Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen

(Paperback)

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A compelling story of heroism told through eight famous lives -- from Achilles to Sir Francis Drake -- which demonstrates the continuing importnace of the need for heroes in the modern age. On 12 September 2001, a group of people were photographed near the ruins of the World Trade Centre holding up a banner that read WE NEED HEROES NOW. In Lucy Hughes-Hallett's brilliant new book she explores that need through the careers of eight heroes. Her subjects -- Achilles, Odysseus, Alcibiades, Cato, El Cid, Francis Drake, Wallenstein, Garibaldi -- were not necessarily good (quite the reverse in some cases), but they were all great, charismatic enough to persuade those around them that they were capable of doing what no one else alive could do. Beginning beneath the walls of Troy and ending in 1930s Europe when the cult of the hero was turning politically lethal, this is a book about mortality and dictatorship, about money and sorcery, about seduction (sexual and political) and mass-hysteria. Above all, it is a sequence of extraordinary stories, each of them shedding a different and startling light on the all-but-universal craving for an invincible champion, an all-powerful redeemer, a superman, and each of them featuring a character so glamorous or intimidating that his contemporaries considered him either a devil or a god.

Reviews

'A magnificent, cleverly argued book.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph 'Vivid and highly readable, here are biographies that thrill, enthral and dazzle.' Observer 'A bold, witty and thought-provoking book.' Daily Telegraph 'Both rich in material and riveting to read.' Antonia Fraser, Sunday Times 'A compendious and stupendous book' Independent on Sunday '[Heroes] bring(s) history to life. It offers the guilty pleasure of wondering at the undemocratic wildness of eight great men.'Guardian Praise for Lucy Hughes-Hallett's first book, Cleopatra: 'Brilliant and discursive.' Antonia Fraser, The Sunday Times 'Fascinating, wide-ranging, highly-coloured, hugely energetic.' Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph 'Lucy Hughes-Hallett writes very well, with a sometimes epigrammatic edge! Quite brilliantly she elicits from the publicised extravagance of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's real-life, jet-set reprise of Antony and Cleopatra, an essay on the spiritual worth of prodigality, seen as a Rabelaisian, Dionysian "holy foolishness" John Updike, New York Times 'A delightful book, written with grace and intelligence and brimming with entertaining illustrations and bizarre information' Christopher Hudson, Evening Standard

Author Bio

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions which was published in 1990 to wide acclaim. Cleopatra won the Fawcett Prize and the Emily Toth Award. Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews for the Sunday Times. This is her second book.