Glamorous, fun and packed with scandalous anecdotes, Never Shaken, Never Stirred tells the story of two extraordinary sisters, Ann and Laura Charteris, who made marrying well an art form. While Laura eventually became the Duchess of Marlborough, Ann became Mrs Ian Fleming, and the antics and attitudes of the two women inspired the writer to create the famous 'Bond Girl'. Along the way there were marriages, and affairs, with some of the biggest names of the twentieth century. Counting seven marriages between them, the sisters' collective husbands included a duke, four peers, Jackie Kennedy's brother-in-law and the alleged illegitimate son of the Queen's uncle. There were also passionate affairs with two Labour leaders, two press barons and a cluster of film stars. Indeed, the lives of the Charteris sisters are almost too extraordinary to believe, as they bagged husbands, bedded men, threw parties and travelled to some of the most glamorous destinations in the world, all at a time when such behaviour by aristocratic society women was unthinkable.

Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly--overnight and without warning--was handed the reigns of power to one of the most complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? How can we trust him if we don't know him?
"First Person" is an intimate, candid portrait of the man who holds the future of Russia in his grip. An extraordinary compilation of over 24 hours of in-depth interviews and remarkable photographs, it delves deep into Putin's KGB past and explores his meteoric rise to power. No Russian leader has ever subjected himself to this kind of public examination of his life and views. Both as a spy and as a virtual political unknown until selected by Boris Yeltsin to be Prime Minister, Putin has been regarded as man of mystery. Now, the curtain lifts to reveal a remarkable life of struggles and successes. Putin's life story is of major importance to the world.

Imbokodo: Women Who Shape Us is a groundbreaking series of books which introduces you to the powerful stories of South African women who have all made their mark and cleared a path for women and girls. These books recognise, acknowledge and honour our heroines and elders from the past and the present. South African women are silent no more on the roles that we have played in advancing our lives as artists, storytellers, writers, politicians and educationists. The title 'Imbokodo' was been chosen as it is a Zulu word that means "rock" and is often used in the saying 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo!', which means "You Strike a Women, You Strike a Rock!" These books were made possible with the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Arts Council. In 10 Extraordinary Leaders, Activists & Protesters you will read about women who fought against colonialism and oppression. Here are the stories of women heroes through history, whose stories are connected because of a shared passion for equality and justice.

'Light is in us even if we have no eyes.' It is a rare man who can maintain a love of life through the infirmity of blindness, the terrors of war, and the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. Such a man was Jacques Lusseyran, a French underground resistance leader during the Second World War. This book is his compelling and moving autobiography. Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight in an accident when he was eight years old. At the age of sixteen, he formed a resistance group with his schoolfriends in Nazi-occupied France. Gradually the small resistance circle of boys widened, cell by cell. In a fascinating scene, the author tells of interviewing prospective underground recruits, 'seeing' them by means of their voices, and in this way weeding out early the weak and the traitorous. Eventually Jacques and his comrades were betrayed to the Germans and interrogated by the Gestapo. After a fifteen month incarceration in Buchenwald, the author was one of thirty to survive from an initial shipment of two thousand.

A spell-binding autobiography by one of the world's most admired human rights advocates. This story, told on a grand scale, unfolds from Bizos' daring rescue of 6 NZ soldiers from the Nazis as a boy in Greece. He arrives in Johannesburg together with his father, penniless and unable to speak English. He studies law at Wits and becomes an advocate, building a career on defending the downtrodden against apartheid abuses in a hostile justice system. He becomes the defender of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and the families of Steve Biko, Chris Hani and the Cradock Four. He mediates in the events around Winnie Mandela and even defends Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe. These cases are related as gripping courtroom dramas, augmented by the drama behind the scenes. His whole remarkable, courageous and beneficial life told by himself in astonishing detail, involving hundreds of colourful characters and anecdotes. This is no doubt the

