacon’s problem. Like James, he finds sexual comfort in the arms of other men, but he has no crown to protect him. Instead, indignant and lonely, he lives in constant fear of exposure, forced to slake his desires in the dark places of the night, where a willing partner can all too swiftly turn into a violent aggressor. Bacon often speaks with scorn of the ‘Normal Man’, the smug family man who has nothing but contempt for ‘sodomites’, and no compassion for another human being in pain. Love, for Bacon, would mean exposure, first to his house-servants and afterwards to the world at large: it would mean ridicule at best and, at worst, destruction and execution. What kind of choice is that? And so he has trained himself not to need or desire love – a training that’s put to the ultimate test when George Villiers explodes into his life like a comet. Bacon, it transpires, is ill-equipped to resist the very charms with which he hopes to dazzle the king. The scene is set for a complex dance of attraction, in which one misstep could lead to tragedy, and in which Bacon must judge what it is that he truly most desires: love? Or that thing which is rarer and more precious still – power? And the stakes grow ever higher for, as Villiers makes his triumphant entry into court life, Bacon hears a rumour that might bring down Carr completely: a rumour of betrayal, opportunism and murder.

Part love story, part political thriller, this is an engaging story which brings Bacon to centre-stage – a rare prominence, I think, at least in my experience of historical fiction. Despite his importance as a harbinger of modern scientific thought, Bacon doesn’t seem to make it to the first rank of characters: if he appears at all, he’s a secondary character, or a bit of a comic role, as seen in No Bed for Bacon (perhaps people like Helen, who’ve read a much wider range of fiction set in this period, will have encountered him more often). Blackmore is a dashing writer, combining period flavour with the odd modern turn of phrase, and the result is highly readable. His Bacon has a deliciously sarcastic narrative voice, convincingly that of a man far superior in intellect to the courtiers who look down on him. His shoulders are riddled with chips acquired while painstakingly clawing his way up the greasy pole, and the only time this Bacon ever seems truly comfortable is in the company of his best friend Ben Jonson – a wonderfully affectionate, appealing figure in Blackmore’s hands. This Bacon never quite scales the heights of another court functionary of the period – this isn’t quite Wolf Hall – but Blackmore conjures up all the avaricious jostle of the Jacobean court with aplomb.

Reading The Dangerous Kingdom of Love inevitably prompted flashbacks to other books: The King’s Assassin tells the same story from a non-fiction perspective, albeit with a less central role for Bacon. The prose style, with its mixture of wit and crudeness (not to mention its appreciation for pretty boys), reminded me a little of A Dead Man in Deptford, though I stress that Blackmore’s prose is much more approachable than Burgess’s; more, perhaps, along the line of To Be A King. I’m also looking forward to reading more about Robert and Frances Carr in The Poison Bed by Elizabeth Fremantle, which has been on my shelf for quite a while, and which promises to take a point of view that’s far more sympathetic to them. It’ll be very interesting to see how large a role Bacon plays there, and how he’s portrayed.

I should add that Blackmore has been extremely busy recently. The Dangerous Kingdom of Love is due to be released this coming July, but it’s only been a month since his last novel came out: The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle, which looks rather like a cross between The Talented Mr Ripley and The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. Intriguing…

(3.5 stars)

For the review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2021/05/26/the-dangerous-kingdom-of-love-2021-neil-blackmore/

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I was invited to read this but it wasn’t a fast paced, intrigue set in the court of King James I and featuring Francis Bacon. Embracing the scheming of Machiavelli, Bacon is feeling slighted and deposed in influence and sets up a nefarious scheme to claw back power. What follows is a House of Cards style narrative where Bacon occasionally mutters snarky asides to the reader who is fully in his confidence. This was scandalous, amusing, wickedly good fun and salaciously queer. I can see it won’t be for everyone but if you don’t mind what is now considered offensive language (but wasn’t especially in 16th C) you’ll enjoy this pre-enlightenment era romp.

This book was such a joy to read - I haven't been this hooked by a historical novel for so long. It was a lot more full on that I expected - the novel doesn't shy away from explicit language or scenes - but, in my opinion, they are entirely justified and actually add to the story. It is accurate, shocking, scandalous, witty, convincing... it's brilliant!

