Dutch Light
03 September 2020Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
'Enchanting to the point of escapism.' – Simon Ings, Spectator
'Hugh Aldersey-Williams rescues his subject from Newton's shadow, where he was been unjustly confined for over three hundred years.' – Literary Review
Filled with incident, discovery, and revelation, Dutch Light is a vivid account of Christiaan Huygens’s remarkable life and career, but it is also nothing less than the story of the...
Details
03 September 2020384 pages
9781509893324Imprint: Picador
Reviews
This book, soaked like the Dutch Republic itself 'in ink and paint', is enchanting to the point of escapism . . . One of the best things about this absorbing book (and how many 500-page biographies feel too short when you finish them?) is the interest it shows in everyone else.Simon Ings, Spectator
Here’s early modern Europe by way of one of its most energetic minds.
Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
Hugh Aldersey-Williams rescues his subject from Newton's shadow, where he was been unjustly confined for other three hundred years . . . a fresh and absorbing vision of 17th-century experimentation that sheds welcome light on wider European culture.Literary Review
A clever and comprehensive portrait of a unique mind prospering on the border between Renaissance humanism and Enlightenment empiricism.Chris Allnutt, Financial Times
