Adam Zamoyski

Historian Adam Zamoyski tells the story of the Polish princess, Izabela Czartoryska, who was a pioneer of education and whose life touched many of the great figures of 18th and 19th-century Europe.

Zamoyski says Izabela’s aristocratic position led her to encounters with the likes of Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Joseph II, Marie-Antoinette, Tsar Alexander I and Catherine the Great. She lived through revolution and five wars, saw her homes devastated and looted, and experienced tempestuous love affairs and exploitation at the hands of lovers. Zamoyski explains how, despite all this, she remained undaunted, liberated herself through education, enjoyed the respect of learned men, pioneered schooling for the poor and developed her own teaching methods.

‘A brilliant portrait of an extraordinary woman and a history of a wider Europe from Russia and Poland to France and Britain’ Simon Sebag-Montefiore

Zamoyski is a British historian of Polish ancestry. His books include 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna and an acclaimed biography of Napoleon. His Poland: A History is considered the standard concise work on the subject.