As a schoolboy at the age of thirteen, Magnus Malan had already run away to join what was then the Union Defence Force. This was to no avail, of course, but ever since he was permitted to join the Physical Training Battalion in 1946, for a period of some 45 years, his career and life has been closely entwined with the South African Defence Force. Malan's military career took him to many places in Southern Africa: Robben Island, the former South West Africa, where the Territorial Force was charged with protecting the South African Mandate territory, to the Military Academy in Saldanha and the Castle in Cape Town. As Chief of the Army and later Chief of the Defence Force he was closely involved in South Africa's incursion into Angola in 1975 and 1976, and also in many cross-border operations in the years thereafter. Malan then entered politics, and will be particularly remembered as Minister of Defence during the troubled 1980s. Malan offers a brief account of the influence that political developments in Southern Africa since 1960 had on the structures and functions of the South African Defence Force; on the successes of Armscor, and on South Africa's nuclear arms capability. He also provides valuable context for a period of many political and military events; a period of immense importance to the present generation and their descendants, but which has become almost forgotten. The title pays tribute to all those who contributed to the successes of the South African Defence Force and Armscor in a critical era of our history.

'This forensic study of the Renaissance banking dynasty conjures up a world of art, literature, philosophy - and brutality' Telegraph 'Likely to become the standard work of reference on the members of the family that dominated Florence' TLS 'A lucid and beautifully illustrated family history' The Times Wealthy bankers, wise politicians, patrons of the arts, glittering dukes... so runs the traditional telling of the story of the Medici, the family that ruled Florence for two hundred years and inspired the birth of the Italian Renaissance. In this definitive account of their rise and fall, Mary Hollingsworth argues that the idea that the Medici were wise rulers and enlightened fathers of the Renaissance is a fiction. In truth, she says, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias - tyrants loathed in the city they illegally made their own and which they beggared in their lust for power.

First published edition of documents and letters from a highly-significant incident within the nineteenth-century Catholic church. The row between Bishop Herbert Vaughan of Salford and the Jesuits became a cause celebre in the 1870s and was only settled eventually in Rome after the personal intervention of the pope. While the immediate issue was the provision of secondary education, at stake were key questions of authority that had troubled the English Catholic community for centuries; the solution played a major part in determining the relationship between the newly restored bishops and the Religious Orders. This volume brings together for the first time all the relevant English and foreign archival sources and enables the reader to take a balanced view of the whole issue. The documents and letters [including Vaughan's private diary] paint an intriguing and not always flattering picture of the principal combatants. Bishop Vaughan [later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster] was a determined champion of his own and his fellow-bishops' rights as diocesan bishops. Against him stood the leaders of the Jesuit Order, jealous of their traditional privileges and heirs to centuries of service to the English Catholic community. By the 1870s that community wasbeginning to develop a commercial and professional middle class who demanded secondary education for their children. Many of them looked to the Jesuits to provide it and they claimed the right to do so, irrespective of the wishesand rights of the bishop. The source material is accompanied by an introduction placing them into their social and historical context, and explanatory notes. It forms an important addition to an understanding of the nineteenth-century English Catholic Church. Father Martin John Broadley is a priest in the Catholic diocese of Salford; he also lectures at the University of Manchester.

Toe die Britse Imperiale Ryk in 1899-1902 sy volle militêre mag teen die Boererepublieke van Suider-Afrika in die veld gestoot het, het ‘n groot gedeelte van die res van die wêreld hulle morele ondersteuning aan die dapper burgerkrygers toegesê ... maar sedert die bitter uiteinde van daardie ongelyke stryd het geskiedskrywers die verhaal van die oorlog grotendeels uit ‘n Britse oogpunt benader.

Hierdie is ‘n geskiedenisboek wat anders is.

Oorlog-Beeld voer ‘n verbeeldingsprong uit om die krygswêreld van daardie stryders wat deur Nelson Mandela as die ‘eerste Afrika-vryheidsvegters van die 20ste eeu’ beskryf is, te laat herleef. Hier, in koerantformaat soos dit destyds kon gewees het, volg die verhaal van die ‘Engelse Oorlog’ wat deur Boere vertel word: deur die offisiere wat hulle burgers op die slagvelde by Magersfontein, Colenso en Spioenkop aanvoer; deur bittereinderburgers wat tot op die laaste volgehou het; deur verveelde burgers wat Mafeking, Ladysmith en Kimberley tevergeefs beleër het; deur vroue en kinders in die konsentrasiekampe; deur regeerders en krygsgevangenes in ballingskap asook verskeie ander deelnemers – alles toegelig uit ‘n magdom kontemporêre bronne en met ‘n menigte foto’s wat destyds geneem is.