As a young civil servant, Caroline Slocock became the first ever female private secretary to any British Prime Minister, and was at Margaret Thatcher's side for the final eighteen months of her premiership. A left-wing feminist, Slocock was no natural ally - and yet she became fascinated by the woman behind the `Iron Lady' facade and by how she dealt with a world dominated by men. As events inexorably led to Margaret Thatcher's downfall, Slocock observed the vulnerabilities and contradictions of the woman considered by many to be the ultimate anti-feminist. When Thatcher eventually resigned, brought down by her closest political allies, Slocock was the only woman present to witness the astonishing scenes in the Cabinet Room. Had Thatcher been a man, it would have ended very differently, Slocock feels. Now, in this vivid first-hand account, based on her diaries from the time and interviews with other key Downing Street personnel, Slocock paints a nuanced portrait of a woman who to this day is routinely demonised in sexist ways. Reflecting on the challenges women still face in public life, Slocock concludes it's time to rewrite how we portray powerful women and for women to set aside politics and accept that Margaret Thatcher was `one of us'. A remarkable political and personal memoir, People Like Us charts life inside Thatcher's No. 10 during its dying days and reflects on women and power then and now.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A fascinating exploration into the lives of three women ignored by history ... Eye-opening, engrossing' Brit Bennett, bestselling author of The Vanishing Half In her groundbreaking debut, Anna Malaika Tubbs tells the incredible storIES of three women who raised three world-changing men. Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them, each fighting their own battles, born into the beginning of the twentieth century and a deadly landscape of racial prejudice, Jim Crow, exploitation, unpoliced violence and open police vitriol. It was a society that would deny their sons' humanity from the beginning as it had denied theirs, but Berdis, Alberta and Louise were extraordinary women who instilled resilience, resistance and greatness in their sons. They would become mothers not just to three world-famous men but to the civil rights movement itself. These women represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.

The world's leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the "riveting" (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America's long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen's "comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling" (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

You've seen the show, you've sung the songs, now read the full story of America's most misunderstood founding father. 'I was swept up by the story. I thought it 'out-Dickens' Dickens in the unlikeliness of this man's rise from his humble beginnings in Nevis in the Caribbean, to changing, helping shape our young nation. And it's uniquely an immigrant story and it's uniquely a story about writers ... It's an amazing biography' LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA Alexander Hamilton was an illegitimate self-taught orphan from the Caribbean who overcame all the odds to become George Washington's aide-de-camp and the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Few figures in American history are more controversial than Alexander Hamilton. In this masterful work, Chernow shows how the political and economic power of America today is the result of Hamilton's willingness to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. He charts his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe and Burr; his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds; his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza; and the notorious duel with Aaron Burr that led to his death in July 1804.

'Memories After My Death' is the story of Tommy Lapid, a well-loved and controversial Israeli figure who saw the development of the country from all angles over its first sixty years. From seeing his father taken away to a concentration camp to arriving in Tel Aviv at the birth of Israel, Tommy Lapid lived every major incident of Jewish life since the 1930s first-hand. This sweeping narrative is mesmerizing for anyone with an interest in how Israel became what it is today. Lapid's uniquely unorthodox opinions - he belonged to neither left nor right, was Jewish, but vehemently secular - expose the many contradictions inherent in Israeli life today.

First Published in 1976. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Engels and Das Kapital; the general; Engels and the working classes 1850-1870 - the workers in Britain, the workers in France, the workers in Germany; the first international 1864-1872 - the founding of the first international, Marx and the first international, 1864- 70, the international in England, the international in France, the.

'Utterly fascinating' Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times Benjamin Franklin took daily naked air baths and Toulouse-Lautrec painted in brothels. Edith Sitwell worked in bed, and George Gershwin composed at the piano in pyjamas. Freud worked sixteen hours a day, but Gertrude Stein could never write for more than thirty minutes, and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in gin-fuelled bursts - he believed alcohol was essential to his creative process. From Marx to Murakami and Beethoven to Bacon, Daily Rituals by Mason Currey presents the working routines of more than a hundred and sixty of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived. Whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstand or boxing, these people made time and got to work. Featuring photographs of writers and artists at work, and filled with fascinating insights on the mechanics of genius and entertaining stories of the personalities behind it, Daily Rituals is irresistibly addictive, and utterly inspiring.

Elizabeth Thorpe, codenamed Cynthia, was a glamorous American socialite recruited by MI6 to obtain intelligence from the Polish Foreign Ministry and from the Italian and Vichy French embassies in Washington. Her method was to seduce whatever targets could provide her with vital intelligence, a practice in which she hardly ever failed, enabling her to secure first the French and then the Italian naval codes. In the landings in North Africa, she was credited with having saved the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers. This unique account by a British spymaster of his relationship with Cynthia, detailing his subsequent involvement with Kim Philby and the Cambridge spies and his dealings with his counterparts in the CIA and French intelligence, was entrusted by him to a junior colleague on the basis that it was not to be published until everyone in it was dead. Necessarily anonymous and impossible to fully verify, though most of it undoubtedly did happen and is part of the historical record, A Spy Called Cynthia provides a special insight into the world of intelligence and one of its most effective practitioners.

