And here, rising out of the criminal world of Paris, a miasma of fear and suspicion, is the gradual revelation of occult crimes – covens of witches and warlocks practicing “the old religion,” conducting black masses, arranging murders and abortions, concocting magic potions, aphrodisiacs, and poisons for their masked noble clients – as a poison psychosis strikes Versailles, ultimately threatening the very person of Louis himself.Most dramatic of all, the role of Montespan: the King’s Favorite, mother of his five “legitimized” children, an arrogant, highborn, voluptuous beauty, who dazzled Saint-Simon with the wit and brilliance of her conversation; whose intellect made her an arbiter of taste in a court embellished by a Molière (her protégé) and a Lully; whose pearls outshone the Queen’s; whose train was borne by a duchess; who by her strength and charm held the restless Louis bound to her for a decade.In the massive Poisons Affair inquiry that brought the most ancient names of France to trial, the name of Montespan was by royal edict forbidden to be mentioned, and evidence was destroyed. But the day-to-day private journals kept secretly in shorthand by the able and meticulous chief of the Paris police, Nicholas de Lay Reynie, escaped destruction – and they raise the question: To what extent was Montespan, the uncrowned Queen of France, implicated in these grave crimes?Using – brilliantly – the technique that distinguishes her earlier works, presenting her story through the diaries and letters of the principal actors and their contemporaries, Frances Mossiker illuminates this mystery and brings richly to life the antithetical worlds – the royal heights and the grotesquely sinister depths of seventeenth-century society – that came violently together in one of the greatest dramas of French history. [From the book jacket.]

    From the beginning he showed a useful knack for cultivating influential literary friends and for giving audiences what they were sure to like. Early in 1693, his first comedy, The Old Batchelour, pleased the public at Drury Lane, and critics hailed the appearance of a new talent in the theatre who gave a shark edge to the theatrical conventions at the time. Much was expected of Congreve's second offering, The Double Dealer, mounted later the same year. Its surprisingly bitter tone disconcerted many listeners, however, and the play drew only moderate praise. But this setback proved temporary, and Congreve found his reputation regained with Love for Love, and in 1700 his finest comedy of manners The Way of the World. After this he wrote no more comedies. Aware of changing tastes in his audience, and annoyed by critical squabbles over the question of morality in his plays, he retired at the age of thirty to the life of a gentleman of leisure.

    Questions of style, technology, and the social framework of architecture are resolved as separable but always essential components of the building world. Men of genius and buildings of fame emerge: Inigo Jones, Wren, Vanbrugh, Adam, Soane; Hampton Court, St Paul's Cathedral, London squares and the terraces and crescents of Bath. Appendices deal with Scottish architecture before the union and buildings in the thirteen colonies of America. The book is a companion to Ellis Waterhouse's Painting in Britain, 1530-1830 and Margaret Whinney's Sculpture in Britain, 1530-1830; colour plates have been added to this new edition.