Historiska & politiska biografier

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mistresses of Cliveden, an enthralling, sumptuous and surprising history of the Rothschild women

The SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER - now in paperback

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle AwardThe acid, hilarious, confessional, provocative bestselling memoirs of our greatest contrarian, and the author of god Is Not Great. 'If Hitchens didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to invent him.' Ian McEwan

This memoir is the extraordinary story of how one Iranian woman overcame enormous adversity to fight for what she truly believed and founded a major movement for women around the world with the simple removal of her hijab.

'It doesn't get better' - that was the unofficial motto of Red Platoon, stuck at Command Post Keating, one of the most isolated and dangerous US army bases in Afghanistan, in the middle of a free-fire zone.

Based on explosive new evidence, bestselling author David Talbot tells America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA.

From the acclaimed author of Former People, a definitive biography of Rasputin, published to coincide with the centenary of his murder.

ANNE LISTER IS THE INSPIRATION FOR GENTLEMAN JACK, A NEW BBC/HBO SERIES BY SALLY WAINWRIGHT, STARRING SURANNE JONES.'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read for anyone interested in the history of gender, sexuality, and the intimate lives of women' SARAH WATERS'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUEWhen this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told. Anne Lister defied the role of nineteenth-century womanhood: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveller and lesbian - a woman who lived her life on her own terms.'[Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. She was a woman exercising conscious choice. She controlled her cash and her body. At a time when women had to marry, or be looked after by a male relative, and when all their property on marriage passed to their husband, Anne Lister not only dodged the traps of being female, she set up a liaison with another woman that enhanced her own wealth and left both of them free to live as they wished . . . The diaries gave me courage' JEANETTE WINTERSONThese diaries include the years 1816-1824. The second volume, NO PRIEST BUT LOVE, is available in ebook.

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 BC aged thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India. His achievements were unparalleled - he had excelled as leader to his men, founded eighteen new cities and stamped the face of Greek culture on the ancient East. The myth he created is as potent today as it was in the ancient world. Robin Lane Fox's superb account searches through the mass of conflicting evidence and legend to focus on Alexander as a man of his own time. Combining historical scholarship and acute psychological insight, it brings this colossal figure vividly to life.

Now at last in a single, abridged volume the definitive life.When the two volumes of Ian Kershaw s biography of Hitler, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis were published, they were immediately greeted around the world as the essential works on perhaps the most malign figure ever to hold power in modern Europe. In the face of considerable demand for such an edition, Kershaw has now created a single volume version. The result is a frightening, fascinating narrative of how a bitter provincial failure from an obscure corner of Austria rose to unparalleled power; how the half-baked, contemptible ideas of a vagrant former art student coalesced into an ideology that for twelve horrific years shaped the fate of millions; and how both in his determination to impose his will militarily and to fend off his many enemies he unleashed a genocidal Armageddon. No one individual can stand in as the scapegoat for the vast social, technological, economic and military forces that shape our societies but if ever there was one man whose ideas and personality shaped and cowed those forces, as well as embodying them, it was Hitler. This is his story and Kershaw tells it with unique authority, and with moral anger.

From the admiralty to the miner's strike, from the Battle of Britain to eventual victory over Nazi Germany, Churchill oversaw some of the most important events the world has ever seen. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for his personal writing and cautioning against a powerful Soviet Russia in his later years in office, his larger-than-life and complex personality has continued to fascinate writers and historians.In this comprehensive biography, Roy Jenkins faithfully presents these events, while also managing to convey the contradictions and quirks in Churchill's character. Weaving together in-depth analysis and brilliant historical research, Jenkins has succeeded in crafting this magnificent one-volume account packed with insights that only a fellow politician can convey. Bringing to life the statesman, writer, speaker and leader, Churchill is packed with insights into one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

A graphic novel version of the dramatic life and untimely death of German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg

The Oscar-winning film about the legendary French queen, directed by Sofia Coppola, is based on this magnificent book by bestselling historian Antonia Fraser.

The classic eye-witness account of Nazi Germany by Hitler's Armaments Minister and right-hand man.

Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, swashbuckler, poet, self-made gentleman, bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was a notorious lover of the Western world. This title contains the highlights of Casanova's life: his youth in Venice as a precocious ecclesiastic; his dabbling in the occult; his imprisonment and escape; and his amorous conquests.

For 22 years, Dr Zhisui Li was Mao Tse-tung's personal physician, confidant and companion. In this biography Li provides insights into social and political events in China, and details of Mao's private life - from his sexual appetite to the political effects of his aims, fears and idiosyncrasies.

The bestselling story of Britain's most courageous and most famous flyer, the Second World War hero Sir Douglas Bader.

He used the attraction of the great fair - and his own devilish charms - to lure scores of young women to their deaths. These two disparate but driven men are brought to life in this mesmerizing, murderous tale of the legendary Fair that transformed America and set it on course for the twentieth century .

On War is a book on military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830. It is one of the most important books on political-military analysis and strategy ever written.

An award-winning critical biography of Finland's towering leader, charting his statecraft, his political journey and his strategic bravado, carving out independence between Stalin and Hitler.