'Balances detailed research with powerful storytelling to create a well-written and heart-wrenching account' - Nicole Gemine, Press and Journal Jane Haining was undoubtedly one of Scotland's heroines. A farmer's daughter from Galloway in south-west Scotland, Jane went to work at the Scottish Jewish Mission School in Budapest in 1932, where she was a boarding school matron in charge of around 50 orphan girls. The school had 400 pupils, most of them Jewish. Jane was back in the UK on holiday when war broke out in 1939, but she immediately went back to Hungary to do all she could to protect the children at the school. She refused to leave in 1940, and again ignored orders to flee the country in March 1944 when Hungary was invaded by the Nazis. She remained with her pupils, writing 'if these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness'. Her brave persistence led to her arrest in by the Gestapo in April 1944, for "offences" that included spying, working with Jews and listening to the BBC. She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz just a few months later, at the age of 47. Her courage and self-sacrifice, her choice to stay and to protect the children in her care, have made her an inspiration to many.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Beautifully-penned story on the harshness of life and how hope survives' - Sun 'Absorbing . . . Marsh writes with a novelistic flair' - Daily Mail From the grimy streets of Acton and Notting Hill to the bright lights of the West End, Sunday Times bestselling author Beezy Marsh's All My Mother's Secrets is a powerful, uplifting story of a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her family's tragic past. Annie Austin's childhood ends at the age of twelve, when she joins her mother in one of the slum laundries of Acton, working long hours for little pay. What spare time she has is spent looking after her younger brother George and her two stepsisters, under the glowering eye of her stepfather Bill. In London between the wars, a girl like Annie has few choices in life - but a powerful secret will change her destiny. All Annie knows about her real father is that he died in the Great War, and as the years pass she is haunted by the pain of losing him. Her downtrodden mother won't tell her more and Annie's attempts to uncover the truth threaten to destroy her family. Distraught, she runs away to Covent Garden, but can she survive on her own and find the love which has eluded her so far?

In the context of recent media scrutiny on the state of prisons in the UK, the efficacy of incarcerating large numbers of offenders is an issue which is rising steadily up the political agenda. In 2016, the Howard League for Penal Reform - an organization that has energetically lobbied for improvements in the treatment of offenders throughout its lifetime - celebrated its 150th anniversary. This book considers the life and work of Margery Fry, the woman who created the modern Howard League and dominated it from 1918 until her death in 1958, and places the UK's oldest surviving penal reform pressure group and its current work into their historical context. It examines Fry's legacy as a campaigner for an international standard of prisoners' minimum rights, which resulted in a United Nations charter, for the introduction of compensation for victims of criminal injuries, and for the abolition of the death penalty, and also considers her role in the establishment of criminology as an academic discipline and her organization of the first criminology lectures in Great Britain. It is essential reading for all those engaged in prisons research, penal reform and criminal justice history.

'Malala is an inspiration to girls and women all over the world.' - J.K. Rowling I Am Malala tells the remarkable true story of a girl who knew she wanted to change the world - and did. Raised in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, Malala was taught to stand up for her beliefs. When terrorists took control of her region and declared girls were forbidden from going to school, Malala fought for her right to an education. And, on 9 October 2012, she nearly paid the ultimate price for her courage when she was shot on her way home from school. No one expected her to survive. Now, she is an international symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize. A must-read for anyone who believes in the power of change. * This teen edition is a first-hand account told in Malala's own words for her generation. The paperback includes extra material, a Q&A and updated discussion notes. * This book inspired the film HE NAMED ME MALALA, the winner of the BAFTA for Best Documentary.

"Magisterial and glorious" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), the first full authoritative biography of Dorothy Day--American icon, radical pacifist, Catholic convert, and advocate for the homeless--is "a vivid account of her political and religious development" (Karen Armstrong, The New York Times). After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next fifty years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism. Her protests began in 1917, leading to her arrest during the suffrage demonstration outside President Wilson's White House. In 1940 she spoke in Congress against the draft and urged young men not to register. She told audiences in 1962 that the US was as much to blame for the Cuban missile crisis as Cuba and the USSR. She refused to hear any criticism of the pope, though she sparred with American bishops and priests who lived in well-appointed rectories while tolerating racial segregation in their parishes. Dorothy Day is the exceptional biography of a dedicated modern-day pacifist, an outspoken advocate for the poor, and a lifelong anarchist. This definitive and insightful account is "a monumental exploration of the life, legacy, and spirituality of the Catholic activist" (Spirituality & Practice).