2 Historical Biography
ethics is born. He devoted his life to learning, because he believed that education was the surest road to happiness. In fact, he spent his whole life questioning and teaching. In his later years, as his home city of Athens slid into civic unrest, there was a backlash against him. He was tried and condemned to death, which he faced with great courage. Still, in the 21st century, we can benefit from his philosophy, and a good place to start is with this clear, concise biography. 208 pages.
$25.95 NOW £7 74894 GEORGE STEPHENSON: A Shire Book
by Adrian Jarvis Amongst the most famous engineers of all time, George Stephenson’s ‘rags to riches’ story is a one-of-a-kind. Many of the works attributed to him should in fact be credited to young subordinates, not least his son Robert. Much of the work of innovative engineers for this period lay not in the work itself
but in persuading people that such work was desirable and necessary. Here George excels. The book covers places to visit, a chronological summary, what George Stephenson was really like and the work of his biographers, later life and retirement, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and his early railway projects including the safety lamp or Davy lamp he invented with Sir Humphry Davy. 48pp. Colour and other illus. Paperback.
£5.99 NOW £3
74705 FROM SPLENDOUR TO REVOLUTION by Julia Gelardi
Four women with Romanov connections lived through the Russian Revolution and were profoundly affected by its tragic events. Maria Feodorovna, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, married Tsar Alexander III of Russia and became the mother of Tsar Nicholas II, murdered at
Ekaterinburg with his family. Maria’s distress at the abdication of her son in 1917 is vividly described, as is her enmity with her son’s wife the Tsarina, whose dependence on the sinister Rasputin led to the desperate situation in which Rasputin was finally murdered. Maria’s sister-in-law Olga Constantinovna was already a member of the Romanov dynasty when she became the wife of King George I of Greece, Maria’s brother, at the age of 16. Olga was famous for her charitable enterprises throughout Greece’s turbulent political upheavals and she finally died almost a pauper. The Romanov daughter of Alexander II, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, sister of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II, became Queen Victoria’s daughter-in-law when she married Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. Finally Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna married into the Romanov dynasty and was close to the royal family at the time of the murder of Rasputin, for which her brother Dmitri was exiled by the Tsar as a conspirator. The exile saved his life, and Maria Pavlovna also fled the country. A fascinating and vivid read. 482pp, paperback, genealogies.
£14.99 NOW £6
74722 ROYAL STUARTS: A History of the Family that Shaped Britain by Allan Massie
Those readers who like their history unromanticised, unexpurgated and ‘warts and all’ will rejoice at this panoramic description which was lauded by The Daily Telegraph as dripping with ‘blood, cruelty and tears... evocative, visceral - haunting’. Drawing on the accounts
of historians past and present, as well as novels and plays, here is the complete story of the Stuarts, exploring their lineage from the first king to the last and following them from the salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England and eventually to exile. It was one of history’s bloodiest and most tumultuous reigns, during which the family acted as a major player in the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War, the Restoration and more. The book brings to vivid life such characters as Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I and Bonnie Prince Charlie, exposing their strong affections and fierce rivalries. Related with great panache, this is the gripping true story of backstabbing, betrayal and ambition gone awry. 370 pages with a detailed genealogy of the House of Stuart.
$26.99 NOW £6.50
75094 PITT THE ELDER: Man of War
by Edward Pearce
Posterity has invested William Pitt, first earl of Chatham, and Britain’s Prime Minister, with mystique, and has presented him as heroic, a titan, a brilliant statesman and military strategist. Here, in a densely written, meticulously researched account of war and high politics in the second half of the 18th century,
starting with Britain’s momentous victory against the French at the end of the Seven Years War, the author scrutinizes Pitt’s reputation. He investigates the extent to which Britain’s victories and imperial advances can actually be credited to him personally, and not to a coalition of commanders, naval administrators and foreign allies. Here too is Pitt the man - vain, ruthless, tortured with physical illness and succumbing to mental collapse. This book is a masterful portrait of a master showman - arguably the most powerful minister ever to guide Britain’s foreign policy - which, surprisingly, demonstrates the failings of the ‘Great Commoner’ as an effective national leader. 372 paperback pages with b/w contemporary plates. £12.99 NOW £5
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67858 INTIMATE LETTERS OF ENGLAND’S KINGS
by Margaret Saunders Covering the period in history from the Tudor Dynasty to the House of Hanover, this book was first published in 1959 and is here in facsimile reprint for today’s audience. The specially selected letters show aspects of each Sovereign’s personal character and
