Biography

Young Stalin 20% off

Sebag-Montefiore, Simon Normal price £25.00 — Discount price £20.00 — You save £5.00  <convert> 

Stalin remains one of the creators of our world - like Hitler, the personification of evil. Yet Stalin hid his past and remains mysterious. This enthralling biography that reads like a thriller finally unveils the secret but extraordinary journey of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar. What forms such a merciless psychopath and consummate politician? Was he illegitimate? Did he owe everything to his mother - was she whore or saint? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's chief gangster? Was he to blame for his wife's premature death? If he really missed the 1917 Revolution, how did he emerge so powerful? Born in poverty, exceptional in his studies, this charismatic but dangerous boy was hailed as a romantic poet, trained as a priest, but found his mission as fanatical revolutionary. The secret world of Joseph Conrad-style terrorism was Stalin's natural habitat, where he charmed his future courtiers, made the enemies he later liquidated, and abandoned his many mistresses and children. The mastermind of bank-robberies, protection-rackets, extortion, arson, piracy and murder was, uniquely, part-intellectual, part-brigand.

Michael Foot 20% off

Morgan, Kenneth O. Normal price £25.00 — Discount price £20.00 — You save £5.00  <convert> 

The authorised (but not uncritical) life of one of the great parliamentarians and orators of our times, the former Labour Party leader, now in his nineties, who is also an eminent man of letters. Michael Foot has been a controversial and charismatic figure in British public life, political and literary, for over sixty years. Emerging from a famous west-country Liberal dynasty, he rose as a crusading left-wing journalist in the late 1930s: 'The Guilty Men' (his book on the pre-war appeasers of Nazi Germany) is one of the great radical tracts of British history. He has been the voice of libertarian socialism in parliament, an international socialist and government minister, and was Labour leader for two-and-a-half -years between 1980 and 1983. His political friendships with people like Beaverbrook, Cripps, Aneurin Bevan and Barbara Castle were passionate and profound, but he also had a remarkable and quite different career as a man of letters, with Dean Swift, Tom Paine, Hazlitt, Byron, Wordsworth, Heine, Wells and Silone amongst his heroes. His two-volume life of Bevan is a triumph of political biography.

William Wilberforce 20% off

Hague, William Normal price £25.00 — Discount price £20.00 — You save £5.00  <convert> 

William Hague has written the life of William Wilberforce who was both a staunch conservative and a tireless campaigner against the slave trade to coincide with the bicentenary of its abolition in 1807. A formidable orator, campaigner and tactician, Yorkshire-born William Wilberforce spearheaded in Parliament the 20-year-long campaign to abolish one of the great abominations of the eighteenth century: the Atlantic slave trade. Starting with research which led him famously to decide in 1787 that 'so enormous, so dreadful and so irremediable did it appear that I resolved I would not rest until I had effected its abolition', Wilberforce and his small band of allies took on the most powerful vested interests in the land, as well as some formidable political opponents, to secure eventual triumph in the dramatic events of 1807. This is the extraordinary story of a politician (and good friend of William Pitt the Younger) who shunned all honours, titles and ministerial positions, yet became one of the most influential Britons in history.

Napoleon 15% off

Dwyer, Philip Normal price £20.00 — Discount price £17.00 — You save £3.00  <convert> 

Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power was neither inevitable nor smooth; it was full of mistakes, wrong turns and pitfalls. During his formative years, his identity was constantly shifting, his character ambiguous and his intentions often ill-defined. As a young and inexperienced general, he covered up his defeats and exaggerated his victories, never hesitating to blame others for his failures and failings. He was, however, highly ambitious, and it was this ruthless drive that advanced his career and his social status. This book examines the extraordinary evolution of Napoleon's character and the means by which at the age of thirty he became head of the most powerful country in Europe: from his Corsican origins to his French education, from his melancholy youth to his involvement in Corsican political faction-fighting during the Revolution, and from his flirtation with the radicals of the French Revolution to his first military campaigns in Italy and Egypt - and the political-military coup that brought him to power in 1799.

Tommy Lascelles's diaries begin with Edward VIII's abdication and end with George VI's death and his daughter Elizabeth's Coronation. In between we see George VI at work and play, a portrait more intimate than any other previously published.

The early part about Edward VIII is a damning profile; the bulk of the book is WWII as seen from a key courtier - Lascelles is first assistant and soon private secretary to the King and Queen. The last part, which Duff Hart-Davis, the editor, has headed 'Royal Crises', is post-war. Here is Queen Mary's concern over the marriage of her grandson George Harewood (Lascelles' 2nd cousin) and Princess Margaret's relationship with the equerry, Peter Townsend.

Isabella 20% off

Weir, Alison Normal price £8.99 — Discount price £7.19 — You save £1.80  <convert> 

In Newgate Street, in the city of London, once stood the magnificent church of a Franciscan monastery. Entirely paved with marble, this royal mausoleum, built in the 14th century, was set to rival Westminster Abbey. Among the many crowned heads buried, there was Isabella of France, Edward II's queen - one of the most notorious femme fatales in history. Today, according to popular legend, Isabella's angry ghost can be glimpsed among the church ruins, clutching the beating heart of her murdered husband. It's also said that her maniacal laughter can be heard on stormy nights at Castle Rising in Norfolk. In literature, she has fared no better. Christopher Marlowe's 'unnatural Queen, false Isabel' has also been described as 'a woman of evil character, a notorious schemer', and as the 'She-Wolf of France'. Tragic, cruel, tormented: how did Isabella acquire such a reputation? Isabella was born in 1292, the daughter of Philip IV of France and sister to three future French kings. A pawn in the game of international politics, she was married at the age of twelve to Edward II of England.

Talleyrand 20% off

Harris, Robin Normal price £30.00 — Discount price £24.00 — You save £6.00  <convert> 

A renegade bishop and aristocratic revolutionary, he helped make and break the power of Napoleon. With bravura he then dominated the Congress of Vienna which re-shaped Europe, but soon discovered that the Bourbons had, in his own words, 'learned nothing and forgotten nothing'. Disgrace followed. The Revolution of July 1830 finally brought a renewal of Talleyrand's former influence. So, in his late seventies, he arrived as ambassador in London, where he and his beautiful companion, the duchesse de Dino, dazzled and captivated British society. At the end, his famous death-bed reconciliation with the Catholic Church created almost as great a scandal as his notorious early life. In this authoritative new biography, Talleyrand emerges as always ahead of his times. He urged the advantages of peace, while Europe was racked by war; he consistently advocated political moderation, a free press and a liberal constitution; he was a forceful proponent of Anglo-French entente; he understood the importance of free trade as the route to national prosperity; and he foresaw the rise of America as a great power. Robin Harris depicts a statesman of truly world-class stature.

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