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Harold Nicolson
By Norman Rose. 2005
Harold Nicolson was a man of extraordinary gifts. A renowned politician, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster and gardener,…
his position in society and politics allowed him an insight into the most dramatic events of British, indeed world, history.Nicolson's personal life was no less dramatic. Married to Vita Sackville-West, one of the most famous writers of her day, their marriage survived, even prospered, despite their both being practising homosexuals. Unashamedly elitist, bound together by their literary, social, and intellectual pursuits, moving in the refined circles of the Bloomsbury group they viewed life from the rarified peaks of aristocratic haughtiness. Few men could boast such gifts as Nicolson possessed, yet he ended his life plagued by self-doubt. 'I am attempting nothing; therefore I cannot fail,' he once acknowledged. What went wrong? It was a question that haunted Nicolson throughout his adult life. Relying on a wealth of archival material, Norman Rose brilliantly disentangles fact from fiction, setting Nicolson's story of perceived failure against the wider perspective of his times.William Stone died on 10 January 2009 aged 108. He received a hero's funeral. Born in rural Devon, he joined…
the navy during the First World War, travelled the globe just before the British Empire's light began to fade and saw action in some of the most significant sea battles of the Second World War. Afterwards, he returned to Devon to run a barber's shop, an altogether more peaceable existence.As time passed, he became one of a dwindling number of men still alive who had served in the Great War. This meant that for some of the most momentous anniversaries clocked up recently - including the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War - William was a guest of honour. This autobiography bridges two wars and encompasses the remarkable episodes and adventures. It was an ordinary life lived in extraordinary times. He died at a time when the navy is attempting to embrace new ships that bear scant resemblance to those that William knew and face the challenges of a world that shrinks with every bold technological advance. His was a different kind of boldness. This is his astonishing story.Henry VI (Penguin Monarchs)
By James Ross. 2016
Henry VI, son of the all-conquering Henry V, was one of the least able and least successful of English kings.…
His long reign, which started when he was only nine months old, ended in catastrophe, with the loss of England's territories in France and a bankrupt England's long decline into civil war: the wars of the Roses. Yet, failure though Henry undoubtedly was, he remains an enigma. Was he always, as he became in the last disastrous years of his rule, a holy fool, simple-minded to the point of insanity and prey to the ambitions of others? Or was he more active and, as some have suggested, actively malign? In this groundbreaking new portrait, James Ross shows a king whose priorities diverged sharply from what England expected of its monarchs, and whose fitful engagement with government was directly, though not solely, responsible for the disasters that engulfed the kingdom during his reign.Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King (Penguin Monarchs)
By Anne Curry. 2015
Foremost medieval historian Anne Curry offers a new reinterpretation of Henry V and the battle that defined his kingship: AgincourtHenry…
V's invasion of France, in August 1415, represented a huge gamble. As heir to the throne, he had been a failure, cast into the political wilderness amid rumours that he planned to depose his father. Despite a complete change of character as king - founding monasteries, persecuting heretics, and enforcing the law to its extremes - little had gone right since. He was insecure in his kingdom, his reputation low. On the eve of his departure for France, he uncovered a plot by some of his closest associates to remove him from power. Agincourt was a battle that Henry should not have won - but he did, and the rest is history. Within five years, he was heir to the throne of France. In this vivid new interpretation, Anne Curry explores how Henry's hyperactive efforts to expunge his past failures, and his experience of crisis - which threatened to ruin everything he had struggled to achieve - defined his kingship, and how his astonishing success at Agincourt transformed his standing in the eyes of his contemporaries, and of all generations to come.Gimson’s Kings and Queens: Brief Lives of the Forty Monarchs since 1066
By Andrew Gimson. 2015
NEWLY REVISED AND UPDATEDA book for all lovers of history: the experienced and the novice, the serious and the silly.Gimson's…
