I was conscious that writing The Romantic in the third person meant that things had to keep happening, even at the end of Cashel’s life. This was the joke in Woody Allen’s Zelig; is it okay to cite a joke from a Woody Allen movie these days? It's a life of highs and lows and great adventure and loss but Cashel always manages to pick himself up and keep going. Boyd makes a vignette of this otherwise uneventful expedition, giving us its exact date and location in the Pisan countryside, but surprisingly omits to mention the complicated affray, in which Shelley himself was also wounded. He now divides his time between the south-west of France and Chelsea, where he lives a stone’s throw from James Bond’s London address.

Whatever you perceive it to be there is no doubting The Romantic is an extraordinary adventure and the one question that runs through the story is “What do we leave behind us when we die? This is a key theme that becomes a focus of his thoughts and actions as he reaches an age where he increasingly starts to reflect on his life. It’s a life story, from Cashel’s complicated childhood, through his exploits at Waterloo, and in the Indian Army, as a best selling novelist and a Brewer of beer in the New World and an African explorer to name but a few of his exploits, Cashel had an extraordinary eventful life. It bears no doubt the stamp of the author’s heart and fancy; but unfortunately not half so visibly as that of his peculiar system. Two strong women become central to the story; Contessa Raphaella Rezzo; and widow Mrs Frances (Frannie) Broome.Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council. One of the many pleasures of Boyd’s fiction is that history doesn’t just happen around his characters – it happens to them. Over his long and illustrious career, William Boyd has made a name for himself as a peerless storyteller, whose themes have stretched from the comic to crime to spy thrillers.

Writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1814, Francis Jeffrey began his review of Wordsworth’s The Excursion with a provocative denunciation of romanticism: “This will never do,” he complained.

Her desire for experience will lead Amory to further wars, to lovers, husbands and children as she continues to pursue her dreams and battle her demons. Maybe it’s my upbringing: I’m a Scot, but I was born in Africa, so I felt more at home in west Africa than in Edinburgh. Log in Keep reading with a freetrial Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free.

It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, and, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future. He is an atheist and a non-racist: he risks court-martial at one point by trying to stop his commanding officer from murdering innocent villagers in Ceylon (oh yes, he spends some time in the East India Company Army too).As the title suggests, he’s hopelessly romantic; as a young man, his own proud and impulsive nature ruins his chance of happiness with the woman he loves and this sets the tone for the rest of the novel and the rest of his life, as he continually moves from country to country, continent to continent, unable to put this missed opportunity behind him and settle down.