Historical & Political Biographies

The iconic daily record of life between 1660 and 1669 - entertaining, personally-charged, historically indicative.

Winner of the St Ermin's Intelligence Book of the Year Award. 'One of the great biographies of 2015.' The TimesFully updated edition including recently released information. A Guardian Book of the Year. The Times Best Biography of the Year. Mail on Sunday Biography of the Year. Daily Mail Biography of Year. Spectator Book of the Year. BBC History Book of the Year. 'A remarkable and definitive portrait ' Frederick Forsyth'Andrew Lownie's biography of Guy Burgess, Stalin's Englishman ... shrewd, thorough, revelatory.' William Boyd'In the sad and funny Stalin's Englishman, [Lownie] manages to convey the charm as well as the turpitude.' Craig BrownGuy Burgess was the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - all brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.In this first full biography, Andrew Lownie shows us how even Burgess's chaotic personal life of drunken philandering did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years.Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colourful, tragi-comic wonder.

In March 1965, Marine Lieutenant Philip J Caputo landed in Danang with the first ground combat unit committed to fight in Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home - physically whole, emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism shattered. This book tells his story.

The truth & the myths about the legless Battle of Britain fighter ace

Six rollercoaster weeks that brought down America's top general by the ROLLING STONE journalist who broke the story - now the inspiration for the major motion picture WAR MACHINE.

WINNER OF THE 2012 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZEA monumental work of history, biography and adventure - the First World War, Mallory and Mount Everest'The price of life is death' For Mallory, as for all of his generation, death was but 'a frail barrier that men crossed, smiling and gallant, every day'.

Traces the life of Britain's only female Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from her upbringing in Grantham to her unexpected challenge to Edward Heath for leadership of the Conservative party and her eventual removal from power.

The complete letters, dispatches and chronicles that tell the real story of Anne Boleyn.

From the author of the internationally acclaimed Putin's Russia and A Russian Diary. Until her murder in October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya wrote for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, winning international fame for her reporting on the Chechen wars and, more generally, on Russian politics and state corruption.

Nothing had prepared them for the vicious cold of the desert winter, and after a blizzard and a desperate search for food, Chris Ryan found himself the last man standing. Left on his own, Ryan narrowly escaped an Iraqi attack and set out alone, trying to reach the border through some of the most lethal country in the world.

Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who changed everything. No longer in power, he has been forced to endure criticism from those wise after the event - most notably Boris Yeltsin, who became undisputed leader after the failed military coup that finally displaced Gorbachev from office.

Tells the history of the modest family which rose to become one of the most powerful in Europe. This title explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage.

The real Master and Commander 'There is no man I envy so much as Lord Cochrane' Lord Byron

Following the enormous success of HITLER: HUBRIS this book triumphantly completes one of the great modern biographies. No figure in twentieth century history more clearly demands a close biographical understanding than Adolf Hitler; and no period is more important than the Second World War. Beginning with Hitler's startling European successes in the aftermath of the Rhinelland occupation and ending nine years later with the suicide in the Berlin bunker, Kershaw allows us as never before to understand the motivation and the impact of this bizarre misfit. He addresses the crucial questions about the unique nature of Nazi radicalism, about the Holocaust and about the poisoned European world that allowed Hitler to operate so effectively.

Rudolph Hoess was Commandant of Auschwitz during the war. He was taken prisoner by the British. Between his trial and his execution he was ordered to write his autobiography. This is it.

The Orientalist unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world. Tom Reiss first came across the man who called himself 'Kurban Said' when he went to the ex-USSR to research the oil business on the Caspian Sea, and discovered a novel instead.

Genghis Khan - creator of the greatest empire the world has ever seen - is one of history's immortals.

WINNER OF THE MEDICAL JOURNALISTS' OPEN BOOK AWARD 2005Revered and feared in equal measure, John Hunter was the most famous surgeon of eighteenth-century London.

Faced with cancer and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president, Ulysses S Grant wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future. In doing so, he won himself a unique place in American letters. This title deals with his life as a soldier.

McCullin grew up in London during the aftermath of World War II. He has spent a large part of his life photographing wars in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In this book he writes of the deprivation of his childhood and the much greater misery and horror he has witnessed during his career.

The remarkable and moving story of Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French resistance leader who was interned at Buchenwald.

**PRE-ORDER: The gripping, groundbreaking historical true crime from the award-winning #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FIVE**This is the story of a murder, not a murderer ... Throughout the 20th century, the infamous 'Crippen murder' was told in such a way as to cast doubt on Crippen's guilt and to victim-blame his wife Cora, a musichall actress, for her own murder. It also astonishingly depicted Crippen's younger mistress Ethel as innocent of any involvement in the killing of her love rival. Not so, says Rubenhold. In fact, Ethel got away with murder, and the same Edwardian beliefs about women that demonised his wife also blinded society to Ethel's guilt. By telling the story through the women's eyes, we see clearly who this lying, deceitful, misogynistic criminal doctor was. He was not 'the mild-mannered murderer' as everyone from Raymond Chandler to Dorothy Sayers has suggested, but a dead-eyed, unrepentant killer. STORY OF A MURDER is a grand experiment in subverting a famous history. With a galloping narrative at its centre, it explores the late Victorian and Edwardian era, class aspiration, the transatlantic world and the incredible period of social revolution for women.

A New York Times bestseller and "a brilliant and bracing analysis" (Mark R. Levin) of Donald Trump, his presidency, and his vision of America's future--now updated for 2024 In The Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become an extremely successful president. Trump alone saw a political opportunity in defending the working people of America's interior whom the coastal elite of both parties had come to scorn, Hanson argues. And Trump alone had the instincts and energy to pursue this opening to victory, dismantle a corrupt old order, and bring long-overdue policy changes at home and abroad. After decades of drift, America needed the outsider Trump to do what normal politicians would not and could not do. Now updated for the 2024 election with a comprehensive new introduction, this is the essential book on what Donald Trump means for America.