Kings and Queens whirls us through the lives of our monarchs - from 1066 and William the Conqueror right up to Queen Elizabeth II and the present-day - to tell a tale of bastardy, courage, conquest, brutality, vanity, vulgarity, corruption, anarchy, absenteeism, piety, nobility, divorce, execution, civil war, madness, magnificence, profligacy, frugality, philately, abdication, dutifulness, family breakdown and family recovery.Written in Andrew Gimson's inimitable style, and illustrated by Martin Rowson, this is both a primer and a refresher for anyone who can't quite remember which were the good and bad Edwards or Henrys, or why so-and-so succeeded to the throne rather than his second cousin.'The most entertaining and instructive book on the English monarchy you will ever read' Daily TelegraphGeorge VI: The Dutiful King (Penguin Monarchs)
By Philip Ziegler. 2014
Written by Philip Ziegler, one of Britain's most celebrated biographers, George VI is part of the Penguin Monarchs series: short,…
fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers in a collectible formatIf Ethelred was notoriously 'Unready' and Alfred 'Great', King George VI should bear the title of 'George the Dutiful'. Throughout his life, George dedicated himself to the pursuit of what he thought he ought to be doing rather than what he wanted to do. Inarticulate and loathing any sort of public appearances, he accepted that it was his destiny to figure conspicuously in the public eye, gritted his teeth, battled his crippling stammer and got on with it. He was not born to be king, but he made an admirable one, and was the figurehead of the nation at the time of its greatest trial, the Second World War. This is a brilliant, touching and sometimes funny book about this reluctant public figure, and the private man.Philip Ziegler is the author of the authorised biographies of Mountbatten, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. His other books include The Duchess of Dino, William IV, The Black Death and most recently Olivier. Initially a diplomat, he worked for many years in book publishing before becoming a full-time writer.George V: The Unexpected King (Penguin Monarchs)
By David Cannadine. 2014
For a man with such conventional tastes and views, George V had a revolutionary impact. Almost despite himself he marked…
a decisive break with his flamboyant predecessor Edward VII, inventing the modern monarchy, with its emphasis on frequent public appearances, family values and duty. George V was an effective war-leader and inventor of 'the House of Windsor'. In an era of ever greater media coverage--frequently filmed and initiating the British Empire Christmas broadcast--George became for 25 years a universally recognised figure. He was also the only British monarch to take his role as Emperor of India seriously. While his great rivals (Tsar Nicolas and Kaiser Wilhelm) ended their reigns in catastrophe, he plodded on.David Cannadine's sparkling account of his reign could not be more enjoyable, a masterclass in how to write about Monarchy, that central--if peculiar--pillar of British life.George IV: King in Waiting (Penguin Monarchs)
By Stella Tillyard. 2019
George IV spent most of his life waiting to become king: as a pleasure-loving and rebellious Prince of Wales during…
the sixty-year reign of his father, George III, and for ten years as Prince Regent, when his father went mad. 'The days are very long when you have nothing to do' he once wrote plaintively, but he did his best to fill them with pleasure - women, art, food, wine, fashion, architecture. He presided over the creation of the Regency style, which came to epitomise the era, and he was, with Charles I, the most artistically literate of all our kings. Yet despite his life of luxury and indulgence, George died alone and unmourned. Stella Tillyard has not written a judgemental book, but a very human and enjoyable one, about this most colourful of all British kings.George III: Madness and Majesty (Penguin Monarchs)
By Jeremy Black. 2006
King of Britain for sixty years and the last king of what would become the United States, George III inspired…
both hatred and loyalty and is now best known for two reasons: as a villainous tyrant for America's Founding Fathers, and for his madness, both of which have been portrayed on stage and screen.In this concise and penetrating biography, Jeremy Black turns away from the image-making and back to the archives, and instead locates George's life within his age: as a king who faced the loss of key colonies, rebellion in Ireland, insurrection in London, constitutional crisis in Britain and an existential threat from Revolutionary France as part of modern Britain's longest period of war.Black shows how George III rose to these challenges with fortitude and helped settle parliamentary monarchy as an effective governmental system, eventually becoming the most popular monarch for well over a century. He also shows us a talented and curious individual, committed to music, art, architecture and science, who took the duties of monarchy seriously, from reviewing death penalties to trying to control his often wayward children even as his own mental health failed, and became Britain's longest reigning king.George II: Not Just a British Monarch (Penguin Monarchs)