Daar word nie net oor militêre konfrontasies berig nie, maar ook oor die kommandolewe, oor die ervaringe van krygsgevangenes in kampe oor die aardbol heen versprei, oor die aktiwiteite van die Boere-afgevaardigdes in die buiteland wat buitelandse inmenging aan Boerekant teweeg moes bring, oor die aktiwiteite van prominente individue, soos president Paul Kruger en Emily Hobhouse, en oor die treurige lot van vroue en kinders in die konsentrasiekampe.

First published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Clive Hamilton has spent a life asking why. In his unique memoir, Provocateur, he shows us why questioning the status quo matters, how powerful arguments can change the country, and how the life of ideas in action actually works. From why climate change matters to how we understand ourselves as Australians and the dangers to us of the new authoritarianism - all this and more has been shaped, for better or worse, by public researchers and writers like Hamilton. His work, and that of the Australia Institute he founded, made him many friends as well as powerful enemies. He's been denounced in federal parliament, black-handed by the Chinese Communist Party and sued by an angry corporation. He's had to call in the police after death threats and take a crash course in counter-surveillance techniques. But he has also influenced the quality of the air Australians breathe, the cost of our education and how we see Australia's place in the world. In Provocateur, we see the passions, the doubts, the strategising, the fears, the victories, the mistakes and the questioning. Here is a blueprint for changing public debate in our increasingly uncertain times - proof that ideas are powerful and that a different way into the future is possible.

'A scintillating story superbly told... [Ostler] packs every paragraph with eye-opening detail' The Times 'A rollicking read... [Ostler] tells Elizabeth's story with admirable style and gusto' Sunday Times 'Terrifically entertaining: if you liked Bridgerton, you'll love this...and her research is impeccable' Evening Standard 'Fascinating. Magnificent. Sensitively told' Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five 'Catherine Ostler's superb, gripping, decadent biography brings an extraordinary woman and a whole world blazingly to life' Simon Sebag Montefiore When the glamorous Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, Countess of Bristol, went on trial at Westminster Hall for bigamy in April 1776, the story drew more attention in society than the American War of Independence. A clandestine, candlelit wedding to the young heir to an earldom, a second marriage to a Duke, a lust for diamonds and an electrifying appearance at a masquerade ball in a diaphanous dress: no wonder the trial was a sensation. However, Elizabeth refused to submit to public humiliation and retire quietly. Rather than backing gracefully out of the limelight, she embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe, being welcomed by the Pope and Catherine the Great among others. As maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth led her life in the inner circle of the Hanoverian court and her exploits delighted and scandalised the press and the people. She made headlines, and was a constant feature in penny prints and gossip columns. Writers were intrigued by her. Thackeray drew on Elizabeth as inspiration for his calculating, alluring Becky Sharp. But her behaviour, often depicted as attention-seeking and manipulative, hid a more complex tale - that of Elizabeth's fight to overcome personal tragedy and loss. Now, in this brilliantly told and evocative biography, Catherine Ostler takes a fresh look at Elizabeth's story and seeks to understand and reappraise a woman who refused to be defined by society's expectations of her. A woman who was by turns, brave, loving and generous but also reckless, greedy and insecure; a woman totally unwilling to accept the female status of underdog or to hand over all the power, the glory and the adventures of life to men.

Wilf Page was a champion of agricultural workers, a promoter of justice in the countryside, a rural communist councillor during the difficult cold war years and a lifelong community activist. He is best known for his role in the National Union of Agricultural Workers, and in the European Federation of Agricultural Unions, but he was also a prominent local politician in Norfolk, and was a communist councillor for Edgefield for twenty-eight years. On his death, an obituary in "The Times" accurately reported that Wilf's communism had not been of the 'big Russian bear' variety, but had been about 'the community owning the wealth'. He was a man whose tireless battle for justice lasted until the last day of his life.

