'An extraordinary life, depicted with searing honesty ... A colourful journey sprinkled with delicious anecdotes' Daily Express 'Extraordinary ... You'll be ugly-sobbing at the end' Graham Norton 'It tells not just the story of his life, but also the battle for LGBT equality in the UK' Guardian 'A memoir to cherish' Ian McKellen 'A book to be savoured' Alan Johnson 'There are so many reasons to love this book' Armistead Maupin 'A beautifully written, funny memoir' Jo Brand Growing up in post-war East London, the son of a docker and an office cleaner, young Michael Cashman's life changed when he was discovered, aged twelve, and transported to the West End stage. Cashman would make history - first as an actor, one half of the first gay kiss broadcast on a British soap, BBC TV's EastEnders, and then as a campaigner and politician, founding Stonewall with Ian McKellen, and embarking on a fight for gay rights across the world that would lead him and his partner Paul Cottingham from tea in LA with David Hockney to flying the rainbow flag over the Royal Albert Hall with Elton John. One of Them contains as many multitudes as its author: glorious nostalgia, showbiz gossip and a stirring history of a civil rights movement. And above all things, it is a love story - a tender account of a partnership that changed the world. 'Passionate and true ... A great book about love, pain and the whole damn thing' Simon Callow 'Brutally frank and brave' i 'A brave, good man' Sheila Hancock

Today, as liberty and truth are increasingly challenged, the figures of Churchill and Orwell loom large. Exemplars of Britishness, they preserved individual freedom and democracy for the world through their far-sighted vision and inspired action, and cast a long shadow across our culture and politics. In Churchill & Orwell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks masterfully argues that these extraordinary men are as important today as they ever were. Churchill and Orwell stood in political opposition to each other, but were both committed to the preservation of freedom. However, in the late 1930s they occupied a lonely position: democracy was much discredited, and authoritarian rulers, fascist and communist, were everywhere in the ascent. Unlike others, they had the wisdom to see that the most salient issue was human liberty - and that any government that denies its people basic rights is a totalitarian menace to be resisted. Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men, and this book reveals how they rose from a precarious position to triumph over the enemies of freedom. Churchill may have played the larger role in Hitler's defeat, but Orwell's reckoning with the threat of authoritarian rule in 1984 and Animal Farm defined the stakes of the Cold War and continues to inspire to this day. Their lives are an eloquent testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it takes to stay true to it.

The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller Complete with new afterword where she discusses the past eighteen months since President Donald Trump has been serving in office. 'A compelling read' - Financial Times 'A sporadically absorbing, pleasingly vengeful and often darkly funny account of one woman's bid for presidential history.' Sunday Times 'Her new book is more gossipy, it is meaner, more entertaining and more wrong-headed than anything she or her speechwriters have written before.' Observer 'What Happened is highly entertaining. It is spirited, well-written and informative.' Guardian 'In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I've often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I'm letting my guard down.' - Hillary Rodham Clinton, from the introduction of What Happened For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference and an opponent who broke all the rules. This is her most personal memoir yet. In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterwards. With humour and candour, she tells readers what it took to get back on her feet - the rituals, relationships and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. She speaks about the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye, the criticism over her voice, age and appearance, and the double standard confronting women in politics. She lays out how the 2016 election was marked by an unprecedented assault on democracy by a foreign adversary. By analysing the evidence and connecting the dots, Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect their values and democracy in the future. The election of 2016 was unprecedented and historic. What Happened is the story of that campaign and its aftermath - both a deeply intimate account and a cautionary tale.

