Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah

Charles King tells the story of Handel’s oratorio through the people around it: an ageing composer whose London career had collapsed, a librettist assembling scripture, singers of uneven reputation, and a city full of the destitute the premiere was staged to help. Handel was briefly imprisoned for debt. Exactly what you would want from a book on the Messiah.