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Henry VI (Penguin Monarchs)
Par 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)
Par 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.Handel: The Man & His Music
Par Jonathan Keates. 2008
Jonathan Keates original biography of Handel was hailed as a masterpiece on its publication in 1985. This fully revised and…
updated new edition - published to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composers death - charts in detail Handel's life, from his youth in Germany, through his brilliantly successful Italian sojourn, to the opulence and squalor of Georgian London where he made his permanent home. For over two decades Handel was absorbed in London's heady but precarious operatic world. But even his phenomenal energy and determination could not overcome the public's growing indifference to Italian opera in the 1730s, and he turned finally to oratorio, a genre which he made peculiarly his own and in which he created some of his finest works, such as Saul, Messiah, Belshazzar and Jephtha.Over the last two decades a complete revolution in Handel's status has taken place. He is now seen both as a titanic figure in music, whose compositions have found a permanent place in the international repertoire, and as one of the world's favourite composers, with snatches of his work accompanying weddings, funerals and television commercials the world over.Skillfully interwoven with the account of Handel's life are commentaries on all his major works, as well as many less familiar pieces by this most inventive, expressive and captivating of composers. Handel was an extraordinary genius whose career abounded in reversals that would have crushed anyone with less resilience and will power, and Jonathan Keates writes about his life and work with sympathy and scrutiny.Georgian London: Into the Streets
Par Lucy Inglis. 2013
In Georgian London: Into the Streets, Lucy Inglis takes readers on a tour of London's most formative age - the…
age of love, sex, intellect, art, great ambition and fantastic ruin. Travel back to the Georgian years, a time that changed expectations of what life could be. Peek into the gilded drawing rooms of the aristocracy, walk down the quiet avenues of the new middle class, and crouch in the damp doorways of the poor. But watch your wallet - tourists make perfect prey for the thriving community of hawkers, prostitutes and scavengers. Visit the madhouses of Hackney, the workshops of Soho and the mean streets of Cheapside. Have a coffee in the city, check the stock exchange, and pop into St Paul's to see progress on the new dome.This book is about the Georgians who called London their home, from dukes and artists to rent boys and hot air balloonists meeting dog-nappers and life-models along the way. It investigates the legacies they left us in architecture and art, science and society, and shows the making of the capital millions know and love today.'Read and be amazed by a city you thought you knew' Jonathan Foyle, World Monuments Fund'Jam-packed with unusual insights and facts. A great read from a talented new historian' Independent'Pacy, superbly researched. The real sparkle lies in its relentless cavalcade of insightful anecdotes . . . There's much to treasure here' Londonist'Inglis has a good ear for the outlandish, the farcical, the bizarre and the macabre. A wonderful popular history of Hanoverian London' London HistoriansGrowing Out: Black Hair and Black Pride in the Swinging 60s (Black Britain: Writing Back #9)
Par Barbara Blake Hannah. 2016
'A gorgeously exuberant account. . . writing that is natural and vivacious . . . a fascinating and hugely enjoyable…
read.' Bernardine Evaristo, from the IntroductionTravelling over from Jamaica as a teenager, Barbara's journey is remarkable. She finds her footing in TV, and blossoms. Covering incredible celebrity stories, travelling around the world and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Germaine Greer and Michael Caine - her life sparkles. But with the responsibility of being the first black woman reporting on TV comes an enormous amount of pressure, and a flood of hateful letters and complaints from viewers that eventually costs her the job.In the aftermath of this fallout, she goes through a period of self-discovery that allows her to carve out a new space for herself first in the UK and then back home in Jamaica - one that allows her to embrace and celebrate her black identity, rather than feeling suffocated in her attempts to emulate whiteness and conform to the culture around her.Growing Out provides a dazzling, revelatory depiction of race and womanhood in the 1960s from an entirely unique perspective.A title in the Black Britain: Writing Back series - selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books depicting black Britain that remap the nation.George VI: The Dutiful King (Penguin Monarchs)
Par 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)
Par 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)
Par 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)
Par 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)
Par 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)
Par 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 Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism
Par Robert Kee. 1972
THE GREEN FLAG stands as the most comprehensive and illuminating history of Irish Nationalism yet published. For many years available…
as three separate volumes (THE MOST DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY, THE BOLD FENIAN MEN and OURSELVES ALONE), this outstanding history is now available as a single volume.A Green and Pleasant Land: How England’s Gardeners Fought the Second World War
Par Ursula Buchan. 2013
SHORTLISTED FOR INSPIRATIONAL BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE 2014 GARDEN MEDIA GUILD AWARDS. The wonderfully evocative story of how…
Britain’s World War Two gardeners – with great ingenuity, invincible good humour and extraordinary fortitude – dug for victory on home turf.A Green and Pleasant Land tells the intriguing and inspiring story of how Britain's wartime government encouraged and cajoled its citizens to grow their own fruit and vegetables. As the Second World War began in earnest and a whole nation listened to wireless broadcasts, dug holes for Anderson shelters, counted their coupons and made do and mended, so too were they instructed to ‘Dig for Victory’. Ordinary people, as well as gardening experts, rose to the challenge: gardens, scrubland, allotments and even public parks were soon helping to feed a nation deprived of fresh produce. As Ursula Buchan reveals, this practical contribution to the Home Front was tackled with thrifty ingenuity, grumbling humour and extraordinary fortitude. The simple act of turning over soil and tending new plants became important psychologically for a population under constant threat of bombing and even invasion. Gardening reminded people that their country and its more innocent and insular pursuits were worth fighting for. Gardening in wartime Britain was a part of the fight for freedom.The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them
Par Linda Yueh. 2023
'A masterclass in spotting the early signs of a crisis' Nouriel Roubini'This is the historical perspective we need' John Kay'A…
first point of entry for anybody who wants to learn how the world sleep-walked into multiple crashes' Daron Acemoglu'Fascinating, well-written and authoritative' Tim Harford-----------------------------------------------------------------The global economy has weathered the most tumultuous century in modern financial history. Since America's Wall Street Crash of 1929, the global economy has weathered the most tumultuous century in financial history. From the currency crises of the 1980s, to Japan's housing meltdown, the dot com boom and bust, the global financial crash and the COVID pandemic, crash after crash has sent shockwaves through our world.The Great Crashes tells the stories of ten of these historic financial events. They serve as a series of cautionary tales, each with their own lessons to be learnt. With clear-eyed analysis, renowned economist Professor Linda Yueh uses these meltdowns to extract a critical three-step framework to help recognise the early signs of a crash, mitigate the effects and even prevent them in the future. There is very little that is certain in economics, except for this: there will be another financial crisis.Combining her in-depth knowledge with compelling storytelling, The Great Crashes is essential reading that offers urgent lessons for the modern world.-----------------------------------------------------------------'An important contribution that can help society anticipate and tackle potential crashes in the future' Christine LagardeThe Great War: The People's Story (Official TV Tie-In)
Par Isobel Charman. 2014
During the First World War three quarters of a million British people died – a figure so huge that it…
feels impossible to give it a human context. Consequently we struggle to truly grasp the impact this devastating conflict must have had on people's day-to-day lives. We resort to looking at the war from a distance, viewing its events in terms of their political or military significance. The Great War: The People's Story is different. Like the all-star ITV series it accompanies, it immerses the reader in the everyday experiences of real people who lived through the war. Using letters, diaries, and memoirs – many of which have never previously been published – Isobel Charman has painstakingly reconstructed the lives of people such as separated newly-weds Alan and Dorothy Lloyd, plucky enlisted factory-worker Reg Evans and proudly independent suffragist Kate Parry Frye. A century on, they here tell their stories in their own words, offering a uniquely personal account of the conflict.The Great War: The People's Story is both a meticulously researched piece of narrative history and a deeply moving remembrance of the extraordinary acts of extremely ordinary people.Great Britain's Great War
Par Jeremy Paxman. 2013
Jeremy Paxman's magnificent history of the First World War tells the entire story of the war in one gripping narrative…