Here are some of the best of Churchill's letters of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill's correspondence, much of which is unpublished. Many of the letters included have never appeared in book form before. Winston Churchill has become an iconic figure greatly loved the world over, but maybe especially these days in the USA. Churchill understood the power of words and he used his writing to sustain and complement his political career, publishing over 40 books and receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. This volume concentrates on his more intimate words. It seeks to show the private man behind the public figure and introduce fresh light on Churchill's character and personality by capturing the drama, immediacy, storms, depressions, passions and challenges of Churchill's extraordinary career. Churchill was neither a god nor a demon. Through these letters we see him as a human being with human emotions, frailties and a large ego. He was not always right. He held strong opinions and was often provocative. These letters take us into his world and allow us to follow the changes in his motivations and beliefs as he navigates his 90 years. There are intimate letters to his parents, his teacher at Harrow, Louis de Souza (Boer Secretary of State for War), his wife Clementine, Prime Minister Asquith, Lord Northcliffe, Anthony Eden, President Roosevelt, Eamon De Valera, the French Socialist Prime Minister Leon Blum and Charles De Gaulle. These are all letters of a personal nature and are most illuminating. They are enhanced by facsimiles of the letters and images which appear throughout the book, helping the reader to envisage a sense of Churchill in his most private moments.

Hanibal [1697- 1761] was probably the most outstanding African in Europe in the 18th Century, his rags to riches life, and the fact that he was the great grandfather of Russia's greatest writer, Alexander Pushkin, makes him of even greater interest. Now finally appearing in English, this was the book, based on original research, which proved fairly conclusively that Hanibal (sometimes spelt Gannibal in English) was born in Logone-Birni, in present day Cameroon rather than, as was supposed, in Ethiopia. This book recounts his life story: he was taken as a slave to Istanbul and then to Russia at the age of 8. Tsar Peter the Great and adopted educated him. He was sent to study mathematics and military engineering in France, where he joined the French army fighting against Spain and was promoted to the rank of captain. Back in Russia: he was promoted but was briefly exiled to Siberia where he designed fortresses on the frontier. His first marriage was a disaster but he went on to marry a Swedish aristocrat with whom he had seven children, one of whom, Osip, was to be the grandfather of Pushkin. There were moments in his life when he suffered for being black, yet he ended his life as a pillar of the Russian aristocracy, even owning serfs. Hanibal's contribution to the technical advancement of the Russian army was huge. He was commander-in-chief, director of fortifications and head of the engineering corps. In 1725-26 he published an important text book on geometry and fortification for engineering students and he introduced the study of civil engineering into the Russian schools of military engineering.

Shadowy geniuses whispering, Rasputin-like, into the ears of our elected politicians under a cloak of secrecy, or a crucial but undervalued cog in the machinery of government? ... Or just a rag-tag band of weirdos and misfits? Despite the acres of speculation devoted to special advisers from Alastair Campbell to Dominic Cummings, their role is much misunderstood. Who are the people Piers Morgan once called 'these miserable little creatures' and just how much influence do they have? Peter Cardwell served as SpAd to four Cabinet ministers, acting as media adviser, political fixer, troubleshooter and occasional wardrobe consultant. In this candid, compelling and frequently hilarious insider account, he reveals what the job really involves, from dealing with counter-terror emergencies in Cobra to explaining to the Justice Secretary what a dental dam is, to having your inside leg measured in a government office. Packed with advice on navigating the perks and pitfalls of the job, The Secret Life of Special Advisers will inform and entertain anyone who has ever wondered what these mysterious figures really do all day.

In the long run, we're all dead. But for some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated and even filed away in a lawyer's office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs and nether regions have embarked on voyages that criss-cross the globe and stretch the imagination. Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln's corpse. Einstein's brain went on a cross-country road trip. And after Lord Horatio Nelson perished at Trafalgar, his sailors submerged him in brandy - which they drank. From Mozart to Hitler, Rest in Pieces connects the lives of the famous dead to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses and traces the evolution of cultural attitudes towards death.

The definitive biography of perhaps the most respected political figure in the world - updated to include her final months in office Matthew Qvortrup's definitive and insightful biography of Angela Merkel is essential reading for anyone interested in current affairs, the fate of Europe, or simply the story of a truly remarkable woman. Updated to within a month from when Merkel steps down as German chancellor. Based on over 14 years of in-depth research, Angela Merkel tells the story of the political titan's astonishing rise from obscurity to become the most influential leader in Europe today. It follows the German Chancellor's journey to prominence and power from a bleak childhood in East Germany, and offers an unprecedented understanding of her inimitable personality and perspective, explaining how her unique qualities have made Merkel perhaps the most respected political figure on the world stage today.

