The Half-Mad Lord: Thomas Pitt 2Nd Baron Camelford (1775-1804)
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Behind every age of empire lurks a figure too wild, too reckless, and too combustible to be contained by its conventions — and Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, was precisely such a man. The Half-Mad Lord chronicles the turbulent life of one of Regency Britain's most notorious aristocrats, a man of extraordinary privilege and volcanic temperament whose brief 29 years were packed with naval insubordination, street brawls, political scandal, and a fatal duel that shocked even a society well-accustomed to violent excess. Nikolai Tolstoy reconstructs Camelford's world with forensic precision, drawing on historical records to present a portrait of a brilliant but dangerously unhinged nobleman navigating the rigid hierarchies of late 18th-century Britain. Tolstoy's biographical approach is both rigorous and compulsively readable, situating Camelford's erratic behaviour within the broader social and political tensions of a nation at war with Napoleonic France. The biography raises searching questions about the nature of madness, class, and the cult of masculine honour that defined the Georgian era. As much a social history as a personal portrait, this work illustrates how institutions — the Royal Navy, Parliament, and the aristocracy itself — both shaped and were threatened by men who refused to conform. Readers left wondering whether Camelford was a tragic visionary or simply a catastrophe in a titled coat will find no easy answers here.
Author: Nikolai Tolstoy
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Behind every age of empire lurks a figure too wild, too reckless, and too combustible to be contained by its conventions — and Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, was precisely such a man. The Half-Mad Lord chronicles the turbulent life of one of Regency Britain's most notorious aristocrats, a man of extraordinary privilege and volcanic temperament whose brief 29 years were packed with naval insubordination, street brawls, political scandal, and a fatal duel that shocked even a society well-accustomed to violent excess. Nikolai Tolstoy reconstructs Camelford's world with forensic precision, drawing on historical records to present a portrait of a brilliant but dangerously unhinged nobleman navigating the rigid hierarchies of late 18th-century Britain. Tolstoy's biographical approach is both rigorous and compulsively readable, situating Camelford's erratic behaviour within the broader social and political tensions of a nation at war with Napoleonic France. The biography raises searching questions about the nature of madness, class, and the cult of masculine honour that defined the Georgian era. As much a social history as a personal portrait, this work illustrates how institutions — the Royal Navy, Parliament, and the aristocracy itself — both shaped and were threatened by men who refused to conform. Readers left wondering whether Camelford was a tragic visionary or simply a catastrophe in a titled coat will find no easy answers here.