circumstances perhaps not commonly known and the royal scribes’ feelings and reactions, vital or ephemeral, regarding happenings in their private or public lives. The spelling generally has been updated with modern usage except in the case of the letters of Henry VII where the ancient words and quaint phraseology has been retained. Brief details of each sovereign’s personal history has been included to refresh the reader’s memory. Starting with Henry VII (1457-1509), ending with William IV (1765-1837), it is an illuminating insight into the lives of 13 kings and includes Henry VIII’s declaration of love to Anne Boleyn and James II’s sarcastic letter to his perfidious son-in-law, William of Orange. Humorous, charming, tragic, the letters show sharp contrasts and are chosen for their human appeal. With simplified genealogical table and lists of letters and sources. 240pp in large softback with 16 pages of photos. £15.99 NOW £6.50
74712 LOVE AND CAPITAL: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel
Jenny Marx was descended from Prussian and Scottish nobility and like her husband Karl was a highly educated intellectual, able to hold her own in the passionate political debates of the day. The Marxes were prolific letter-writers and for this study, the first to concentrate
wholly on Marx’s wife and children, the author has consulted many unpublished documents. The story starts when Jenny, a beautiful young woman who was at the centre of the social life of Trier, decided to break off an engagement to a young army officer and instead concentrate on women’s rights and Enlightenment philosophy. It was during her studies that she met Karl Marx, the son of the town’s first Jewish lawyer. When they married in 1843 Karl was already a known political revolutionary, and by 1851 they were exiled in a two- room attic in London’s Dean Street. The love between Karl and Jenny survived poverty, social ostracism, the deaths of several children and even Marx’s fathering another woman’s child with Helene Demuth. The book delves deep into the story of modern capitalism and reveals that the savage battles Marx’s daughters fought on behalf of working people made his own struggles look relatively tame. The family ate, slept and breathed economic, social and political revolution. The author finds Marx’s predictions about the weaknesses of the capitalist system to be unexpectedly accurate in many ways, although his dream of a classless society was never likely to achieve reality. 706pp, photos. $35 NOW £8
74720 PIRATE HUNTER OF THE CARIBBEAN: The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers
by David Cordingly With rich and vivid details and plenty of action, one of the world’s foremost experts on pirate history, as well as being the author of the perennial favourite Under the Black Flag, brings us the thrilling story of the man who fought the real pirates
of the Caribbean. Sea captain, privateer and colonial governor, Woodes Rogers was one of the early 18th century’s boldest and most colourful characters. This thrilling book is the definitive account of his incredible life. A fearless adventurer who lost his fortune as often as his temper, he battled scurvy, hurricanes and mutinies - capturing, along the way, a treasure galleon and rescuing the shipwrecked Alexander Selkirk, whose four- year ordeal on a remote Pacific island inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe. Woodes Rogers was eventually appointed Governor of the Bahamas where he found himself in charge of a string of islands being plundered by raucous felons from the notorious Blackbeard to female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read who escaped the hangman’s noose only by stating that they were pregnant. An exciting 301 rough cut pages illustrated in colour, 16.5 x 24cm. $26 NOW £7
74713 A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: Victoria, Albert, and the Death that Changed
the British Monarchy by Helen Rappaport In a letter to the King of Prussia, Queen Victoria wrote: ‘For me, life came to an end on 14 December. My life was dependent on his, I had no thoughts except of him; my whole striving was to please him, to be less unworthy of him!’ This
was a woman obsessed with her living husband and, after his death, with his enduring place in history. Trawling through letters, diaries and memoirs from the Royal Archives and other neglected sources, as well as the newspapers of the day, the author offers an entirely new perspective on this compelling historical psychodrama during the crucial final months of the Prince’s life and the first long, dark ten years of the Queen’s retreat from the public view. After his untimely death both Victoria and her nation were plunged into a state of sorrow so profound that this one event would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy. It was not only that Britain had lost a prince. During his 20-year marriage, Albert had increasingly performed the function of king in all but name. The extreme outpouring
of grief after his death would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana 136 years later. This gripping account also throws light on the true nature of Albert’s chronic physical condition, revealing how he suffered all his life, and overturning for good the myth that he died of typhoid fever. 336 pages with colour and b/w illustrations, notes and appendix: What Killed Prince Albert?
$26.99 NOW £7
75163 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. At times the Pembrokes had both threatened the authority of the Crown and acted as its brutally efficient and violent agents. Ambivalent in the extreme, they were at differing and the same times both flag bearers for what was good and honourable in ancient England and time servers in some of the most corrupt courts England has ever known. 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. Magisterially written and beautifully balanced, here is a brilliant account of the Elizabethan “Golden Age” and the relative chaos of the Jacobean period, retold through the seesawing fortunes of the Pembroke dynasty. 308pp with 16 pages of mostly colour plates. Paperback, very small remainder mark.