Dwight D. Eisenhower had two careers: before he was one of America's most popular presidents, he was its greatest military commander. His military career lasted much longer, and (according to John) it was far more important to him personally. Nobody is in a better position to tell the story of General Ike than John, who was by his side for much of it, and who rose to the rank of Brigadier General before retiring to write seminal and bestselling works of military history. GENERAL IKE is a definitive, revealing, and brilliantly crafted study of the right stuff of leadership. Great leaders bring out the best in the people around them, and Ike was no exception. Drawing on scenes witnessed by few others, and comments given him in private by his father, John Eisenhower shows how his father's keen mind, great sense of the strengths of others, and perseverance in the face of all duties combined to bring America to victory.

A remarkable account of Kurt Goedel, weaving together creative genius, mental illness, political corruption, and idealism in the face of the turmoil of war and upheaval. At age 24, a brilliant Austrian-born mathematician published a mathematical result that shook the world. Nearly a hundred years after Kurt Goedel's famous 1931 paper "On Formally Undecidable Propositions" appeared, his proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable within that system - continues to pose profound questions for mathematics, philosophy, computer science, and artificial intelligence. His close friend Albert Einstein, with whom he would walk home every day from Princeton's famous Institute for Advanced Study, called him "the greatest logician since Aristotle." He was also a man who felt profoundly out of place in his time, rejecting the entire current of 20th century philosophical thought in his belief that mathematical truths existed independent of the human mind, and beset by personal demons of anxiety and paranoid delusions that would ultimately lead to his tragic end from self-starvation. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, and medical records, Journey to the Edge of Reason offers the most complete portrait yet of the life of one of the 20th century's greatest thinkers. Stephen Budiansky's account brings to life the remarkable world of philosophical and mathematical creativity of pre-war Vienna, and documents how it was barbarically extinguished by the Nazis. He charts Goedel's own hair's-breadth escape from Nazi Germany to the scholarly idyll of Princeton; and the complex, gently humorous, sensitive, and tormented inner life of this iconic but previously enigmatic giant of modern science. Weaving together Goedel's public and private lives, this is a tale of creative genius, mental illness, political corruption, and idealism in the face of the turmoil of war and upheaval.

The history of Science is replete with untold stories and this book is one of these accounts. The author shares a narrative of heredity, an active topic of inquiry long before Gregor Mendel - the father of genetics - planted his peas. One such interlude unfolded in Mendel's home city and involved the sheep breeder, Imre Festetics. He sought to improve wool and proposed important rules of heredity. Unfortunately, aspects of wool quality, now known to be polygenic, complicate interpretations of the work of Festetics and explain why it is neglected. The forebearers of Mendel never get the credit they deserve. Heredity Before Mendel resurrects Festetics, the grandfather of heredity. Key Features 1) Documents a vibrant community of scholars interested in heredity before Mendel 2) Highlights the work of Imre Festetics, the forgotten grandfather of genetics 3) Desribes political repression which stifled the nascent foundation of heredity research 4) Emphasizes the role sheep and wool played as the first model system of genetics 5) Challenges19th century taboos in Moravia leading to malicious rumors about the inbred royal House of Austria (Habsburgs).

More than three decades after her election to Parliament, Diane Abbott is still racking up firsts. The first black woman elected to Parliament, she also recently became the first black person to represent their party at PMQs. Abbott came to fame in the 1980s as part of a new generation of Labour activists, quickly dubbed the 'loony left' by right-wing tabloids. Decades later she is still a divisive figure. Inside the Brexit echo chamber she is treated with unparalleled contempt. Yet for her supporters she is a trailblazer, someone who has remained true to her principles and her community after thirty years in 'the belly of the beast'. Based on interviews with her colleagues, her political opponents and friends from school and university, as well as extensive archival research, Diane Abbott: The Authorised Biography traces Abbott's path from London, via Cambridge University, through the media and radical politics into Parliament, and then to the top of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow Cabinet.

