Brotton has taken on a cracking good story, confidently snaking through the complicated politics of seventeenth-century European art-dealership, from Venice and the Low Countries to the Escorial and back into the side-streets of turbulent London and the thousand-odd rooms of Whitehall Palace. He beds this vast mass of convoluted activity with its great cast of characters from de Critz to Van Dyck - its rivalries, frauds, enthusiasms, bankruptcies, brinkmanship and U-turns - deeply into the political, social and artistic context of the time. This is no pillow book: that Brotton maintains his authorial grip on both the grand sweep and the elaborate detail while controlling the drive of his multi-layered narrative is a superb achievement -- Kate Colquhoun * Daily Telegraph * Provocative . . . admirably researched and compellingly narrated -- Miranda Seymour * Sunday Times * Jerry Brotton, a young historian with an enviable command of the secondary literature, both historical and art-historical, and a good understanding of the way objects and works of art assume ideological significance, has told the amazing story of Charles I's collection and its subsequent sale in full -- Charles Saumarez Smith * Literary Review * Jerry Brotton holds a magnifying glass to the amassing of the royal collection and its later dispersal . . . bustles with fascinating detail * History Today * Admirable * The Times * Colourful * Observer * Magnificent * Daily Express *