The pitfalls of cultural fantasies of the north: this cultural history, rich with travellers' tales and legends, is entertaining but also disturbing as myth, reality and politics rub uncomfo... 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
An elegant exploration of how British Prime Ministers, from Eden to Blair and beyond, have engaged in the Middle East under the misconception that they could help solve disputes because they... 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 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 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
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.
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