Famously depicted as 'Crookback Dick', and as Shakespeare's 'bunch-back'd toad', the murderer of the Princes in the Tower and the warrior vanquished at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III is one of England's most enigmatic monarchs. Now, with the discovery of Richard's bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012 and their reburial in early 2015, the obsession with this mysterious king has been further ignited. Historian David Horspool tells the story of Richard, Duke of Gloucester's birth and upbringing and his part as a young man in the closing years of the Wars of the Roses, describes what really happened to the Princes in the Tower, and explains why this character has become one of the most compelling and divisive rulers in the history of the British Isles. In his final chapter, with a ringside seat to the pomp and circumstance of Richard's reburial in Leicester in 2015, Horspool explains why the public fascination with this flawed king has been so enduring. Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation is concerned to examine the legend as well as the man. Have we bought in to the myth of Richard III as the personification of evil, a view maintained by his Tudor successors and publicised by Raphael Holinshed and William Shakespeare? Or should we believe the Ricardian narrative of a much maligned monarch, warrior and statesman made popular by the Richard III Society and conceded in part by some historians and archaeologists? These questions and more are discussed in this fascinating insight into one of England's most elusive kings.

First published in 1926, this entertaining and dramatic biography forever installed outlaw Billy the Kid in the pantheon of mythic heroes from the Old West and is still considered the single most influential portrait of Billy in this century. Saga focuses on the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanised into a life of crime and killing by the war's violence and bloodshed. Billy represented the romantic and anarchic Old West that the march of civilisation was rapidly displacing1881.Burns, his destroyer was Pat Garrett, the courageous sheriff of Lincoln County. Garrett's shooting of Billy in 1881 hastened the closing of the American frontier. Walter Noble Burns's 'Saga of Billy the Kid' kindled a fascination in Billy the Kid that survives to this day. Richard W. Etulain's foreword discusses the singular importance of Saga in the historical literature on Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War.

1. While there is an increasingly cluttered market for books on Trump, from journalistic exposes to political memoirs to psychological analyses, this is the first book to offer a criminological perspective on the former president. 2. The book focuses on Trump's character, his crimes and the social and political contexts of his rise to power; as such it has a market across criminology, sociology, law, political science and social and political history. 3. This book offers new perspectives on a range of topical issues such as Black Lives Matter, the QAnon phenomenon, white nationalism and right-wing extremism, Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian collusion, the Impeachment trials, and tax evasion.

Book of the Week on Radio 4, and in the Observer, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and The Week 'Riveting, and immaculately written' Sunday Telegraph 'A superb psychological study of a literary genius' Business Post 'A rounded picture... and gets to Dahl's flawed, human core' Country Life 'Crisply done and well-judged' TLS Roald Dahl was one of the world's greatest storytellers. He conceived his vocation as one as intrepid as that of any explorer and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child's viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a moral, and filled with vibrant characters that endure in public imagination to the present day. In this brand-new biogrpahy, Matthew Dennison re-evaluates the received narrative surrounding Dahl - that of school sporting hero, daredevil pilot, and wartime spy-turned-author - and examines surviving primary resources as well as Dahl's extensive literary output to tell the story of a man who identified as a rule-breaker, an iconoclast and a romantic, both insider and outsider, hero and child's friend.

A puzzle to his friends and family in his lifetime, RLS still remains something of an enigma, even to Stevenson enthusiasts. Years of restless wandering led him to tropical Samoa, where he found not only well-being, but a release of the passionate potential that had been in him from his chilly beginnings in Edinburgh. This virtual paradise, however, was marred by the eccentric behaviour of his wife, Fanny Osbourne. In this book, John Cairney explores their relationship and other fascinating aspects of Stevenson's life.

Winner of the Whitbread Biography of the Year.

William Gladstone was, with Tennyson, Newman, Dickens, Carlyle, and Darwin, one of the stars of nineteenth-century British life. He spent sixty-three of his eighty-nine years in the House of Commons and was prime minister four times, a unique accomplishment. From his critical role in the formation of the Liberal Party to his preoccupation with the cause of Irish Home Rule, he was a commanding politician and statesman nonpareil. But Gladstone the man was much more: a classical scholar, a wide-ranging author, a vociferous participant in all the great theological debates of the day, a voracious reader, and an avid walker who chopped down trees for recreation. He was also a man obsessed with the idea of his own sinfulness, prone to self-flagellation and persistent in the practice of accosting prostitutes on the street and attempting to persuade them of the errors of their ways.

