Son of Edward III, brother to the Black Prince, father to Henry IV: the man with the levers of power, to whom Shakespeare gave the speech about 'this sceptered isle'.
A memoir of his time at Slough Comprehensive, aka Eton. Okwonga is a writer and journalist now based in Berlin, a city "that leaves you alone" and the location of his recent auto-fiction 'I... read more
Another scandalous woman? Well, when she went on trial at Westminster Hall for bigamy in April 1776, the story is said to have drawn more attention in society than the American War of Indepe... read more
It is 30 years since Hazel Holt's biography; many more since David Cecil and Philip Larkin championed her novels. The surprise, perhaps, is that she is read more now than when she first publ... read more
It seems that the stalwart defender of Imperial narratives and values was a compulsive and manipulative womanizer. Thousands of newly discovered letters show an unexpected side to the histor... read more
The author moved to Japan aged 21, immersing herself in language and culture with such success that she is now a literary translator. Her route there was by no means straightforward; this bo... read more
Frost is a prominent designer/decorator who set up the Aids Ark charity with his partner Jeremy Norman, the man who set up the Embassy Club and Heaven. They met in the 1980s, when AIDS began... read more
A riveting portrait of the man who sold many of the books that drove the Renaissance, who knew where manuscripts were, arranged for copies to be made and trod carefully among rival ruling fa... read more
Better remembered now as Vanessa Bell's husband, CB's 1914 'Art' was a ground-breaking re-evaluation that stood at the centre of early C20th art. This fine biography reclaims his significanc... read more
The acclaimed graphic novel that took France by storm, about a year in the life of a 10 yr-old schoolgirl. A brilliantly sharp look at our times, tender, wry, funny, extremely direct. Ages 1... read more
The marvellous Attlee takes us on the journey, through space and time, of one violin, whose voice "was powerful enough to unbuckle joints". Cremona, Russia, Venice, Alpine forests... (Her la... read more
The author's father was an American soldier who fell in love with a Japanese girl on the devastated island. This affecting book probes her own complex feeling and the attitudes among which s... read more
A new assessment of Alan Brooke, first Viscount Alanbrooke, which examines his treatment at the hands of historians as well as his importance to Churchill.
The rich and varied life of the woman who introduced smallpox vaccination into the British Isles, a friend of Swift and Pope, and who is famous for her letters, especially those sent from Tu... read more
A life of the indefatigable and intrepid Bird (1831-1904) who travelled in her mid-life to Australia, the United States, Hawaii, Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaya; later sh... read more