Melvyn Bragg's highly acclaimed, bestselling historical novel, the story behind one of the 19th century's greatest scandals.

'This is the story of an impostor and bigamist, a self-styled Colonel Hope, who travels to the North, where eventually he marries "The Maid of Buttermere", a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of various early nineteenth-century writers . . . It is a fine story . . . This is historical fiction with a human face'
Peter Ackroyd, The Times

'A skilled, ornate and convincing examination of a nineteenth-century scandal in Bragg's own Cumbria'
Thomas Keneally

'A triumph . . . I am overwhelmingly impressed'
Beryl Bainbridge

'Bragg achieves the most difficult of feats, the telling of the changing perceptions and ideals of a radical age . . . He is also as powerful as ever in his description of nature'
Sunday Times