Böcker av Piers Brendon

In its Victorian heyday, when Britannia ruled the waves, the British Empire consisted of 58 countries with a population of 400 million. Covering 14 million square miles, or about a quarter of the earth's surface, it was seven times larger than the territories of Rome at their greatest extent. By then it was a far-flung but loosely-amalgamated assortment of dominions and dependencies that dwarfed its tiny base.

'After my death,' George V said of his eldest son and heir, 'the boy will ruin himself within twelve months.' The forecast proved uncannily accurate. He was never crowned king. In choosing the woman he loved over his royal birthright, Edward shook the monarchy to its foundations. This biography traces Edward's tumultuous public and private life.

Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch, Prince Charles, Mick Jagger - four figures who have illuminated our age. This title reveals how each one played out a major theme in the new Elizabethan medley.

No empire has been larger or more diverse than the British Empire. Within a generation this mighty structure collapsed, often amid bloodshed, leaving behind a scatter of sea-girt dependencies and a ghost of an empire, the Commonwealth, overshadowed by Imperial America.

In his account of four characters, each of whose importance was global, each of them, in their different ways, 'monsters', Piers Brendon writes wittily, sharply and succinctly - and brilliantly illuminates an age.