$15.99 NOW £4.50
74962 HENRY: The Prince Who Would Turn Tyrant by David Starkey
The Sunday Times said, ‘Writing with a mixture of tabloid verve and original scholarship, peppering every page with pungent wit and yet never skimping on the
detail...the best political history of the reign of Henry VIII so far...’ Larger than life in every sense, Henry VIII was Britain’s most
absolute monarch. Yet he was not born to rule. A Renaissance man of exceeding musical, intellectual and athletic talent, the young king’s promising reign transformed into a quest for fame as obsessive as that of any modern celebrity. His search for glory and yearning for a male heir drove Henry into dangerous territory. A fresh-faced Henry stars in this bright, colloquial biography, loaded with anecdotes. Photos, some in colour plus an exclusive interview with David Starkey on the making of the TV series of the same name. 413pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £6
71300 DISCOVERING FAMOUS GRAVES by Lynn Pearson
Find out where Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles is buried (Hendon), the many famous names in Highgate Cemetery like Lizzie Siddal and Jacob Bronowski, John Wesley in Islington and Arnold Bennett in Burslem, Agatha Christie, the Churchills, John Buchan, Jerome K. Jerome, Max Beerbohm, Pocahontas, John Betjeman, Capability Brown, Rob Roy, Ian Fleming, Screaming Lord Sutch, Edith Nesbit and many others on this unique touring guide. With location specifics. 1,000 graves of famous Britons at home and abroad, and also of a few foreigners buried on British soil. 80 photos and woodcuts. 152pp in paperback.
£8.99 NOW £4
74556 HENRY JAMES: His Women and His Art
by Lyndall Gordon Henry James’s friendship with Constance Fenimore Woolson (great niece of James Fenimore Cooper author of The Last of the Mohicans) ended in 1894 when he tried to drown a boatload of her dresses in a Venetian lagoon. She had fallen to her death three months before. It was an elusive friendship that echoed his mysterious relationship
with Minnie Temple who had died 20 years earlier. The thesis is that the two women’s influence was so profound that they can be seen as partners, even collaborators in his art. Their ties to him were not sexual but imaginative. 40 illus, 528pp, paperback.
£14.99 NOW £5
73113 HELEN OF TROY: Goddess, Princess, Whore by Bettany Hughes
Immortalised by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey, Helen of Troy is the mythical perfection of beauty, the woman who left her Greek husband Menelaus for the Trojan Paris, thus causing a major war. She has been portrayed as princess, high priestess, goddess, mother and whore, an agent of both life and death. Hughes examines literary and artistic portrayals from classical lyrics to flamboyant Romantic canvases. The seventh century historian Isidore identified the rape of Helen (some versions make it a real rape) as one of the 132 defining moments that shaped history. Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Berlioz and Tippett are among the numerous creative geniuses who have fallen under her spell. Hughes looks at Bronze Age texts and the Hittites and Mycenaeans. 458pp, maps, timeline, b/w and colour photos. Apologies for sticker.
£20 NOW £7.50
74742 JANE AUSTEN: A Celebration of her Life and Work
by Lauren Nixon Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Sense and Sensibility, this beautiful and informative book brings together aspects of her life, work and lasting legacy. There are synopses and detailed character
portraits of all Jane Austen’s works, and the people and places that inspired her, including a description of each of the houses she lived in. Her family life and upbringing are minutely examined for evidence of the effects these may have had on her writing. Included is a carefully chosen selection of her personal correspondence although, sadly, it is known that her sister destroyed a great many letters. To emphasize Jane Austen’s lasting impact on literature today, her ongoing popularity in film and television is discussed. The glorious colour images and photographs on every page capture the fashions, the romance, the classic styles and the nuances of the Regency period, and include the elegant illustrations of Charles E. Brock and Hugh Thomson as well as a watercolour study of Jane sitting on a grassy bank, painted by her sister Cassandra in 1804. 240 pages 30.5cm x 23cm with gorgeous illustrations in colour and b/w, timelines, family trees. £20 NOW £7.50
73889 CAESAR: A Life in Western Culture by Maria Wyke
His Caesarian birth, the conquest of Gaul, crossing the Rubicon, his love affair with Cleopatra and foretold death on the Ides of March, in the Middle Ages he was a “pagan saint” and kings, emperors and popes would incorporate him into their family trees. Shakespeare and Handel found his life to be the stuff of high drama, and Napoleon, Mussolini and the Borgias looked to his example for practical lessons in how to seize and hold on to power. With the Queen of Egypt and his best friend Mark Antony he was one corner of the most famous love triangle in history, the archetypal tale of the interplay of sex, luxury and power, and his increasing power and the manner of his death has become the watchword for explorations of ambition, tyranny, liberty and betrayal. A reflective account of how political and historical imagination works using one of Ancient Rome’s most important characters. B/w illus, 287pp.
£18.99 NOW £6
73107 ARTHUR: The King in the West by R. W. Dunning
This intriguing volume traces the growth of the legend of King Arthur and his link with the West Country, bringing together archaeology, early and relatively recently written sources, tradition and myth. The book focuses in particular on the ancient Abbey of Glastonbury and the South Cadbury hill fort, one a possible link with the Dark Age Arthur, the other well known for its exploitation of the hero king and the Grail legend. 96 paperback pages, colour photos.
£14.99 NOW £3.50 Contents
ART & ARCHITECTURE BIOGRAPHY / AUTOBIOGRAPHY BUSINESS & COMPUTERS CHILDREN’S COLLECTABLES / ANTIQUES CRIME
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