Unique in his own age and a phenomenon in any, Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand was a statesman of outstanding ability and extraordinary contradictions. Bishop and libertine, iconoclast and institututio, he was a turncoat who could hold high office in five successive regimes, yet maintain oneconstant policy for half a century. Duff Cooper’s classic biography charts his fascinatingly chequered career with all the vigour, elegance and interlect of its remarkable subject.