A spare and engaging chronicle of the summers spent in a small cabin on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland with her partner, who did the illustrations.
A revisionist account by the distinguished historian, which argues that Magellan was less of a hero and more of a treacherous, irresponsible, tyrannical adventurer.
Marten organised the trial of Charles I. During the years he spent in the Tower awaiting execution, he wrote letters to his mistress Mary Ward, which were stolen and used in an attempt to ex... read more
Nellie Melba, the diva from Queensland who transfixed the world for three decades in the roles of Violetta, Juliette, Rosina, Mimi and co... She was adored by gossip columnists and honoured ... read more
In 1864 the Austrian Archduke Maximilian went to assume a distant throne. The operatic episode ended in his death by firing squad, famously memorialised by Manet.
A strange and magical memoir of growing up in prosaic England with Anglo-Burmese parentage. Teak trees interweave oaks; myth and imagery chase each other through the author's odyssey through... read more
Hannah Arendt's first book was about one of the most important and complicated figures in German romanticism, although her gender and Jewishness set her uneasily amongst her contemporaries.
The legendary Russian pianist, friend of Pasternak and other greats, who fell from grace to live precariously on the fringes of Soviet society. EW is the author of fine biographies of Shosta... read more
A memoir by the Egytian woman who set up an independent book shop with a friend and her sister in 2002 - ten years later it had grown to include ten shops and 150 employees. Full of the nois... read more
The rise of Suleyman the Magnificent is told with a clever balance of the close (viziers, lovers, military commanders) and the distant (Venice, popes, emperors, Christendom and its interneci... read more
The story of PayPal, a Silicon Valley startup with a few scruffy tech-heads at the helm. It is now one of the most successful and ubiquitous companies in the world, whose alumni aren't doing... read more
A riotous memoir of attempting to mount a Bacon exhibition in the last days of the USSR; apparatchiks, honey-traps, the KGB - has the author's liver ever recovered?
Rewarding as a study on Bacon - it gets closer to understanding his enigma than anything has since - this memoir is also a tribute to Sylvester's clarity and verve. A re-issue, this was firs... read more