A Right Royal Face-Off

Simon Edge

‘A glorious comedy of painting and pretension’ Ryan O’Neill

It is 1777, and England’s second-greatest portrait artist, Thomas Gainsborough, has a thriving practice a stone’s thrown from London’s royal palaces, while the press talks up his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pedantic theoretician who is the top dog of British portraiture.

Fonder of the low life than high society, Gainsborough loathes pandering to the grandees who sit for him. However, he changes his tune when he is commissioned to paint King George III, his German queen and their vast family. He discovers a taste for royal company – but who will be chosen as court painter, Tom or Sir Joshua?

Meanwhile, two and a half centuries later, a badly damaged painting turns up on a downmarket antiques TV show being filmed in Suffolk. Could the monstrosity really be, as its eccentric owner claims, a Gainsborough? If so, who is the sitter? And why does he have donkey’s ears?

Mixing ancient and modern as he did in his acclaimed debut The Hopkins Conundrum, Simon Edge takes aim at fakery and pretension in this highly original celebration of one of our greatest artists.

‘The rivalry between Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds is at the heart of this larky novel’ Saga Magazine

‘One part mystery, one part history, one part satire, and wholly entertaining. A hilarious portrait of the artist as a frustrated man’

Ryan O’Neill, author of Their Brilliant Careers

‘I enjoyed this beguiling book very much. The interwoven strands between 1780s and the 2010s are beautifully managed and brilliantly resolved’ Hugh Belsey

‘Witty, observant and joyously gossipy. The characterisations are sharp and Simon Edge has the painter’s eye for detail. It is paced beautifully and nothing is wasted’ NB Magazine

‘A laugh-out-loud contemporary satire skewering today’s tired reality TV formats married with a tale of vicious rivalry in the world of 18th century royal portraiture’

Liz Trenow

‘The more of Simon Edge you read, the more you realise that every element of his stories is hand-selected and glued to the bigger picture – it’s whimsical, farce-like… scrapbooky, in the best possible way’ Buzz Magazine

‘It hooked me straight in from the beginning. It’s brilliant’ Lesley Dolphin, BBC Radio Suffolk

Paperback: 288pp

Published: Lightning (July 2019)

ISBN: 9781785631306