Catherine was the sister of Christian; in WW2 she worked with the French Resistance but was arrested in 1944 and sent to Ravensbrück. Miraculously she survived, and was awarded both the Cro... read more
Born into an English Catholic family in 1538, she was married into the Spanish Court. After her husband's death she took on the role of unofficial ambassador in Spain, keeping on the good si... read more
Summer, 1865: Dostoevsky was stuck in a Wiesbaden hotel, ill and unable to pay. Combining aspects of his own fix with the story of a notorious Parisian murderer, he wrote a novel that made h... read more
A hotchpotch of journal entries from the last seven years to do with living around Paris, surprisingly free of the angst found in much of her other writing.
One of the great patrons of the Renaissance, creator of perhaps the most remarkable library outside the Vatican, the Duke of Urbino was also the most successful and feared mercenary of the a... read more
Born Elizabeth Forbes in 1912, he lived as a boy/man and had the gender on his birth certificate altered in order to marry. When his older brother died in 1965, his cousin contested Ewan's i... read more
A thorough, readable biography of the Queen's grandfather that seeks to understand how this supposedly dull man navigated the monarchy successfully through a succession of crises.
This little book is a delightful treat for Advent which tells the story of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square and its relationship with the honourable, courageous Norwegian King Haakon V... read more
A memoir by the former President of the Supreme Court. This remarkable and courageous woman, who took up law when told at school that she wasn't clever enough to study history, obtained a st... read more