Showing results by publisher "HarperCollins Publishers Limited" in Europe

From our funniest writer, a portrait of our most talked-about royal. She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando clam up. She cold-shouldered Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. John Fowles hoped to keep her as his sex slave. Dudley Moore propositioned her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was in love with her. For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy.

A shocking true story of murder, extreme politics and the deep scars left by the Troubles in Ireland of the 1970s and the human consequences. A taut tale of murder, extreme politics, institutionalised violence and the deep scars left by such turmoil. In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail.

Who was the real Mary Queen of Scots? The most enigmatic ruler of England lived a life of incredible drama and turmoil: crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months old, and Queen of France at 16 years, she grew up in the crosshairs of Europe's political battles to become Queen Elizabeth's archrival.

The first of Henry VIII's wives was Catherine of Aragon, the pious Catholic princess who suffered years of miscarriages and still births and yet failed to produce a male heir.

Operation Chastise was one of the most extraordinary episodes of the Second World War, yet it has also become one of the most misunderstood. Max Hastings tells the gripping story of the Dambusters raid, from the invention of the bouncing bomb to the moonlit cockpits of young pilots flying at treetop height through lethal enemy fire. But Hastings also challenges what we think we know about the Dambusters, bringing to light the difficult truths that have often been left out of the legend.

King Charles faces many challenges as he succeeds his mother to the throne. Despite his hard work and genuine concern for the disadvantaged, King Charles III has struggled in the past to overcome his unpopularity. After Diana’s death, his approval rating crashed to 4% and has been only rescued by his marriage to Camilla. In unearthing many secrets and dramas surrounding King Charles, Bower’s book, relies on the testimony from over 120 people employed or welcomed into the inner sanctum.

In her relationship with Charles, which has survived for more than 40 years, Camilla's story has seen a great many myths. This book is the definitive account. The relationship between Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is one of the most remarkable love stories of the age. It has endured against all the odds and, in the process, nearly destroyed the British monarchy.

England, July 1540: it is one of the hottest summers on record, and the court of Henry VIII is embroiled once again in political scandal. Anne Cleves is out. Thomas Cromwell is to be executed and, in the countryside, an aristocratic teenager named Catherine Howard prepares to become fifth wife to the increasingly unpredictable monarch.

Reissued for the 20th anniversary of Diana's death, this sensational best seller is an explosive account of her life, from the man who was by her side throughout its most turbulent period. In 1981 Lady Diana Spencer was seen by many as a lifeline for the outdated Windsor line. But Diana didn't follow the script. Instead she brought a revolution. Patrick Jephson was Diana's closest aide and adviser during her years of greatest public fame and deepest personal crisis.

Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a godlike genius, a romantic avatar, a megalomaniac monster, a compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator? Whilst he displayed elements of these traits at certain times, Napoleon was none of these things. He was a man and, as Adam Zamoyski presents him in this landmark biography, a rather ordinary one at that.

The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, to the Wars of the Roses, the chaos of the Civil War, the fall of Charles I and Cromwell's emergence as Lord Protector – all the way up until the Victorian era when Britain’s monarchs came face-to-face with modernity.

Based on unrivalled access to all the key politicians and their advisors - including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of Vote Leave - Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller and offers a gripping day-by-day account of what really happened behind the scenes in Downing Street, both Leave campaigns, the Labour Party, Ukip and Britain Stronger in Europe.

Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now, he turns his attention to a new war, and in this book about the American Revolution recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force.

The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British Prime Ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith's Secret Service Bureau to Cameron's National Security Council. At the beginning of the 20th Century the British intelligence system was underfunded and lacked influence in government. But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war.

This is the first of three volumes, which, taken together under the over-arching title of Monarchy, will form a new, ground-breaking history of England as told through the lives of its Kings and Queens.

In Chocolate Wars best-selling historian and award-winning documentary maker Deborah Cadbury takes a journey into her own family history to uncover the rivalries that have driven 250 years of chocolate empire-building. Beginning with an account of John Cadbury, who founded the first Cadbury's coffee and chocolate shop in Birmingham in 1824, Chocolate Wars goes on to chart the astonishing transformation of the company's fortunes.

In a thrilling narrative built on formidable research, Ben Lewis tracks the extraordinary journey of a masterpiece lost and found, lied and fought over across the centuries. In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as saviour of the world is ‘the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived’. Its dazzling price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting.  

Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology to life.

At the age of only 36, Sir Mark Sykes was signatory to the Sykes-Picot agreement, one of the most reviled treaties of modern times. A century later, Christopher Sykes' lively biography of his grandfather reassesses his life and work - and the political instability and violence in the Middle East attributed to it.

We live in their buildings, work in their companies, shop in their stores, eat in their restaurants and elect politicians they fund. Founded more than 150 years ago by shepherding families in the toe of Italy, the 'Ndrangheta is today the world's most powerful mafia, with a crushing presence in Southern Italy, a market-moving size in global finance and a reach that extends to 50 countries around the world. And yet, remarkably, few of us have ever heard of it.