Soldier. Farmer. Felon. Writer. Father. Lover. One man, many lives. Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss.Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace.He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army.He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days.As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is.This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic. From one of Britain's best-loved and bestselling writers comes an intimate yet panoramic novel set across the nineteenth century. 'Picaresque, big-hearted and moving, this is Boyd at the top of his game' Guardian'There are few reading pleasures as great as giving in to a William Boyd novel' Sunday Times'One of our best contemporary storytellers' Spectator'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Sebastian Faulks