Historical Biography dynasty’s dramatic rise from its Spanish roots to its


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occupation of the highest position in Renaissance society is a gripping tale. The powerful, voracious Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, was the central figure of the dynasty. Two of his several papal offspring also rose to power and fame: Cesare, who served as the model for Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, and his daughter Lucrezia Borgia who, alongside Cesare, famously murdered her husband. Erudite, witty and insightful, here the layers of myth around the Borgia family are removed. 328 paperback pages. £8.99 NOW £4.50


67286 CASANOVA: The Life and Loves of the


World’s Most Famous Lover edited by Pierre Dubois


On 2 April 1725 a baby boy was born to an impoverished dancer and actor in Venice. He was christened Giocomo Girolamo Casanova, although he was to change his name many times during his eventful life, which ended in 1798, just after he had the good sense to write down many volumes of racy memoirs. He moved from city to city around Europe, frequenting the courts of nobles and rulers and, more often than not, frequenting the bedchambers of their wives and daughters. Gifted, learned and multilingual he was the Renaissance man par excellence, and turned his hand to many pursuits, including violinist, librarian, diplomat and spy. 100 mostly colour illus, many bawdy. 160pp softback.


£18.99 NOW £4 67644 ANNE BOLEYN


by P. Friedmann and Josephine Wilkinson Originally published in the 1880s, this exciting, monumental biography is still regarded as a standard work of reference by historians. Here is charted the rise and fall of the woman who refused her sexual favours until King Henry VIII promised her marriage. From her origins as the daughter of a gifted and ambitious courtier, through her elevation to the greatest height a woman could reach, to her tragic fall and execution, she ended as the victim of the man who had once loved her and who had altered the course of his country’s history forever in order to have her. Henry had taken on the might of the Catholic Church, challenging papal authority as he strove to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. The process cost the lives of many great and powerful men and ended with the country facing invasion from a disapproving Europe. 348 pages illustrated in colour and b/w. £20 NOW £7


67852 IMPOSSIBLE BOURBONS: Europe’s


Most Ambitious Dynasty by Oliver Thomson


Of all the dynastic royal families in European history, the Bourbons were probably the most remarkable, and certainly the most tenacious. They ruled three kingdoms, France, Spain and Italy simultaneously, and in the 18th century also controlled much of the Netherlands, all of South America bar Brazil, immense swathes of southern and western North America, all the West Indies bar Jamaica and the Philippines, as well possessing considerable interests in Africa and India. All the royal Bourbons from Louis III onwards were descended from Juana the Mad of Castile and over half of the latter Bourbons were officially declared as mentally defective, and the rest exhibiting varying forms of physical, sexual and mental abnormalities. 192pp softback with photos, family trees and maps. £14.99 NOW £6.50


67973 SAMUEL JOHNSON: A Life by David Nokes


The first and most enduring image of Dr Johnson was created by James Boswell in 1791. Although they have always been regarded as one of the great literary double acts, Boswell spent barely more than a year in Johnson’s company. Despite his ugliness, his frequent bouts of depression and the fact that he had been cursed with scrofula as an infant, apparently Johnson never lost his ardour for women of all ages! In 1755, defying both European academicians and his friend Jonathan Swift - who, like other conservatives, despised progress and worried that a dictionary signalled the rise of the middle class - Johnson gave the world the first modern dictionary. For him, language was a living thing and would always change, some words withering away while others sprang up to take their places. 419 pages with b/w illus and map of London. $32 NOW £6


67995 THE RED PRINCE: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke by Timothy Snyder


Wilhelm von Habsburg wore the uniform of an Austrian officer, the court regalia of an archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece and, every so often, a dress. He could handle a sabre, a pistol, a rudder or a golf club. He


handled women by necessity and men for pleasure. Coming of age during the First World War, he repudiated his family to fight alongside Ukrainian peasants, in the hope that he would become their king. When this dream collapses, he became, by turns, an ally of German imperialists, an opponent of Hitler and a spy against Stalin. Played out in Europe’s glittering capitals and bloody battlefields, in extravagant ski resorts and dank prison cells, this book captures an extraordinary time in the history of Europe. 344 pages illus, maps and family trees.


