Born an Austrian, Schulz lived as a Pole and died as a Jew, shot while carrying home a loaf of bread. 60 years after his death, the discovery of his murals generated controversy.
After losing five family members in as many months, RH began to run. She also began to research the trailblazing, tenacious women who first did outdoor sports in the late 1800s - often in lo... read more
This is a bewitching and sympathetic account of a deliciously odd, brilliantly clever man. He was prone to headstands, toothbrushing and - like Lord Lundy - to tears.
The first biography of one of the great codebreakers: she played a key role in both world wars, and also deciphered the letters of both Beethoven and Mozart.
The author and her brother spent a decade at sea; at sixteen she made it ashore in New Zealand, effectively abandoned by her parents. A startling and riveting memoir.
The Chinese-born novelist moved to Britain and then to the US. Her memoir glints with her fascination with the West as well as her nostalgia for the East.
Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt was the French archaeologist who, in the 1960s, faced down both de Gaulle and Nasser to dismantle and move a dozen temples - including the vast Abu Simbel - t... read more
Edie's older sister attempts to understand how her younger sibling progressed from an isolated, privileged Californian childhood to become Warhol's muse.
As the ultra-conservative director of the FBI for nearly 50 years, Hoover is arguably more responsible for the emergence of the US far right than anyone else. Who was he? What happened?
The 'double life' of the title refers to Eliot's relationship with George Lewes, the married man with whom she lived for nearly a quarter of a century. CC looks at the ways in which this sca... read more
Inspired by Darwin and von Humboldt, ARW travelled to the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago. He published a paper on natural selection in 1858, a year before Darwin's Origin of Species... read more
A group biography of four magnificent and prodigiously talented women composers who, though famous in their lifetimes for their works, are now ghosts in the canon. All were born between 1858... read more
A fascinating exploration of travel in C17th India: merchant-cum-gentleman Thomas Roe is whisked away as ambassador to Mughal India where he plays the dangerous (and often disappointing) gam... read more
Brought up in Germany as a good National Socialist, KF was repatriated with her half-English mother to England. A poignant account of the C20th political buffetings navigated by three genera... read more
KL was Creative Director at Chanel for thirty-five years; as seen through glasses darkly. WM, a well known fashion journalist, knew him for many years.
A memoir by the half-Italian, half-Latvian writer about returning to Riga, to her childhood there and to her murdered Jewish father, told through the careful piecing-together of memory, docu... read more
Gorer met Fran?ois 'F?ral' Benga, the great Senegalese dancer, in the interwar artistic community of Paris in 1934. This is a re-issue of Gorer's remarkable account of their travels around W... read more
An affecting memoir of the author's sister and half-sister, one of who whom was consumed by addiction, leaving the others to wrestle with grief and guilt.
On his impoverished childhood and the Christian ethics that together informed his political career. He was MP for Birkenhead for forty years and now sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lo... read more
Uses Beethoven's music to tell the story of his life; a zestful account, told in short chapters though a hundred pieces of music and recommended recordings.
An entertaining and affecting memoir of the great pianist's youth and early training, which began in a suburb of post-war Liverpool. Told with candour and simplicity.