A spectacular, elegant, brilliant portrait of skulduggery, murder and sex in Renaissance Florence Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 1531 after years of brutal war and political intrigue, the bastard son of a Medici Duke and a half-negro maidservant rides into Florence.
Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today this is the comprehensive literary biography of the greatest WW1 poetWilfred Owen tragically died in battle just a few days before the Armistice.
SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERDear Leader contains astonishing new insights about North Korea which could only be revealed by someone working high up in the regime.
Part thriller, part psychological drama, part puzzle with a strange twist, The Mascot is one of the most astonishing stories to emerge from the Second World War.
Imprisoned in a fairy-tale castle and under constant threat of execution by his ruthless captor an 18th century apothecary struggled to realize the alchemist's dream.
In the bleakest years of the Second World War when it appeared that nothing could slow the advance of the German army, Hitler set his sights on the Mediterranean island of Crete, the ideal staging ground for domination of the Middle East.
A dramatic, sparkling tale of sex, glamour, intrigue, romance and heartbreak, England's Mistress traces the rise and rise of the gorgeous Emma Hamilton.
Our perception of Victoria the Queen is coloured by portraits of her older, widowed self - her dour expression embodying the repressive morality propagated in her time.
Unruly Times is a superlative portrait of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, and a fascinating exploration of the Romantic Movement and the dramatic events that shaped it.
'Deserves to be on the same shelf as Anne Frank's Diary and to find as huge a readership' - Philip RothMihail Sebastian was a promising young Jewish writer in pre-war Bucharest, a novelist, playwright, poet and journalist who counted among his friends the leading intellectuals and social luminaries of a sophisticated Eastern European culture.
The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here.
This enthusiastically received collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciation of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world - sometimes in both.
Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes.
An indispensable guide to Islamic political thought from Muhammad to the twenty-first centuryThe first encyclopedia of Islamic political thought from the birth of Islam to today, this comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible reference provides the context needed for understanding contemporary politics in the Islamic world and beyond.
The critically acclaimed memoir from the well-loved broadcaster Gerry AndersonGerry Anderson broadcast every day out of Londonderry, which once upon a time was called Doire Colmcille, evolving, under the influence of the English, into LondonDerry in the 17th century.
When her two daughters were approaching the finish of their education Marie Herbert felt the need to mark the end of the child-rearing phase of her life by a rite of passage, a way to find herself a new place in the grand scheme of things.
Forged in the Dustbowl of the 1930s, in an America crippled by the Great World Recession, this humble man found solace in song, and soon those songs became the voice of the People men and women who had seen their lives deracinated and destroyed by the vicissitudes of global economic forces beyond their control.
In 2008 Major Russell Lewis commanded a company of two hundred soldiers from the British Army's legendary Parachute Regiment on a six-month tour in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan.