£18.99 NOW £5.50


68567 ISABELLA DE MEDICI by Caroline Murphy


Subtitled ‘The Glorious Life and Tragic End of A Renaissance Princess’, Isabella was the true star of the powerful house of Medici. She grew up charming and funny, intelligent and wealthy and spent her life on a quest for beauty, love and pleasure, determined always to hold her own among men. She was the hostess of a glittering circle in Renaissance Florence and engaged in an adulterous affair with her husband’s cousin. It was this affair and her very success as First Lady of Florence that led to her death at the hands of her husband when she was just 34. She left behind a remarkable story and as her legacy a son who became the greatest of the Orsini Dukes, immortalised in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Her city of Florence is shown in maps, her birthright in a Medici family tree and her image in numerous colour plates and woodcut illus. 397pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4.50


68039 EDMUND BURKE: A Life in


Caricature by Nicholas Robinson For more than 30 years until his death in 1797, the statesman and writer Edmund Burke was a powerful and passionate voice on the great political issues of late 18th century Britain. The broad range of his interests and the fact that he was Irish with Catholic connections made Burke a favourite target of leading caricaturists such as Gillray and Rowlandson. This book follows and sheds new light on Burke’s political, literary and personal life by examining a wide selection of the cartoons, often vitriolic and sometimes scurrilous, in which he was featured. The author puts the caricatures in context by reconstructing the day-to-day episodes such issues as the influence of the Crown, relations with America, the governance of India and the French Revolution. He shows how caricature was forged into a formidable political weapon, unravels the caricaturists’ devices and investigates how Burke and other political figures, including William Pitt, George III and the Prince of Wales, fared as the subjects of the satirical prints. 214 very large pages, lavishly illustrated in b/w and colour with addresses of print sellers and publishers.


£45 NOW £19


with her affairs and opulent wardrobe and jewellery, just as remarkable was her fidelity to the emperor (if not her husbands) and the influence she had on him. She was by his side at his famous victories in Italy, a regular at Malmaison with him and her rival for his affections, the Empress Josephine, followed him to exile on Elba and, following his final defeat at Waterloo, begged to be allowed to join him on St Helena. Fraser casts a whole new light on the workings of the Napoleonic era as she crafts a dynamic and vivid portrait of a mesmerising woman. US first edition of 2009 with 306 roughcut pages, colour plates. $28.95 NOW £7


68736 QUARREL WITH THE KING: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War by Adam Nicolson


In the 16th and 17th centuries the Pembrokes were the richest family in England, with old blood and new drive, led as much by a succession of extraordinary women as by their fathers, husbands and sons. Nicolson’s book tells the story of the first four earls, their wives, children, estates, tenants and allies, following their high and glamorous trajectory from the 1520s to the 1650s, some of the most turbulent and dramatic years of English history. There had been a simmering power struggle for many years between the Pembrokes, with their great estates to the west of Salisbury, and the Crown. Eventually, as things came to head in the 1640s, the then Earl of Pembroke, who had up until then been loyal to the King, had no other choice than to rebel against a monarch whom he felt had betrayed both him and his country. 305pp, colour plates. £17.88 NOW £6


68921 OUT OF THE STORM: The Life and


68030 BEING SHELLEY: The Poet’s Search for Himself by Ann Wroe


Four questions consumed Shelley and coloured everything he wrote: Who or what was he? What was his purpose? Where had he come from? and Where was he going? He sought the answers in order to free and empower not only himself but the whole human race. He thought that, by his ideas, he would shatter the earth’s illusions, shock men and women with new visions, find true love and liberty and take everyone with him. This book takes the life of one of England’s greatest poets and turns it inside out, bringing us the life of the poet rather than the man. 452 paperback pages, illus.


£9.99 NOW £5 68068 PRINCE OF EUROPE: The Life of


Charles-Joseph de Ligne 1735-1814 by Philip Mansel


Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne was a provocative writer, an ambitious general, a brilliant conversationalist and an innovative garden designer. His desire for military and literary glory was as great as his appetite for lovers. An international aristocrat, equally at home in Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg, he electrified everyone he met from Catherine the Great to Casanova, from Marie Antoinette to Goethe. With great delicacy and skill, it tells much of the complex dynastic and diplomatic history of late 18th century Europe. 414pp, b/w plates, maps and family tree. ONLY £4


68335 LIVES LIKE LOADED


GUNS: Emily Dickinson And Her Family’s Feuds by Lyndall Gordon


Unanswered questions resonate in the wake of lives, and no one more elusive than the famous poet Emily Dickinson. The first step was to map her social landscape - New England in the 1880s. What Gordon exposes is a seething Peyton Place of adultery, betrayal and lifelong feuding. It opens the way to an


entirely new reading of Dickinson’s life and poetry. This is the book that cracked one of poetry’s most enduring enigmas and rescues Dickinson from the image of the passive, heart-broken recluse. Family tree, maps and cast list. 492pp in paperback, photos. £9.99 NOW £4.50


