When a dying King Hussein shocked the world by picking his son rather than his brother, the longtime Crown Prince, to be the next King of Jordan, no one was more surprised than the young head of Special Forces who discovered his life was in for a major upheaval.
This investigation of religion by greatest psychoanalyst of the twentieth-century explores the role faith can take in the life of man, what it can mean to us and why as a species we are inclined towards it.
Soldier, explorer, mystic, guru and spy, Francis Younghusband began his colonial career as a military adventurer and became a radical visionary who preached free love to his followers.
Eminent Victorians marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked.
A prodigiously brilliant thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age, the political and social radical John Stuart Mill was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century.
How I Came to Know Fish (1974) is Ota Pavel's magical memoir of his childhood in CzechoslovakiaFishing with his father and his Uncle Prosek - the two finest fishermen in the world - he takes a peaceful pleasure from the rivers and ponds of his country.
Named Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, TLS, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail and Scotland on Sunday, Ian Kershaw's The End is a searing account of the final months of Nazi Germany, laying bare the fear and fanaticism that drove a nation to destruction.
'Perpetua shouted out with joy as the sword pierced her, for she wanted to taste some of the pain and she even guided the hesitant hand of the trainee gladiator towards her own throat'Lives of Roman Christian Women is a unique collection of letters and documents from the third to the fifth centuries, celebrating Christian women from across the Roman Empire.
THE EXTRAORDINARY TALE OF THE FATHER OF MODERN GEOLOGYHidden behind velvet curtains above a stairway in a house in London's Piccadilly is an enormous and beautiful hand-coloured map - the first geological map of anywhere in the world.
Gandhi's non-violent struggles against racism, violence, and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself.
FROM THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ABOUT A BOY 31 Songs is best-selling author Nicky Hornby's ultimate desert island disksThrough thirty-one songs that he either loves or has loved, Nick Hornby tells us what music means to his life.
From Thomas Becket's early life as a merchant's son and his time as the Archbishop of Canterbury to his assassination in the Cathedral itself, this enlightening book brings to life a colossal figure of British history.
Mrs Jordan's Profession is the acclaimed biography of Dora Jordan by bestselling author Claire Tomalin'Intelligent, finely made and wonderfully readable.
Over forty years of service to the United Nations - the last ten as Secretary-General - Kofi Annan has been at the centre of the major geopolitical events of our time.
One of the most controversial of all works to survive from ancient Rome, the Augustan History is our main source of information about the Roman emperors from 117 to 284 AD.
Discover the brave, shocking and remarkable true story of two RAF lieutenants' capture during the Gulf War'HEROISM UNDER A BLOOD RED SKY' Independent'THE MOST COMPELLING STORY OF THE GULF WAR' Daily Mail_________RAF Flight Lieutenants John Peters and John Nichol were shot down over enemy territory on their first mission of the Gulf War.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE 2020A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019A revelatory new biography of Adolf Hitler from the acclaimed historian Brendan SimmsAdolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong.
Winner of the Elizabeth Longford prize for Historical Biography'Engrossing' Claire Tomalin / 'Superb' Sunday Times / 'A triumph' Daily MailWhether honoured and admired or criticized and ridiculed, Florence Nightingale has invariably been misrepresented and misunderstood.
King of Prussia, German Emperor, war leader and defeated exile, Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of the most important - and most controversial - figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe.
A Moment of War is the magnificent conclusion to Laurie Lee s autobiographical trilogy begun in Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning .
The definitive biography of Jackie Kennedy, by Britain's best royal biographer Jackie Kennedy was a twentieth-century icon of glamour, elegance and grace.
Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown.
Ian Kershaw's HITLER allows us to come closer than ever before to a serious understanding of the man and of the catastrophic sequence of events which allowed a bizarre misfit to climb from a Viennese dosshouse to leadership of one of Europe's most sophisticated countries.
In the Second World War, Great Britain, the United States and Germany each produced one land force commander who stood out from the rest: Bernard Montgomery, George Patton and Erwin Rommel.
These nine biographies illuminate the careers, personalities and military campaigns of some of Rome's greatest statesmen, whose lives span the earliest days of the Republic to the establishment of the Empire.
One of the most influential - and best loved - spiritual autobiographies'I beg anyone who reads this account to bear in mind, for the love of the Lord, how wicked my life has been'Born in the Castilian town of vila in 1515, Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation when she was twenty-one.
'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting world-views.
A remarkable medieval woman's life and the earliest surviving autobiography in English, now updated with new materialThe story of the eventful life of Margery Kempe - medieval wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest surviving autobiography in English.
'Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tempted creatures, whose great moral task is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within' GORE VIDALAs private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, the scholar Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eyewitness accounts) to produce one of the most colourful biographical works in history.
This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror.
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who led the Macedonian army to victory in Egypt, Syria, Persia and India, was perhaps the most successful conqueror the world has ever seen.
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft is the acclaimed bestselling biography by Claire TomalinWinner of the Whitbread First Book PrizeWitty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day.
Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith - a passionate craftsman who was admired and resented by the most powerful political and artistic personalities in sixteenth-century Florence, Rome and Paris.
'The best life of Lawrence yet published' - The Express Lawrence was a brilliant propagandist, rhetorician and manipulator, who deliberately turned his life into a conundrum.
