The Golden Virgin

What were the consequences for Germany, and the world, that William II was Kaiser at the onset of the 'Great War'? In The Kaiser and His Times (first published in ...

On June 6 1944 - 'D-Day' - Allied troops landed in France, opening a way to eventual victory. In this provocative reappraisal of the Second World War, John Grigg suggests that the ...

Following the failure of the 1848 revolution a great many political refugees headed for England - the richly cosmopolitan hub of an Empire, and the commercial-industrial locus of the world. Among ...

Her looks attracted Cecil Beaton and the principal painters of the day. Among her friends were Aldous Huxley, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. She rebuffed Wyndham Lewis and ardently ...

'This is Alan Ross's fourth volume of autobiography (following on from Blindfold Games, Coastwise Lights, and After Pusan) ... Winter  Sea, like his previous volumes, is an intriguing mix of ...

'Lively and entertaining ... [Disraeli's Grand Tour] concentrates on one colourful episode, or sequence of episodes, in the young Disraeli's life: the tour through the Mediterranean and Near East ...

He proclaimed himself a genius and raged against the slightest criticism from fellow scholars; he was a Marxist who despised the 'Idiot People'; he could be generous and affectionate yet ...

'I agree with Lord David [Cecil] that Melbourne as a friend or relative must have been one of the most delightful, wise and entertaining of men, but in public life ...

Politics in the Age of Peel, first published in 1953, is concerned with the ordinary working world of politicians in England during the stormy period between 1830 and 1850: the ...

The name ‘Laura Ashley’ is an international byword for the classic English countrywoman living in domestic bliss. But what was Laura Ashley the woman really like, behind the façade of ...

Anne Sebba presents a compelling history of the struggles of women to be admitted to professional journalism and so obtain the right to report from places where they were felt ...

‘This lively biography reveals a passionate woman who was painfully aware of the difficulties of living as a writer and as a wife and mother.’ The Times

This remarkable biography ...

Lloyd George fell from power in October 1922, never to hold office again. As a result he has tended to be written out of the politics of the 1920s. But ...

'This richly enjoyable biography of the great Victorian novelist reminds us how truly revolutionary was George Eliot ... [Ashton] provides luminously sane readings of the marvellous novels.' A. N. Wilson, Evening ...

'It appears to me that a simple, straightforward account of my life in retirement from day to day should suffice to show that, for a variety of interests, civic sense ...

Who was Major Kavan Elliott? Womaniser, rogue, wartime saboteur, peacetime spy - even all of these?

Behind the cover of a seemingly respectable business career, Elliott was entangled in a complex ...

Newly updated to 2012 and the Leveson Inquiry, Stick It Up Your Punter! is the classic story of the Sun newspaper, its part in the rise of Rupert Murdoch's ...

First published in 1966, Robert Bernard Martin's The Accents of Persuasion is a consummate critical study of Charlotte Brontë's four novels: The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette ...

Sir Richard Grenville (1542-1591), English sea captain and explorer, became a legendary figure in the resistance to the Spanish Armada, dying as a result of wounds sustained at the helm ...

First published in 1935, Eleanor Farjeon's A Nursery in the Nineties is one of the most striking accounts of childhood ever written: a testament to a happy and creative ...