Gladstone, by historian and eminent politician Roy Jenkins, is a full and deep portrait of a complicated man, offering a sweeping picture of a tumultuous century in British history, and is also a brilliant example of the biographer's art.

The Irish Times bestseller 'A gripping tale of savagery and courage' Noam Chomsky 'Fascinating and captivating' Irish Times 'A beautiful book... Full of pain and longing but also joy, adventure, and excitement' Janine di Giovanni 'A superb account of the life and work of the best reporter I have ever known' Patrick Cockburn When Lara Marlowe met Robert Fisk in 1983 in Damascus, he was already a famous war correspondent. She was a young American reporter who would become a renowned journalist in her own right. For the next twenty years, they were lovers, husband and wife and friends, occasionally angry and estranged from one another, but ultimately reconciled. They learned from each other and from the people in the ruined world they reported from: Lebanon, torn apart by a vicious civil war as well as Israeli and Syrian occupations; Iran, where they were the only journalists to interview the Middle East's chief hostage-taker and dispatcher of suicide bombers; the Islamist revolt that claimed up to 200,000 lives in Algeria; the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and two US-led wars on Iraq. This is at once a portrait of a remarkable man, the story of a Middle East broken by its own divisions and outside powers, and a moving account of a relationship in dark times.

A reissue of Rachel Holmes's landmark biography of Dr James Barry, one of the most enigmatic figures of the Victorian age. James Barry was one of the nineteenth century's most exceptional doctors, and one of its great unsung heroes. Famed for his brilliant innovations, Dr Barry influenced the birth of modern medical practice in places as far apart as South Africa, Jamaica and Canada. Barry's skills attracted admirers across the globe, but there were also many detractors of the ostentatious dandy, who caused controversy everywhere he went. Yet unbeknownst to all, the military surgeon concealed a lifelong secret at the heart of his identity: on his death Barry was claimed to be anatomically female and in fact a cross-dresser. Vividly drawn and meticulously researched, The Secret Life of Dr James Barry brings to life one of the most enigmatic figures of the Victorian age, elevating its subject to a latter-day transgender icon - and is a landmark in the art of biography.

Martin Frobisher's third (1578) voyage to Baffin island was the consequence of flawed logic and excessive optimism on the part of the adventurers of the ephemeral 'Company of Cathay'. Their original intention - to find a north-western route to the Far East - had been largely forgotten following the imagined discovery of gold - and silver-bearing ore in Meta Incognita (the Unknown Limits), as Elizabeth I had named the forbidding and icy landscape which Frobisher and seventeen mariners had first sighted two years earlier. This was to be the English nation's first experience of a 'gold-rush', and if many refused to be swayed by the promise of an empire to rival that of Spain, others, including the Queen herself and many of her Privy Councillors, allowed their cupidity to override all caution. As the likelihood of future profits was downgraded in successive assays of the mineral samples, the adventurers accepted that a much larger expedition would be required to extract sufficient ore to provide an adequate return upon monies already spent. The result - a fleet of fifteen ships, crewed by almost five hundred men - remains the largest fleet ever to have visited Baffin Island. Their travails in arctic seas, near-comic failures of navigation and the backbreaking task of mining the largest possible amount of mineral ore in the time allowed by the brief arctic summer, were recorded in an unsurpassed body of eyewitness reports, all of which, for the first time, have been assembled in a single volume. Supplemented by extremely detailed and opprobrious (though substantially accurate) accusations regarding Frobisher's role in this enterprise by his ex-partner, the merchant Michael Lok, these records provide a graphic, poignant and often humorous picture of a voyage which foreshadowed the glorious failures of a later age of English empire-building.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2017 Born into nobility and married into the royal family, Catherine Howard was attended every waking hour - secrets were impossible to keep. In this thrilling reappraisal of Henry VIII's fifth wife, Gareth Russell's history unfurls as if in real time to explain how the queen's career ended with one of the great scandals of Henry's reign. This is a grand tale of the Henrician court in its twilight, a glittering but pernicious sunset during which the king's unstable behaviour and his courtiers' labyrinthine deceptions proved fatal to many, not just to Catherine Howard.