Discover this bestselling classic from the author of The Gustav Sonata, charting Robert Merivel’s rise and fall through glittering seventeenth-century society. When a twist of fate delivers an ambitious young medical student to the court of King Charles II, he is suddenly thrust into a vibrant world of luxury and opulence. Blessed with a quick wit and sparkling charm, Robert Merivel rises quickly, soon finding favour with the King, and privileged with a position as ‘paper groom’ to the youngest of the King’s mistresses.But by falling in love with her, Merivel transgresses the one rule that will cast him out from his new-found paradise…‘A most beautiful and original novel’ Independent‘Triumphant’ Sunday Telegraph‘Dazzling’ New York Review of Books *Rose Tremain has sold over ONE MILLION books. Enter her vivid historical world*