Showing titles in Politics & Activism

From the former prime minister of New Zealand, then the world's youngest female head of government and just the second to give birth in office, comes a deeply personal memoir chronicling her extraordinary rise and offering inspiration to a new generation of leaders.

In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England's monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects' destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

This magnificent biography of Henry VIII is set against the cultural, social and political background of his court - the most spectacular court ever seen in England - and the splendour of his many sumptuous palaces. An entertaining narrative packed with colourful description and a wealth of anecdotal evidence, but also a comprehensive analytical study of the development of both monarch and court during a crucial period in English history.

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s - Orwell shot in the neck in the Spanish Civil War and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century, they would be considered two of the most important people in British history....

Some of the greatest heroes and villains in British history were thrown together in these turbulent times: Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt and prudent rule at home marked the high point of the medieval monarchy; Edward IV, who was handed his crown by the scheming soldier Warwick the Kingmaker, before their alliance collapsed into a fight to the death; and the last Plantagenet, Richard III, who stole the throne and murdered his own nephews, the Princes in the Tower.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over 40 new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography, to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors.

Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump term. He, his family and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again that they lied to themselves, allies and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on 28 June 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed – all but dooming the Democrats to defeat later that year.

A reissue of this classic title, updated with never-before-published material from the original taped interviews and with a new introduction by Andrew Morton that reflects on the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the original publication of Diana: Her True Story. One of the world's best-known biographers, Andrew Morton's groundbreaking and controversial biography Diana: Her True Story changed the public's perception of the British monarchy and became an instant global best seller.

In On Xi Jinping, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage—that of President Xi Jinping, who now holds near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is now, in effect, president-for-life. Rudd argues that Xi’s worldview differs significantly from those of the leaders who preceded him, and that this ideological shift is reflected in the real world of Chinese policy and behaviour.

This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

'Never again', became Queen Elizabeth II's mantra shortly after Diana's death. More specifically, there could never be 'another Diana'—a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy. Picking up where The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana's blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.

In the first volume of this epic new series, Alison Weir strips away centuries of romantic mythology and prejudice to reveal the lives of England's queens in the century after the Norman Conquest. Beginning with Matilda of Flanders, who supported William the Conqueror in 1066, to the turbulent life of the Empress Maud, who claimed to be queen of England in her own right and fought a bitter war to that end, the five Norman queens emerge as hugely influential figures and fascinating characters.

The British Royal Family believed that the dizzy success of the Sussex wedding, watched and celebrated around the world, was the beginning of a new era for the Windsors. Yet, within one tumultuous year, the dream became a nightmare. In the aftermath of the infamous Megxit split and the Oprah Winfrey interview, the Royal Family's fate seems persistently threatened.

A magnificent biography of Queen Victoria by International New York Times columnist Julia Baird. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, Victoria: The Queen is a stunning new portrait of the real woman behind the myth - a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.

Once described by Mao Zedong as a "needle inside a ball of cotton", Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China's radical transformation in the late 20th century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao's cult of personality, and loosened the policies that had stunted China's growth. Obsessed with modernization, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet he also answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.

The world has watched Prince William and Prince Harry since they were born. Raised by Princess Diana to be the closest of brothers, how have the boy princes grown into very different, now distanced men? From royal insider, biographer and historian Robert Lacey, this book reveals the untold details of William and Harry’s closeness and estrangement, asking what happens when two sons are raised for vastly different futures - one burdened with the responsibility of one day becoming king, the other with the knowledge that he will always remain spare.