What do Julius Caesar, Aung San Suu Kyi, Thomas More and , Pope Innocent III all share?.
What eanbled a deaf Beethoven, a blind Milton, a syphilitic Schubert and a certifiable Virginia Woolf to create memorable masterpieces?
Peter Deakin takes a new ;ook at heroic leaders - leaders who used their power to inflict suffering and death. And a new look at geniuses, who endured misery as the price of their creativity. ahis bold analysis shows how they summoned Whatever It Takes - letting nothing stand in the way as they left indelible marks on the world.
In war, government, art, literature and music, he finds high achievers calling on strengths that perhaps we all possess to some degree
Everyone knows names like Lincoln and Van Gogh. But the Altamira cave painters are forever anonymous, and who remembers cruel Queen Ranavalona? Yet the evidence assembled here, even about the best known names , will shock and entertain every reader.
Peter Deakin grew up in Sydney in a family of nine children. He has spent most of his working life as a lawyer, but for even longer has been writing: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Weekends are getting longer on his farm on the Fish River, where he breeds cattle and produces olive oil.
He quotes Frank Dalby Davidson: " A man needs a thin skin to be a writer, and mostly needs a thick skin to put up with the consequences." Deakin believes he has reached the stage where he is ready for the consequences of what he has written
PART ONE Ruthless Power
Niccolo Machiavelli
Julius Caesar
Emperor Justinian
Emperor Charlemagne
Pope Innocent III
King Henry V
Sir Thomas More
Peter the Great
Oliver Cromwell
Napoleon Bonaparte
Admiral Horatio Nelson
Themistocles
The Salem Witch Trials
Abraham Lincoln
Ranavalona- The Queen of Madagascar
Aung San Suu Kyi
Conclusion
PART TWO Suffering Genius
The Altimira Cave Paintings
Michelangelo
John Milton
Ludwig von Beethoven
George Gordon Lord Byron
Franz Peter Schubert
Robert Alexander Schumann
Charles Pierre Baudelaire
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Paul Gaugin
Vincent Van Gogh
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Virginia Woolf
Ernest Hemingway
Charles Bukowski
Conclusion
Further Reading