68415 TRICKSTER TRAVELS: The Search for


Leo Africanus by Natalie Zemon Davis Subtitled ‘A 16th Century Muslim Between Worlds’, the book begins in 1514 when King Manuel I of Portugal presented Pope Leo X with a white elephant from India and in 1518 when a Spanish pirate, fresh from successful raids against Muslim ships in the Mediterranean, presented the same Pope with a captured North African traveller and diplomat from Fez named al-Hasan al- Wazzan. He left behind in Italy several manuscripts, one of which was published in 1550 and became a bestseller. Baptised in St. Peter’s in 1553 as Giovanni Leone, he is better known as Leo Africanus. Impressed by his charisma and intelligence, the Pope had granted him freedom, baptism and a European life of scholarships, but at his core he was very Arabic. Caught between the ‘warring worlds’ of Islam and Christianity, his story is packed with adventure. 435pp in paperback, plates. £10.99 NOW £2.50


68574 NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA by Robert Massie


Subtitled ‘The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family’, Massie shows conclusively how the personal curse of the young heir’s haemophilia and the decisive influence of Rasputin, became fatally linked with the collapse of Imperial Russia. The fall of the Romanovs is a subject of compelling interest, an exquisite story of love and compassion with every imaginable ingredient - grandeur and misery, romantic love, a glittering court, Byzantine intrigue, mysterious illnesses and evil influences, war and revolution. 584pp with maps and many photos. Paperback. £10.99 NOW £5


68728 PAULINE BONAPARTE: Venus of Empire by Flora Fraser


Although celebrated for her looks - as immortalised in Canova’s famous, scandalous, almost-nude marble statue - and notorious for her passions, not to mention her deep loyalty and love for her brother (accusations of incest were rife) there was much more to Pauline Bonaparte Borghese. Although she shocked the continent


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Legacy of Martin Luther by Derek Wilson One of the few people to change world history, Martin Luther was in many ways an unappealing character - uncompromising, aggressive and opinionated - but also very human, a man who as a student enjoyed the pleasures of the bierkeller and the brothel. At the Law School in Erfurt he became increasingly interested in theology, questioning the Catholic Church’s guardianship of religious truths. His father arranged a good marriage for him which would bar him from taking a theology degree, and at this point Luther decided to enter the cloister of the Observant Augustinian Friars. He would eventually leave the order to marry, but by that time he had changed the course of history and got the European Reformation under way. Luther’s relations with the Humanist scholar Erasmus, Staupitz the vicar general who supported him in his plans for reform, the indulgence-salesman and propagandist Tetzel and his rival Johann Eck are discussed in detail. As a Protestant, Luther encouraged monks and nuns to abandon their vows and to marry, and he himself married one of the nuns he had liberated from her vows, Catherine de Bora. The author also tackles the sensitive question of Luther’s anti-Semitism. 400pp, drawings. £20 NOW £8.50


HISTORY


I have seen the Mississippi. That is muddy water. I have seen the St Lawrence. That is crystal water. But the Thames is liquid history.


- John Burns


69315 1066 AND RATHER MORE: A Walk Through


History by Huon Mallalieu The Norman Conquest in 1066 is the best known event in British history, but much of what we believe we know about it is debatable. For instance, none of the seven aspirants to the throne had a perfect claim and Mallalieu ferrets out some interesting facts about the gaggle of toughs who


aspired to rule the English. 19 days before his death at Hastings, King Harold had defeated the Norwegian Harald Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, and his army then had to march 260 miles from York to Hastings in 12 days, encumbered with weaponry. The exact route is uncertain but in 2006 the author decided to see if it could be done today on a route through Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, London and Kent. Heading out of York towards Doncaster he passes through villages such as Moss and Fishlake which would have been under water in Harold’s time, and meandering along the River Don he crosses Harold’s route along Ermine Street, rejoining it again at Stamford. The speed of Harold’s march indicates that the Roman roads were still usable 800 years after they were built. From Waltham Abbey he follows the River Lea into London and finally outside Hastings he finds the long-lost ditch of Malfosse where the English briefly beat the Normans back. Quirky, unusual and informative. 239pp, genealogies, bibliography, chronology. £14.99 NOW £6


69495 MILLENNIUM: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom by Tom Holland


A cracking tale which vividly brings this neglected era of monks, popes, knights and serfs back to life.’ In AD900, few would have guessed that the splintering kingdoms of Europe were candidates for future greatness. Here in an exhilarating sweep across European history either side of the year 1000 we see


how a new civilisation emerged. It was the age of Otto the Great and William the Conqueror, of Viking sea- kings, of hermits and monks. It witnessed the spread of castles, the invention of knighthood, and the founding of a papal monarchy. The book sweeps thrillingly over the troubled centuries that saw the troubled Byzantium, the ascent of Islam and the lingering disaster of the Crusades. A blood and thunder narrative ending in the recapture of Jerusalem from the Saracens in 1099. 476pp in well illustrated paperback with colour photos and maps.


