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'Enthralling'
The Daily Mail
'Sparkling'
The Independent 'Magnificent' The Times
‘Fresh and exhilarating’ The Guardian
'Delectable biography' New Statesman
‘Casanova dazzles once again, and so, too, does his biographer’
***** The Mail on Sunday.
'In author Ian Kelly, after two hundred years, Casanova has at last
found his Boswell' The Telegraph
‘Enthralling...Casanova is
stripped bare...a wonderful read...pulsing with testosterone,
energy and a determination to strip Casanova’s story of historical
and cultural assumptions and return, via archival research all over
Europe, to the man himself.’ The Mail on Sunday
'The two most interesting things in the world are sex and the 18th
century..as Ian Kelly's delectable biography makes clear...[it]
makes you proud to be human.' The New Statesman
‘Captivating... in Kelly’s hands the story makes for a thrilling
read’ The Sunday Times
'Meticulously researched' The Independent on Sunday
'Casanova would have been proud... Kelly does a marvellous and
brilliantly unobtrusive job... like his previous Beau Brummell,
Casanova is a treasure-trove of life...the effect is as though we
had gone around the back after show. Here is Casanova himself,
without the makeup and the trick lighting, talking through Kelly's
subtle reticent voice (he commands instant respect as a stylist of
some wit)..emerging, scaling the leads, opening the bedroom window,
moving closer, smiling. It is Casanova. He's alive. He is alive.'
The New Statesman
'It is difficult to imagine a juicier or more engaging guide to life
and love in the 18th century.' The Daily Mail
‘He explores how Casanova revolutionised the way people view
themselves as sexual and social creatures, and argues that he
created ‘a modern sensibility of what it is to be a fully rounded
man, alive to failures, fears and foibles, and very much attuned to
a sexual motive force.’ Mail on Sunday
'enjoyable, illuminating, Kelly has written an adult book, or I
should say one for grown-ups.' The Spectator
‘An unexpected pleasure is the book's focus on food.’
The
Telegraph
'The great strength of Ian Kelly's new biography is that Kelly,
himself an actor, is so attuned to the 18th century habit of mind
which cast the world as a stage...and sets Casanova's wanderlust at
the heart of the story, following his trail around Europe's archives
to fill in the details, corroborate or correct Casanova's must
mistrusted memoirs; it is impressive work.' The Spectator
'Kelly has a fine way with libertines and dandies...he approaches
his subject with a healthy appetite for food and sex and provides a
fresh angle on Casanova as a gastronome.' The Independent
‘Lots of sex then, but lots of everything else, too... crowded with
incident. Rather than the shallow seducer of popular imagining,
Casanova’s appeal is as a man – flawed, humorous, engagingly
self-deprecating – whose vast appetite for life still acts as a
tonic on those who come to know him. Kelly conveys all this
admirably, and his book makes an excellent introduction to a complex
and surprisingly modern life.’ The Financial Times
‘Kelly brilliantly communicates Venice’s cultural importance and
fashionability during Casanova’s time.’ The Mail on Sunday
‘Kelly halts the action and talks directly to the audience about
Casanova and travel, sex and, most interestingly, food and it is
entirely to Kelly's credit - specifically, his ability to re-imagine
life on the hoof in 18th-century Europe as a series of exhilarating
mini-dramas - that he has managed to make this story feel so fresh
again.’ The Guardian
'Incredibly impressive in every way – and endlessly entertaining'
Clive Anderson Loose Ends, BBC Radio 4
‘Like Casanova, Mr. Kelly is
something of a polymath, and his professional activities make him an
apt guide to his subject. He is an actor...and the author
convincingly represents Casanova's comic audacity, charm and brazen
trickery as a commedia dell'arte played out on the stage of
18th-century Europe...in this eloquent biography’
Wall Street Journal
‘The great thing about a cultural icon is that he can be forever
rediscovered, reinvented, and recast in the drama of his life.
Casanova, by Ian Kelly does all these things for his hero – priest,
lover, actor, writer, philosopher, spy, gourmet and gourmand, rich
man, poor man, jailbird and genius – with a brio and confidence that
would do credit to the great charlatan himself’
Iain Finlayson, Best Biographies and memoirs of 2008, The Times |
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