A brilliant excavation of the life of bestselling historian Adam Zamoyski’s great-great-great-great grandmother, a princess and pioneer of education who created the first museum in Poland.

This is an unknown history brought to startling light for the first time. Izabela the Valiant is a story of a vulnerable but resilient women caught up in extraordinary events – a story that must be told.

In the late 18th century, Europe sat at a crossroads, the formerly rococo world shattered by the French Revolution and then transformed by Napoleon’s agenda. Social values, the religious landscape, the positions of royalty were morphing. Izabela is a fascinating route into this world; buffeted by conflicting forces, her life provides an insight into what these changes meant for real people living through them. Inherited values and conventional notions of honour and loyalty to the throne were challenged by the new doctrine of sacrifice in the service of the nation. The sentimentality and pragmatism of the eighteenth century morphed respectively into the Romantic movement and a new realpolitik.

By following this creative, forward-thinking woman who sat at the centre of power and held many important men’s affections, Zamoyski’s charming and engrossing biography will open up a stormy period of late eighteenth, early nineteenth century Polish history.