£10.99 NOW £5.50 e-mail: orders@bibliophilebooks.com


69316 ARCHAEOLOGICA: The World’s Most Significant Sites and Cultural


Treasures by Dr Aedeen Cremin In archaeology every day brings a new discovery and archaeologists are constantly re-writing history. Be it the tragic young Inca girls sacrificed in the capacocha or the anonymous craftsmen who glazed the bricks of Susa in Iran, we can learn about and feel with our fellow humans in everyday activities to which we can all relate. It is fun to work through the book by themes - the environment, clothing, food, architecture and religion, or by time - what was happening around the world during the winter solstice 4000 years ago? More than 40 archaeologists, historians and cultural anthropologists from around the world have all contributed to this magnificent book. The great mysteries of the world like the Easter Island statues, the Nazda Lines, Stonehenge and the pyramids of Mexico are not demystified - on the contrary, they are put into context which makes them even more remarkable. Imagine Howard Carter’s amazement when he first laid eyes on the treasures within the tomb of Tutankhamun? Modern technology today involves satellite imagery, DNA analysis, three dimensional computer simulations and more. However, age-old issues such as forgeries, tomb robbers and the ownership of finds still dog conscientious archaeologists. From early human footprints at Laetoli in Tanzania dating to 3.6 million years ago to the 20,000 year old Aboriginal footprints at Lake Mungo in Australia, here are places on which human history has left its mark. Magnificently illustrated in colour with over 550 images including historical photos, site shots and pictures of key artefacts, 20 detailed regional maps and 150 locator maps. Features 150 sites from more than 50 countries. 400 very large glossy pages.


£29.99 NOW £12


69507 UNCOMMON PEOPLE: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz by Eric Hobsbawm


‘The best known living historian in the world’ (‘The Times’) presents 26 essays written between the early 1950s and the mid 1990s. The three sections of the book deal with particular social groups - the Radical Tradition with the working class, Country People with traditional peasantry and Jazz with one of the few developments in the major arts


entirely rooted in the lives of poor people. Subjects include the formation of the British working class, revolution and sex, and socialism and the avant-garde. From essays on Mario Puzo and the Mafia, to the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano and the cultural consequences of Christopher Columbus, the historian’s passionate concerns for the lives and struggles of ordinary men and women shines through. 470pp paperback. £11.99 NOW £6


23944 BOOK OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF


BRITAIN by G.S.P Freeman-Grenville Dr. Freeman-Grenville was the consultant for Burke’s Royal Families of the World and his major work was the Chronology of World History. This specially commissioned book is a magisterial and entertainingly written overview of British monarchs from Cerdic First, King of Wessex to George VI. All the regal chronology and insights into the foibles of one of the world’s most interesting and resilient constitutional monarchies. 245pp in paperback. ONLY £4


69332 THE FIRST EMPEROR: China’s Terracotta Army edited by Jane Portal


Published in 2007, this first edition exhibition catalogue accompanied a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the British Museum. This important book explores the tangible evidence of Qin Shihuangdi’s existence, his great achievements and his vision. The chance discovery in 1974 of the life-sized Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of China (221-210BC) astounded the world. Haunting lines of warriors were revealed, frozen for all time in clay. For over 2,000 years they had silently guarded the vast tomb complex of one of the greatest military leaders in history. He rose from his position as King of the Qin in Western China to conquer the six other major states and control a vast territory. He ordered 120,000 families to move to his new capital and summoned 700,000 men from all over the empire to build his tomb. He bequeathed a legacy to China that long affected the rise and fall of dynasties, shaped the form of government and established firm, authoritarian ways of governing the land and its peoples. Jane Portal is joined by other leading historical scholars whose research is based on recent excavations and topics include imperial tours and mountain inscriptions, the afterlife of the universe, the Terracotta Army, armour and entertainment in the afterlife and more. With full list of exhibits, each is beautifully photographed in colour together with floor plans, paintings from an 18th century album showing a fanciful depiction of the first emperor’s imperial tour in glowing colour, jade beakers,


lacquerware, Qin gold, pottery, coins and a very useful timeline chronology. 240 very large pages on glossy paper. 250 illus. £40 NOW £12


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