WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH | 7:00PM
At Raynham Hall
Join us at Raynham Hall for an evening with American historian Alexander Rose as he sits in conversation with political commentator & novelist Kevin Baker to discuss and sign his Civil War history book, The Lion and the Fox, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide of the Civil War—and the Union agent resolved to stop him.
TICKETS ARE REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT
Copies of The Lion and the Fox will be available for purchase at the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
“Entertaining and deeply researched…with a rich cast of spies, crooks, bent businessmen and drunken sailors…Rose relates the tale with gusto.” -The New York Times
In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, two secret agents—one a Confederate, the other his Union rival—were dispatched to neutral Britain, each entrusted with a vital mission.
The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was to acquire a cutting-edge clandestine fleet intended to break President Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports, sink Northern merchant vessels, and drown the U.S. Navy’s mightiest ships at sea. The profits from gunrunning and smuggling cotton—Dixie’s notorious “white gold”—would finance the scheme. Opposing him was Thomas Dudley, a resolute Quaker lawyer and abolitionist. He was determined to stop Bulloch by any means necessary in a spy-versus-spy game of move and countermove, gambit and sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal. If Dudley failed, Britain would ally with the South and imperil a Northern victory. The battleground was the Dickensian port of Liverpool, whose dockyards built more ships each year than the rest of the world combined, whose warehouses stored more cotton than anywhere else on earth, and whose merchant princes, said one observer, were “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.”
From master of historical espionage Alexander Rose, The Lion and the Fox is the astonishing, untold tale of two implacable foes and their twilight struggle for the highest stakes.
ALEXANDER ROSE is the author of Washington’s Spies (the basis for the AMC drama series, Turn), Empires of the Sky, Men of War, and several other nonfiction books. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He writes the Spionage newsletter at Substack.
KEVIN BAKER is a novelist, historian, and journalist. He has been a professional writer since the age of 13, working originally for the Gloucester Daily Times as a stringer covering school-boy sports. He is the coauthor of Reggie Jackson’s Becoming Mr. October. His work as appeared in Harper’s, where he is also a contributing editor, New York Observer, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York City.
PLEASE NOTE: All books signed at this event must be purchased from Theodore's Books. If you purchase your book in advance of the event, please save your receipt.
