Joanna Richardson portrays one of the greatest of nineteenth-century pictorial journalists, Constantin Guys; a remarkably perceptive artist, to whom Charles Baudelaire consecrated his most famous work in prose.
‘A sort of giant’, with immensely long arms and legs and a mop of bristling red hair, Felix Nadar employed his creative gifts in several different arts and sciences.
‘The poor King was thoroughly French in character, possessing all the liveliness and talkativeness of that people.’ So wrote Queen Victoria about the King of the French. Joanna Richardson offers her portrait of the man at the head of the July Monarchy, whose reign lasted from 1830 until 1848.
Joanna Richardson describes the life and work of the French father of science fiction.
Though he exercised little political influence, Victor Hugo’s genius and his ardent championship of liberty had made him a legendary figure long before his death.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter's romantic representations of royal and noble personages, writes Joanna Richardson, have an unquestionable charm for those who live in a more pedestrian age.
Joanna Richardson describes how Queen Victoria wrote as she certainly must have talked - with common sense, some simplicity, much shrewdness, and occasional indiscretions.
Cross-Channel relations were cordial during the reign of the Emperor Napoleon III, writes Joanna Richardson.
In 1680, writes Joanna Richardson, the mistress of Louis XIV was concerned in a scandal that involved both poisoning and black magic.
Joanna Richardson describes how the gifted cousin of the Emperor Napoleon III acted as an all-powerful intermediary between the studio and the palace.
