Talleyrand (Phoenix Giants S.) - Softcover

Unique in his own age and a phenomenon in any, Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand was a statesman of outstanding ability and extraordinary contradictions. Bishop and libertine, iconoclast and institututio, he was a turncoat who could hold high office in five successive regimes, yet maintain oneconstant policy for half a century. Duff Cooper's classic biography charts his fascinatingly chequered career with all the vigour, elegance and interlect of its remarkable subject.

Politician, diplomat, scholar and bon viveur, Duff Cooper won the DSO in the Great War and married society beauty Lady Diana Manners. He had an important ministerial career in the 1920s and '30s which ended with his resignation from the Cabinet over the Munich Agreement. Called back to office by Churchill, his chequered wartime career culminated in a spell as Ambassador to France. After his retirement he returned to his first love, literature; his writing ranges across biography, poetry and fiction.