The Sun King

The Sun Kingis a dazzling double portrait of Louis XIV and Versailles, recreating the daily life of the King, his court, and his ministers during France's golden age. Nancy Mitford introduces us to the architects, artists, and gardeners tasked with transforming a modest hunting lodge into the most magnificent palace Europe had ever seen, delves into the complex and deadly court intrigues afoot in the new capital, and chronicles Louis's love affairs with a succession of mistresses including the brilliant feuding marquises of Montespan and Maintenon. Along the way we find Jean-Baptiste de Lully and his fiddlers, floating behind the King's gondola on summer nights in Versailles; Racine translating Latin aloud to his insomniac monarch; the Premier Médecin du Roi, Guy Crescent Fagon, bleeding one royal after another to death-and at the center of them all the demanding, mercurial, but remarkably resilient personality of France's sovereign for nearly three quarters of the Grand Siècle. Brimming with sumptuous detail and delicious bons mots, and written in a witty, conversational style The Sun Kingrestores a distant glittering century to vibrant life.

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) was born into the British aristocracy and, by her own account, brought up without an education, except in riding and French. She managed a London bookshop during the Second World War, then moved to Paris, where she began to write her celebrated and successful novels, among them The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, about the foibles of the English upper class. Nancy Mitford was also the author of four biographies: Madame de Pompadour (1954; available as an NYRB Classic), Voltaire in Love (1957), The Sun King (1966), and Frederick the Great (1970). In 1967 Mitford moved from Paris to Versailles, where she lived until her death from Hodgkin’s disease.

Philip Mansel is the author of six books dealing with French history, including a life of Louis XVIII (1981), The Court of France, 1789–1830 (1989) and Paris Between Empires (2001). He is currently at work on a life of Louis XIV.