The Man in the Red Coat

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker - a scientific man with a famously complicated private life. In The Man in the Red Coat Julian Barnes constantly circles round him and his circle, taking in subjects as disparate as Dandyism, Oscar Wilde, Dreyfus, Sarah Bernhardt, political assassination, Degas, Maupassant, gynaecology, anaesthesia, Proust, Flaubert, Daudet, homosexuality, and Wagner ... Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards 2020.