A valuable reminder of the remarkable rise and achievements of the uneducated orphan farm boy who became Minister of Labour during WW2, and one of the prime architects of West Germany, NATO ... read more
The author is a US journalist who, in 2016, accompanied an Afghan driver determined to leave his country for the West. It is an extraordinary account of how this ghastly odyssey works from t... read more
Daughter of James I & VI, she briefly became Queen of Bohemia before being deposed along with her husband, Frederick V, Elector Palatine. This fine new biography of 'the Winter Queen' portra... read more
Huygens developed the theory of light travelling as a wave, invented the mechanism for the pendulum clock, and discovered the rings of Saturn - via a telescope that he had also invented. His... read more
My theory and practice is to say yes to life and then I'll see how I manage along the way. Part memoir, part manifesto of a fiercely independent spirit; intelligent and lyrical.
BA, aka Lady Black, has led "more colourful lives than the most exotic Cheshire Cat", quoth Sir Elton John. Trailed as a candid account of a fairly kaleidoscopic existence, from not-quite-ra... read more
Witty, tangential, self-deprecating, Amis's autobiography is not a chronological procession of memories but a frenzy of footnotes, asides, literary zigzags through time and space. It's funny... read more
Reading this 'novel' is like going to stay with an old uncle, one with lots of stories to tell but nobody to tell them to. Little Keith - as Hitchens used to call Amis - has been waiting for... read more
The author is Anatoly Kuznetsov, who grew up in Kiev. He documented as a boy the appalling massacre of Jews, Ukrainians and Russians by Nazi forces in 1941. First published in Russian (in a ... read more