Showing Frederick the Great: A Life in Deed and Letters by Giles MacDonogh

The 18th-century Prussian monarch Frederick the Great continues to divide opinion. For some he remains a model king, politically talented and culturally engaged, "a man", his friend Voltaire said, "who gives battle as readily as he writes an opera ... who has written more books than any of his contemporary princes has sired bastards." For others, though, he was a militaristic absolute monarch, the first example of what we could later come to think of as a distinctively German phenomenon, the fascist "führer". Giles MacDonogh's superb biography manages to steer a line between these extremes, and to explore a complex and fascinating figure. Around such a character myriad legends accrue, and MacDonogh examines them all dispassionately and penetratingly, from Frederick's philosophical ideas and military prowess down to his "maniacal coffee drinking" (he was eventually able to reduce his intake to "six or seven cups in the morning"). We are also treated to balanced examination of his sexuality--his mistresses, his alleged homosexuality, and even the intriguing charge that he was "physically underdeveloped in the sexual organs". Through all this, Frederick emerges as a curiously appealing character, bitchy and paranoid but nonetheless a human being rather than a stuffed historical waxwork. MacDonogh writes beautifully, and balances exquisitely between scholarly rigour and absorbing narrative. --Adam Roberts