Johan David Åkerblad (1763–1819) contributed to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic and is known as a predecessor of Jean-François Champollion. This intellectual biography offers a new and less heroic interpretation of the first reading of the Egyptian scripts. Åkerblad, an exceptional linguist, was a diplomat and orientalist who spent several decades living in the Ottoman Empire, France and Italy. Of humble birth, he was a supporter of the French Revolution – something that stymied his career. His life cannot be understood in a purely Swedish national framework, and this study firmly situates him as an international scholar. The book discusses European expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean during the tumultuous decades around the year 1800, and traces Åkerblad’s momentous life in relation to the debates on ‘orientalism,’ the tradition of classical studies and the history of science.

The story of Bonnie Prince Charlie is a romantic episode in British history and has been the subject of innumerable accounts. Less familiar, but equally fascinating, are the Prince's later, melancholy years of exile in Rome, in which the handsome, spirited hero of popular myth degenerated into a portly drunkard, impotently presiding over his miniature court, alienating those who had remained true to the Good Old Cause, and finally being cared for by his illegitimate daughter. They form a central part of this elegant, entertaining account of the Stuarts in exile, which takes the story from the flight of James II in 1688 through to the early years of the nineteenth century. The lugubrious Old Pretender; the bewildered Cardinal Duke of York; the unconventional bluestocking Countess of Albany and her fiery lover, the poet Alfieri--however squalid, intrigue-ridden or bizarre their lives in the political hothouse of eighteenth-century Italy, James Lees-Milne tells their stories with his customary wit and learning.--From publisher description.