Masterpiece

Masterpiece is Hannah Rothschild’s best novel by far. Brilliantly researched, it is a multi-period story which is both moving and convincing * Antony Beevor *
Powerful and passionate, Masterpiece is a ravishing story about buried love and the art that might save us. It unfolds layer by layer, across generations and centuries, with the precision and scale of the great painting at its heart. I loved it * Rachel Joyce *
An exquisitely unfolding story of love and art. Masterful and gripping * Esther Freud *
A captivating charming heartbreaking novel that celebrates a gorgeous painting, a series of secret love affairs and the joy and transience of life itself, spanning history from the fifteen century to today with exquisite poignancy and delicious storytelling * Simon Sebag Montefiore *
A marvellous exploration of what art means to the individual, how it brings us together and how it helps us to communicate -across culture, time and experience -and to find our shared humanity. Rich and immersive: I loved it. * Joanne Harris *
Masterpiece is just wonderful. There’s a generosity and scope to this novel that expands the heart and fills the mind. It’s one of those books that you can’t wait to talk about with friends. Three very different stories weave their way through three centuries, each one showing that art and love - and the courage to be different - really matter. The characters crackle on the page and take up residence in your head. It’s dextrous, vivid and wise: a tonic and a celebration. My book of the year. * Cressida Connolly *
Darting through history and across Europe, interlacing stories, always with a vivid sense of the present, this is a vastly enjoyable novel which will appeal to everybody who has ever looked at a picture and fallen in love with it. Hannah Rothschild proves herself a natural and addictive novelist * Andrew Marr *
I love Rothschild’s cleverness, wit and heart, and this is the book she was born to write. * Rosie Boycott *
What gives the novel its power is the human depth beneath the art. Rothschild is acutely attentive to the fragile, often contradictory inner lives of her characters—ambition braided with vulnerability, intellect shadowed by grief, love constrained by invidious laws. Even as the narrative delves into the rarefied world of art, it never loses sight of the emotional stakes that make that world matter. Masterpiece is also a fast-paced, addictive page-turner, as gripping as the finest whodunnit * Geordie Greig *
Emotionally consuming and beautifully told, this generation spanning story of love, creativity, art and integrity had me spellbound. A truly gorgeous novel * Jennie Godfrey *

Hannah Rothschild was the first woman to Chair the board of London’s National Gallery. She is the author of an acclaimed biography, The Baroness, and three novels, including The Improbability of Love, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was a Waterstones Book of the Year, and won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Drawing on her extensive knowledge, she has spent seven years researching unpublished diaries, letters, photograph albums and papers to tell this remarkable story. Masterpiece is the book she feels she has always been meant to write.

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