By Norman Davies. 2021
From the celebrated historian and author of Europe: A History, a new life of George IIGeorge II, King of Great…
Britain and Ireland and Elector of Hanover, came to Britain for the first time when he was thirty-one. He had a terrible relationship with his father, George I, which was later paralleled by his relationship to his own son. He was short-tempered and uncultivated, but in his twenty-three-year reign he presided over a great flourishing in his adoptive country - economic, military and cultural - all described with characteristic wit and elegance by Norman Davies. (George II so admired the Hallelujah chorus in Handel's Messiah that he stood while it was being performed - as modern audiences still do.) Much of his attention remained in Hanover and on continental politics, as a result of which he was the last British monarch to lead his troops into battle, at Dettingen in 1744.George I: The Lucky King (Penguin Monarchs)
By Tim Blanning. 2016
George I was not the most charismatic of the Hanoverian monarchs to have reigned in England but he was probably…
the most important. He was certainly the luckiest.Born the youngest son of a landless German duke, he was taken by repeated strokes of good fortune to become, first the ruler of a major state in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and then the sovereign of three kingdoms (England, Ireland and Scotland). Tim Blanning's incisive short biography examines George's life and career as a German prince, and as King. Fifty-four years old when he arrived in London in 1714, he was a battle-hardened veteran, who put his long experience and deep knowledge of international affairs to good use in promoting the interests of both Hanover and Great Britain. When he died, his legacy was order and prosperity at home and power and prestige abroad. Disagreeable he may have been to many, but he was also tough, determined and effective, at a time when other European thrones had started to crumble.The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's First Prime Minister
By Edward Pearce. 2007
The year 1721 has many splendours: great houses built by William Kent, fine pictures and the fruits of commerce. But…
there are also thirteen public hanging days a year, drunkenness is endemic, organised crime rampages through the streets. And politics are ferocious. Only a generation earlier, The Pretender failed to take the Crown; the new King is cursed as a damned foreigner; James's followers - the Jacobites - conspire and are persecuted; the South Sea Bubble collapses.Robert Walpole, once imprisoned for financial chicanery, assumes political control and becomes 'Prime Minister'. He personally detects a Jacobite plot, is dismissed in 1727 on the death of George I, recruits the new King's clever wife, Caroline, and bounces cheerfully back. Coarse, corrupt and cynical, Walpole dominates King, Parliament and Government until 1742. This is Mr Worldywiseman, keeping England out of war for twenty years and setting up a stable and growing economy. All politics of a kind we can recognise today begin with Robert Walpole. And here, in Edward Pearce's elegant book, he is brought vividly back to life.Great Lives: As heard on Radio 4
By Karen Farrington. 1735
Based on the popular Radio 4 series, Great Lives highlights some of the world's most fascinating and influential characters. Chosen…
by the show's guests, each biography reveals the life and times of artists, sportsmen, statesmen, authors, monarchs, actors, musicians and scientists, showing why they inspire, what they achieved and how they have influenced the world at large. Discover the intriguing lives of Clement Attlee and Henri Matisse, King Alfred and Samuel Johnson, Tommy Cooper and Robert Kennedy, Robin Day and Edith Wharton, along with many more. From the famous to the obscure, the historical to the contemporary, each biography provides an insight into the character's personality, why they were driven to achieve so much, and separates fact from fiction. With a foreword by the show's presenter, Matthew Parris, Great Lives is an ideal gift for history and biography enthusiasts, and for fans of the Radio 4 series.A Good African Story: How a Small Company Built a Global Coffee Brand
By Andrew Rugasira. 2013
Since it was founded in 2003, Good African Coffee has helped thousands of farmers earn a decent living, send their…
children to school and escape a spiral of debt and dependence. Africa has received over $1 trillion in aid over the last fifty years and yet despite these huge inflows, the continent remains mired in poverty, disease and systemic corruption. In A Good African Story, as Andrew Rugasira recounts the very personal story of his company and the challenges that he has faced – and overcome – as an African entrepreneur, he provides a tantalising glimpse of what Africa could be, and argues that trade has achieved what years of aid have failed to deliver.This is a book about Africa taking its destiny in its own hands, and dictating the terms of its future.Free At Last: Diaries 1991 - 2001
