Showing titles in Historical

In March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, lies dying at Richmond Palace. The queen's ministers cluster round her bedside, urging her to name her successor—something she had stubbornly resisted throughout her reign. She dies shortly afterwards and the throne of England passes peacefully from Tudor to Stuart. Or so we've been led to believe... But, as enthralling new research shows, this is not what happened. In the weeks and months that followed, history was literally re-written on the orders of James VI to hide the truth.

Toby Gutteridge was only 24 when he was shot through the neck while operating behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. He survived despite not breathing for at least 20 minutes. Back in the UK, doctors recommended that his life support machine be switched off, but with the defiant spirit that would define his recovery, Toby pulled through. Now quadriplegic, capable of movement only with his head, Toby has rebuilt his life.

Mengele describes the international search for the Nazi doctor in 1985 that ended in a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the dogged forensic investigation that produced overwhelming evidence that Mengele had died - but failed to convince those who, arguably, most wanted him dead. This is the riveting story of science without limits, escape without freedom, and resolution without justice.

Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993) was an international celebrity in her youth. But in 1963, the year of the Profumo Affair, the 11th Duke of Argyll shocked the country when he alleged that his adulterous wife had slept with over 80 men behind his back. The duke won a divorce, and Margaret was abandoned by most of her friends. Lyndsy Spence tells a tragic story of the life and downfall of this fascinatingly complex woman, and shows how she fell victim to a cruel husband, harsh social mores, and an unforgiving class.

Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt’s marriage is one of the most celebrated and scrutinized partnerships in presidential history. It raised eyebrows in their lifetimes and has only become more controversial since their deaths. From FDR’s lifelong romance with Lucy Mercer to Eleanor’s purported lesbianism - and many scandals in between - the American public has never tired of speculating about the ties that bound these two headstrong individuals.

When Louisa Deasey receives a message from a Frenchwoman called Coralie, who has found a cache of letters in an attic, written about Louisa’s father, neither woman can imagine the events it will set in motion. The letters, dated 1949, detail a passionate affair between Louisa’s father, Denison, and Coralie’s grandmother, Michelle, in post-war London. They spark Louisa to find out more about her father, who died when she was six.

Elizabeth I is one of England's most famous monarchs, whose story as the ‘Virgin Queen' is well known. But queenship was by no means a certain path for Henry VIII's younger daughter, who spent the majority of her early years as a girl with an uncertain future. Before she was three years old Elizabeth had been both a princess and then a bastard following the brutal execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn.

Over two centuries have passed since his death on 4 May 1799, yet Tipu Sultan’s contested legacy continues to perplex India and her contemporary politics. A fascinating and enigmatic figure in India’s military past, he remains a modern historian’s biggest puzzle as he simultaneously means different things to different people, depending on how one chooses to look at his life and its events.

Born one hundred years ago, Betty Webb MBE, LOH (Legion of Honour) has had a ringside seat to history. After graduating from school, she faced the usual limited opportunities for employment on offer to women at the time. However, with the war in full swing, fate intervened and in 1941, wanting to play her part in the war effort, Betty joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (Women’s Army). After being interviewed by an intelligence officer, she found herself at Euston station with her kit-bag, a travel warrant in her pocket and instructions to get off the train at Bletchley Park.

>i>Mosaic is compelling storytelling at its best - from the fascinating details of Polish-Jewish culture and the rivalries and dramas of family life, to its moving account of lives torn apart by war and persecution, this an extraordinary true story of a family, and of one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage.

A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England’s greatest novelists and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited.

Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live.

Queen Victoria, a woman of diminutive stature and superabundant temperament, gave her name to something more than an age. Elizabeth Longford's classic biography won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize when it was first published in 1964. The author's grasp of the era's politics, and her understanding of the problems which confront a woman who is not only a queen but also a mother of a large high-spirited family, make this audiobook unique to this day.

After sixty years, Paul Gregory finally tells everything he knows about the Oswalds and how he watched the soul of a killer take shape. He offers the intimate details of his time spent with Lee and wife Marina in their run-down duplex on Mercedes Street in Fort Worth, Texas, and his admission into the inner world of a young marriage before candidly assessing the murder that marked a turning point in our country’s history. As a scholar and skilled researcher, Gregory debunks the vast array of conspiracy theories by demonstrating that Lee Harvey Oswald did it and did it alone.

Horace 'Jim' Greasley was 20 years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters, and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in Northern France, with just 30 rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. He was taken prisoner on 25th May 1940.

Of all the colorful cutthroats who scoured the seas in search of plunder during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th century, none was more ferocious or notorious than Blackbeard. As unforgettable as his savage career was, much of Blackbeard's life has been shrouded in mystery - until now. Drawing on vivid descriptions of Blackbeard's attacks from his rare surviving victims, pirate expert Angus Konstam traces Blackbeard's career from its beginnings to his final defeat in a tremendous sea battle near his base at Ocracoke Island

Stanley Booth, a member of the Rolling Stones’ inner circle, met the band just a few months before Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool in 1968. He lived with them throughout their 1969 American tour, staying up all night with them listening to blues, talking about music, ingesting drugs, and consorting with groupies. His thrilling account culminates with their final concert at Altamont Speedway: a nightmare of beating, stabbing, and killing that would signal the end of a generation’s dreams of peace and freedom.

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicized affair with the poet Lord Byron—he was 24, she 26. Her phrase 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' became his lasting epitaph. Antonia Fraser's biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know.

An Unfinished Life is the first authoritative single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. Drawing upon firsthand sources, freshly unearthed documents, and never-before-opened archives, prizewinning historian Robert Dallek reveals more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy forever changing the way we think about his life, his presidency, and his legacy.

Few fathers and sons can ever have been so close as Winston Churchill and his only son, Randolph. Both showed flamboyant impatience, reckless bravery and generosity of spirit. The glorious and handsome Randolph was a giver and devourer of pleasure, a man who exploded into rooms, trailing whisky tumblers and reciting verbatim whole passages of classic literature. But while Randolph inherited many of his fathers' talents, he also inherited all of his flaws.