Holy moly! The first line and we’re off…

The Dangerous Kingdom of Love recounts the downfall of Francis Bacon, Robert Carr et al, which is fascinating in itself, but with Blackmore’s added, imaginings and behind closed doors frolics and filling in of blanks, this is superb.

It is narrated by Bacon in the first person and addressed to the reader, to whom he frequently speaks. There are wicked asides, confidences, stage whispers all for our ears (or is that eyes?) only, which create great intimacy and a feeling of being right at the centre of the machinations. Blackmore uses a mix of sixteenth century and contemporary language, which holds the flavour of the age but allows a modern flow; it also works extremely well for the asides.

A word of warning though…this is not for everyone; and I know some people will find the subject distasteful and the language unacceptable. There is much use of both the F and C words but remember, these were not considered offensive in the sixteenth century. There’s a fair amount of sex and sexual references, which whilst crude, are never graphic.

This book is shocking, scandalous, witty, sad, tender. The history is accurate, the portrayals convincing.

Neil Blackmore is a very skilled writer.

Neil Blackmore writes like Hilary Mantel on acid.


Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House/Cornerstone for the Advanced Reader Copy ofd the book which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Well, this is a bizarre book. I never thought the day would come when I'd stay awake late at night, fervently reading a novel about Francis Bacon, but there you go. Stranger things have happened.

I've been craving a novel about James I and his male favourites for years and years, and although this isn't quite the novel I would have expected, it's a bit of a riot, and I honestly have no idea where to start reviewing it. It really is the sort of book that begs for a full literary analysis. Blackmore's version of Francis Bacon is such a compelling yet unreliable narrator that the first half of the book really threw me off kilter in the best way; it's obvious that Bacon isn't who he says - or thinks - he is, and the journey of discovering that alongside him was sort of exhilarating, if frustrating because he's supposed to be so clever and yet sees so little of his own behaviour and character. He's a great narrative voice, deliberately anachronistic and sympathetic despite his very obvious flaws. The rest of the characters were all interesting and well-drawn, especially Mrs Turner, who, even through Bacon's very limited perspective, clearly has her own machinations and motives. Villiers, as he appears here, is a fascinating sort; I never knew what to make of him, even at the end. It's the sort of book that builds and builds up to a climax which I've really not stopped thinking about for days, and will probably ruminate over for months to come. Few books manage to linger in that way.

Really, the one thing that makes this a 4 star rather than a 5 star rating is just the fact that Blackmore has chosen a series of real historical events (i.e. the relationships of James I, Robert Carr and George Villiers) but completely changed absolutely everything about them, to the extent that I wonder if it needed to be based on those real events at all. I do fully understand that historical fiction is just that, fiction, and that it doesn't need to follow the events as they happened, but Blackmore's version of it all bears quite literally no resemblance to any of the sources (as an example, Bacon and Coke's rivalry, in historical terms, was very much centred around Coke marrying Bacon's own betrothed, whereas here there's no mention of Bacon ever being engaged or married, even though their rivalry is a huge plot point) and I do wonder if inventing a new set of characters would have been less jarring in some instances. There were times that the grotesque (and, honestly, slightly offensive to the Scots, I should imagine) caricature of King James was just a bit weird. Still, I do know that the use of real characters gives relevancy and context to the themes, as well as making it just a more interesting read in general, so this may entirely be personal taste.

As a novel, it has so much to say about the nature of love, and posterity, and power, and also saffron coloured ruffs, and although I'm still hoping that a more sympathetic novel about King James and Villiers might be written one day, I'm inordinately glad that this wasn't it.

This book was a joy to read. Based on a true situation in the court of James I, the book is written from the point of view of Francis Bacon, Attorney General, who jostles for power and influence with the rest of the court.

The book wears its history lightly as it unveils a story of love, desire and power, all three of which could get you hanged or worse in a Jacobean court built on the whims of an unsympathetically portrayed King and Queen.

The descriptions of the world and the characters are very real, the path we follow with Bacon is fraught with danger and disgrace, and it is a thrilling journey to take that feels very personal.

Although the book lacks the breathless giddiness of Blackmore's previous book about Mr Lavelle, it does create a raucous and believable account of events that may or may not have happened, and it has a steadiness and a sadness behind growing old and power waning that is very touching.