By Tony Benn. 2002
Tony Benn is the longest serving MP in the history of the Labour Party. He left Parliament in 2001, after…
more than half a century in the House of Commons, to devote more time to politics. This volume of his Diaries describes and comments, in a refreshing and honest way, upon the events of a momentous decade including two world wars, a change of government in Britain and the emergence of New Labour, of which he makes clear he is not a member. Tony Benn's account is a well documented, formidable and principled critique of the New Labour Project, full of drama, opinion, humour, anecdotes and sparkling pen-portraits of politicians on both sides of the political divide. But his narrative is also broader and more revealing about day-to-day political life, covering many aspects normally disregarded by historians and lobby correspondents, relating to his work in the constituency, including his advice surgeries. This volume also offers far more of an insight into Tony Benn's personal life, his thoughts about the future and his relationship with his family, especially his remarkable wife Caroline, whose illness and death overshadow these years. Tony Benn is a unique figure on the British political landscape: a true democrat, a passionate socialist and diarist without equal. With this volume, his published Diaries cover British politics for over sixty years. It is edited, as are all others, by Ruth Winstone.Eminent Victorians (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Lytton Strachey. 1986
Eminent Victorians marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high…
Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked. In it Strachey cleverly exposes the self-seeking ambitions of Cardinal Manning and the manipulative, neurotic Florence Nightingale; and in his essays on Dr Arnold and General Gordon his quarries are not only his subjects but also the public-school system and the whole structure of nineteenth-century liberal values.The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus
By Christopher Columbus. 1969
No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas…
in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.Elizabeth I: A Study in Insecurity (Penguin Monarchs)
By Helen Castor. 2017
'The experience of insecurity, it turned out, would shape one of the most remarkable monarchs in England's history' In the…
popular imagination, as in her portraits, Elizabeth I is the image of monarchical power. But this image is as much armour as a reflection of the truth. In this illuminating account of England's iconic queen, Helen Castor reveals her reign as shaped by a profound and enduring insecurity that was a matter of both practical politics and personal psychology.Elizabeth: The Scandalous Life of an 18th Century Duchess
By Claire Gervat. 2003
Elizabeth Chudleigh was one of the eighteenth century's most colourful characters. Born into impoverished gentility, her beauty, wit and vitality…
soon earned her a place at the centre of court life. When she married the Duke of Kingston in 1769 she had reached the highest rung of the social ladder. But Elizabeth was carrying a dark secret. In 1744 she had secretly married a naval lieutenant called Augustus Hervey, and after the Duke's death her first marriage was discovered. Bigamy fever swept London society and, in a very public trial, Elizabeth was found guilty. But her strength of character ensured that, even when her friends deserted her, her courage and zest for life did not. In an engaging history of this strong and wilful woman, Gervat shows there was far more to Elizabeth than the caricature villain her contemporaries made her out to be.Edward VIII: The Uncrowned King (Penguin Monarchs)
By Piers Brendon. 2016
'After my death,' George V said of his eldest son and heir, 'the boy will ruin himself within twelve months.'The…
forecast proved uncannily accurate. Edward VIII came to the throne in January 1936, provoked a constitutional crisis by his determination to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, and abdicated in December. He was never crowned king.In choosing the woman he loved over his royal birthright, Edward shook the monarchy to its foundations. Given the new title 'Duke of Windsor' and essentially sent into exile, he remained a visible skeleton in the royal cupboard until his death in 1972 and he haunts the house of Windsor to this day.Drawing on unpublished material, notably correspondence with his most loyal (though much tried) supporter Winston Churchill, Piers Brendon's superb biography traces Edward's tumultuous public and private life from bright young prince to troubled sovereign, from wartime colonial governor to sad but glittering expatriate. With pace and panache, it cuts through the myths that still surround this most controversial of modern British monarchs.