Gascoigne: The Life of a Tudor Poet

George Gascoigne was one of the leading writers of Tudor England - an accomplished poet, a dramatist and novelist. But he was also accused of being a ruffian, a killer, a spy and a “godless person”. This major new biography, the first in almost a century, traces Gascoigne’s journey from rural Bedfordshire to the Court of Elizabeth I, via Cambridge and the Inns of Court. It follows his career as a soldier in the Low Countries, as an entertainer at Kenilworth Castle during the legendary royal visit of 1575, and as a state intelligence agent. It also examines in detail Gascoigne’s premature and mysterious death in Stamford. Apart from his swashbuckling life and his clashes with censorship, Gascoigne had a very modern concept of himself as a writer, viewing the book as simultaneously a cultural and commercial product. Over two centuries before the great romantic poets, he had a towering sense of self. His life and personality was something to be written about and marketed as a thing interesting and important in its own right. This was much more than being simply proud of his ancestry. To be a Gascoigne gave him pride and confidence. But Gascoigne was not interested in promoting himself as the latest bearer of the family coat of arms. He was not a Gascoigne but the Gascoigne: a Gascoigne for all time.