A study in vanity and ambition, madness and resignation Sir Walter Ralegh was the greatest courtier of his day, Elizabeth's favourite, dashing, brilliant, wily and powerful. But by the summer of 1618, his last voyage a failure and suffering the hostility of James I, he was escorted from Plymouth to London and the scaffold. Paul Hyland unfurls the story of the last twenty weeks of Sir Walter's life, of that fateful journey, of Ralegh's grotesque behaviour along the way, of the web of deceit and counter-treachery woven between him and his reviled betrayer 'Judas' Stucley, and of their travelling companion the French physician and double agent Dr Manoury. Around this last journey are intertwined other key players: Bes - Elizabeth Throckmorton - Ralegh's handsome, resourceful and distracted wife; Carew, their thirteen-year-old son; and Samuel King, privateering captain and link with past glories. On several occasions Ralegh has the opportunity to escape, and refuses it; then, when at last he opts for freedom (wearing a false beard), in a sprint down the Thames by rowing boat, he finds himself again betrayed.

A wonderfully engaging and entertaining history of the great dons of the last two hundred years, by one of our leading historians of ideas. Rich in anecdote, and displaying all the author's customary mastery of his subject, The Dons is Noel Annan at his erudite, encyclopedic and entertaining best. The book is a kaleidoscope of wonderful vignettes illustrating the brilliance and eccentricities of some of the greatest figures of British university life. Here is Buckland dropping to his knees to lick the supposed patch of martyr's blood in an Italian cathedral and remarking, 'I can tell you what it is; it's bat's urine.' Or the granitic Master of Balliol, A.D. Lindsay, whose riposte on finding himself in a minority of one at a College meeting was, 'I see we are deadlocked'. But, entertaining as it is, The Dons also has a more serious purpose. No other book has ever explained so precisely - and so amusingly - why the dons matter, and the importance of the role they have played in the shaping of British higher education over the past two centuries.

'My primary aim in writing this book is to demonstrate the importance of individual human beings in modern warfare. In the battle to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, Coalition forces used every form of high-technology weapon available; yet in the end success depended on the performance of individuals, whether they were pilots, divers, tank drivers, mechanics, engineers, cooks, radio operators, infantrymen, nurses or officers of all ranks. It was these ordinary people who, at the end of the day, were going to put their lives on the line and risk their neck when their Government decided to go to war.' Gen. Sir Peter de la Billiere

'A perfect mirror to its subject... should be compulsory reading' Observer Vladimir Putin is a pariah to the West. He has the power to reduce the West to nuclear ashes. He invades his neighbours, meddles in western elections and orders assassinations. Yet many Russians continue to support him. Under Putin's leadership, Russia has once again become a force to be reckoned with. Philip Short's magisterial biography explores in unprecedented depth the personality of Russia's leader and demolishes many of our preconceptions about Putin's Russia. To explain is not to justify. Putin's regime is dark. But on closer examination, much of what we think we know about him turns out to rest on half-truths. This book is as close as we will come to understanding Russia's ruler. 'Exhaustively researched... as a chronicle of Putin's public doings, the book is near faultless' The Times 'Timely... a comprehensive, extensively researched account of Putin's life' New Statesman 'Extensively covers the dark moments of Putin's career.... The Putin of Short's book is not someone you would invite to dinner' New York Times

Die weeklikse rubriek in Rapport, “Hanlie Retief gesels met” , is iets waarna baie lesers elke Sondag uitsien en heel eerste lees. Aanhangers weet haar onderhoude is pittig, op die man af en baie vermaaklik.

Hanlie Retief vra die vrae aan die nuusmakers wat almal brand om te vra. Sy is bekend daarvoor dat sy haar soos ’n verkleurmannetjie kan aanpas by die aard van die onderhoud. Met deernis skets sy misdaadslagoffers se stories en kuier ewe gemaklik saam met Karen Zoid. Hanlie Retief Gesels Met 2 bevat 50 van Hanlie se beste onderhoude wat sy tussen 2011 en 2018 gevoer het: dié waaroor mense lank gepraat het, dié wat mense kwaad gemaak het, laat lag of inspireer het.

Steve Hofmeyr, Rolene Strauss, Tim Noakes, Piet Byleveld en Thuli Mandosela is van die onderhoude wat opgeneem is in hierdie boek.

Scholar, reverend, politician, and perhaps aristocrat... James Arthur Stanley Harley was certainly a polymath. Born in a poor village in the Caribbean island of Antigua, he went on to attend Howard, Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities, was ordained a priest in Canterbury Cathedral and was elected to Leicestershire County Council. He was a choirmaster, a pioneer Oxford anthropologist, a country curate and a firebrand councillor. This remarkable career was all the more extraordinary because he was black in an age - the early twentieth century - that was institutionally racist. Pamela Roberts' meticulously researched book tells Harley's hitherto unknown story from humble Antiguan childhood, through elite education in Jim Crow America to the turbulent England of World War I and the General Strike. Navigating the complex intertwining of education, religion, politics and race, his life converged with pivotal periods and events in history: the birth of the American New Negro in the 1900s, black scholars at Ivy League institutions, the heyday of Washington's black elite and the early civil rights movement, Edwardian English society, and the Great War. Based on Harley's letters, sermons and writings as well as contemporary accounts and later oral testimony, this is an account of an individual's trajectory through seven decades of dramatic social change. Roberts' biography reveals a man of religious conviction, who won admirers for his work as a vicar and local councillor. But Harley was also a complex and abrasive individual, who made enemies and courted controversy and scandal. Most intriguingly, he hinted at illicit aristocratic ancestry dating back to Antigua's slave-owning past. His life, uncovered here for the first time, is full of contradictions and surprises, but above all illustrates the power and resilience of the human spirit.