from the point of view of the British people.***We may think we know about it, but what was life really like for the British people during the First World War?The well-known images - the pointing finger of Lord Kitchener; a Tommy buried in the mud of the Western Front; the memorial poppies of Remembrance Day - all reinforce the idea that it was a pointless waste of life. So why did the British fight it so willingly and how did the country endure it for so long?Using a wealth of first-hand source material, Jeremy Paxman brings vividly to life the day-to-day experience of the British over the entire course of the war, from politicians, newspapermen, campaigners and Generals, to Tommies, factory workers, nurses, wives and children. It shows how both British life and identity were utterly transformed - not always for the worst - by the enormous upheaval of the war.Rich with personalities, surprises and ironies, this lively narrative history paints a picture of courage and confusion, doubts and dilemmas, and is written with Jeremy Paxman's characteristic flair for storytelling, wry humour and pithy observation.***"A fine introduction to the part Britain played in the first of the worst two wars in history. The writing is lively and the detail often surprising and memorable" Guardian"He writes so well and sympathetically, and chooses his detail so deftly, that if there is one new history of the war that you might actually enjoy from the very large centennial selection this is very likely it" The TimesThe Great Nation: The New Penguin History of France
Par Colin Jones. 2002
There can be few more mesmerising historical narratives than the story of how the dazzlingly confident and secure monarchy Louis…
XIV, 'the Sun King', left to his successors in 1715 became the discredited, debt-ridden failure toppled by Revolution in1789. The further story of the bloody unravelling of the Revolution until its seizure by Napoleon is equally astounding.Colin Jones' brilliant new book is the first in 40 years to describe the whole period. Jones' key point in this gripping narrative is that France was NOT doomed to Revolution and that the 'ancien regime' DID remain dynamic and innovatory, twisting and turning until finally stoven in by the intolerable costs and humiliation of its wars with Britain.Great Glasgow Stories
Par John Burrowes. 1998
Few cities in the world abound with so many extraordinary stories as Glasgow. The city has been the silent witness…
to some of the most significant events of the past century, from major triumphs to cataclysmic calamities, and the best of these anecdotes are compiled here to form this unique collection.Amongst the notable events revisited are the launching of the Queen Mary, which captivated the city's inhabitants in 1934, the victorious 16-month work-in campaign by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in the early 1970s, the Ibrox disaster of 1971 and the plague that gripped the Gorbals in 1900.Some of Glasgow's most successful people are also covered, including Clydeside revolutionary John Maclean, founder of the Barras Maggie McIver and the inimitable Billy Connolly, whose humour and colourful personality are synonymous with the city.From the Battle of George Square to the bravery of the Glasgow people during the Blitz, Great Glasgow Stories provides an all-encompassing view of the city throughout the eras.Gaunty's Best of British: It's Called Great Britain, Not Rubbish Britain
Par Jon Gaunt. 2003
Gaunty's Best of British is one man's cheerful look at what's right - and what's wrong - with his country,…
and a brilliantly entertaining guide to how Britain can be Great again. Jon Gaunt embarks on a tour of the best bits of this green and pleasant land, celebrating all things British. His forthright tribute is an aptly eclectic collection, covering everything from cricket, foxhunting and the FA Cup, to great inventions like the Spitfire, the Mini and the miniskirt, and our unofficial national cuisine of fish and chips washed down with a cup of tea or a pint of real ale. Whether you live in Coventry or Cambridge, Liverpool or London, now is the time to join Gaunty and start shouting about this fantastic country and what makes it so Great.Frenzy!: How the tabloid press turned three evil serial killers into celebrities
Par Neil Root. 2011
Murder has transfixed the popular press for centuries. But it was only in the second half of the twentieth century…
that murder began saturating front pages and making these monsters what we today recognise as modern celebrities. It was three serial killers, caught and executed in the few years after the end of the Second World War, who precipitated a level of public furore never seen before. Neville Heath, a 'charming' sadist who killed two women; John George Haigh, the Acid Bath Killer who killed between six and nine men and women; and John Christie, the ineffectual necrophile, who killed between six and eight women. The modern news coverage finds its roots with these three men whom the crime historian Donald Thomas called the 'Postwar Psychopaths'. Their crimes were the first to generate a tabloid frenzy the like of which we see all around us today. It was not only the murderers who captured the public's imagination. It was the detectives who hunted them down, the judiciary who tried them, and the man who executed them, the legendary hangman Albert Pierrepoint.This book tells the stories of these three infamous serial killers against the backdrop of the tabloid frenzy that surrounded them.