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
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
A revisionist account by the distinguished historian, which argues that Magellan was less of a hero and more of a treacherous, irresponsible, tyrannical adventurer.
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.
Howard (1907-1987) served as an intelligence officer in WW2 throughout the Italian campaign. He married Lelia Caetani of Ninfa, where Bassani wrote a large part of The Garden of the Finzi Co... read more
Manon Gropius (1916-1935) was the daughter of Walter and Alma. Her attempts to free herself from maternal expectations and the recurrent image of herself in her stepfather's novels are movin... read more
Portraits of ER from 1926 to the present, drawn from the huge collection at the National Portrait Gallery - Cecil Beaton, Annie Leibowitz, David Lichfield, Andy Warhol and many others.
He left his young family in the '60s for sex, drugs, and enlightenment with the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; he would reappear from time to time, bringing chaos in his wake.
Translated from the French, a biography of the complex Swiss founder of the Red Cross, a devout Christian and social activist, but also an ambitious - and unsuccessful - businessman.
From London in the Swinging Sixties to a hippie retreat in the Outer Hebrides: she and her partner travelled - slowly - by horse and wagon. She gave up music, disillusioned with the pop indu... read more
The spark for this remarkable memoir was a scribbled list of paintings that belonged to the Parisian author's great-grandparents - Degas, Renoir, Monet, Tiepolo etc - of which she knew nothi... read more
Slim but far-reaching memoir of the author's brush with suicide, framed as the consequence of familial trauma and isolation. Superbly written, this bears honourable comparison with William S... read more
Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch & Philippa Foot: they got to know one another as Oxford students during WW2, and went on to have huge influence on subsequent decades.
The author is a US journalist who, in 2016, accompanied an Afghan driver determined to leave his country for the West. It is an extraordinary account of how this ghastly odyssey works from t... read more