The Romantic

LoveReading Says

Spanning the tumultuous nineteenth century, and based on the personal papers of Cashel Greville Ross, William Boyd’s The Romantic weaves historic actualities and ambience into Ross’ extraordinary personal adventures. This is a sweeping saga of the highest order, an intoxicating tale of individual fortune and misfortune played out against a vivid backdrop that spans the globe.

An Irishman born in Scotland on the day George Washington died, Cashel is a man who plays many roles through his long, enigmatic life. Raised in Cork, he and his unusual family move to Oxford, where Cashel is schooled, already filled with a sense that “life was so strange”. 

Reeling from a family revelation, Cashel joins the army and fights in the Battle of Waterloo. Deemed unfit for future service, he then joins the East India Company Army and is court marshalled for refusing an order in Sri Lanka. In Italy, further transformative twists await our curiously endearing hero - here he enters the company of Romantic poets Byron and Shelley and is entranced by a woman who remains in his soul for the rest of his days. 

Cashel writes about his travels, works as a farmer in Massachusetts, enjoys love affairs, and hatches a plan to get rich that takes him to Zanzibar, all the while wondering how life might have turned out if he hadn’t messed things up with his Italian love. In East Africa, Cashel also discerns a pattern to his life - “always moving on, leaving people he loved behind”, though he tells himself that “courses of action were forced upon him. There was nothing heedless or selfish in his nature.”

A drifter and romantic to the end, reading Boyd’s story of Cashel’s life is an enthralling, immersive pleasure.

Joanne Owen

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