Magnus Malan het reeds as 13-jarige skoolseun weggeloop om by die destydse Unieverdedigingsmag aan te sluit. Dit was natuurlik tevergeefs, maar sedert hy in 1946 wel by die liggaamlike opleidingsbrigade kon aansluit, was sy loopbaan en lewe vir bykans 42 jaar onherroeplik met die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag vervleg. Malan se militere loopbaan het hom na verskillende plekke in Suider-Afrika geneem - na Robbeneiland, na die toenmalige Suidwes-Afrika waar die SA Weermag die Suid-Afrikaanse mandaatgebied moes beskerm, na die Militere akademie op Saldanha, na die Kasteel in Kaapstad. As Hoof van die Leer en later as Hoof van die Weermag is hy ten nouste berokke by Suid-Afrika se inval in Angloa in 1975 en talle oorgrensoperasies in die dekade wat daarop volg. Malan tree ook toe tot die politiek en sal veral onthou word as Minister van Verdediging in die 1980's. Malan lewer op bondige wyse verslag oor die invloed wat politieke verwikkelinge in Suider-Afrika sedert 1960 op die strukture en funksies van die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag gehad het; oor die suksesse van Krygkor en oor Suid-Afrika se kernwapenvermoe. Hy verskaf waardevolle konteksgegewens van 'n tydperk volgeprop met staatkundige en militere gebeure; 'n tydperk wat buitengewone betekenis vir hierdie geslag en die nageslag het, maar wat tans byna vergete geraak het.

When Julia Child arrived in Paris in 1948, 'a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian', she barely spoke a word of French and didn't know the first thing about cooking. As she fell in love with French culture - buying food at local markets, sampling the local bistros, and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu - her life began to change forever. We follow her extraordinary transformation from kitchen ingenue to internationally renowned (and internationally loved) expert in French cuisine. Bursting with Child's adventurous and humorous spirit, My Life in France captures post-war Paris with wonderful vividness and charm.

Fintan O'Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government-in despair, because all the young people were leaving-opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don't Know Ourselves, O'Toole, one of the Anglophone world's most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society-perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O'Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of "deliberate unknowing," which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don't Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us.

'An absolutely fascinating read' - newsreader Emily Maitlis James Comey, former FBI Director and Sunday Times number one bestselling author of A Higher Loyalty, uses his long career in federal law enforcement to explore issues of justice and fairness in the US justice system. James Comey might best be known as the FBI director who Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he's had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be, and how far afield it strayed during the Trump presidency. In his much-anticipated follow-up to A Higher Loyalty, Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works. From prosecuting mobsters as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s to grappling with the legalities of anti-terrorism work as the deputy attorney general in the early 2000s to, of course, his tumultuous stint as FBI director beginning in 2013, Comey shows just how essential it is to pursue the primacy of truth for federal law enforcement. Saving Justice is gracefully written and honestly told, a clarion call for a return to fairness and equity in the law.

One of the greatest stories of world exploration ever told. By the late eighteenth century, the river Niger was a 2,000-year-old two-part geographical problem. Solving it would advance European knowledge of Africa, provide a route to commercial opportunity and help eradicate the evil of slavery. Mungo Park achieved lasting fame in 1796 by solving the first part of the Niger problem - which way did the river run? Park died in 1806, in circumstances which are still uncertain, in failing to solve the second - where did the Niger end? Numerous expeditions explored the river in the decades following Park's death, but not until 1830 was its final course revealed following in-the-field exploration. By then, however, the Niger problem had been solved by 'armchair geographers' who had never even visited Africa. Majestic River celebrates Mungo Park's achievements and illuminates his rich afterlife - how and why he was commemorated long after his death. It is also the thrilling story of the many expeditions that sought to determine the Niger's course and the facts of Park's disappearance, as well as a biography of the Niger itself as the river slowly took shape in the European imagination.

A bold and original argument that upends the myth of the Fifties as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements, from historian James R. Gaines. In a fascinating and beautifully written series of character portraits, The Fifties invokes the accidental radicals-people motivated not by politics but by their own most intimate conflicts-who sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Among many others, we meet the legal pathfinder Pauli Murray, who was tortured by both her mixed-race heritage and her "in between" sexuality. Through years of hard work and self-examination, she turned her demons into historic victories. Ruth Bader Ginsberg credited her for the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, but that was only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s, a time when the US, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany viewed gay people as subversives and mentally ill. And in perhaps the book's unlikeliest pairing, we hear the prophetic voices of Silent Spring's Rachel Carson and MIT's preeminent mathematician, Norbert Wiener, who from their very different perspectives-she in the living world, he in the theoretical one-converged on the then-heretical idea that our mastery over the natural world carried the potential for disaster. Their legacy is the environmental movement. The Fifties is a dazzling and provocative work of history that transforms our understanding of a seemingly staid decade and honors the pioneers of gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmentalism. The book carries the powerful message that change actually begins not in mass movements and new legislation but in the lives of de-centered, often lonely individuals, who learn to fight for change in a daily struggle with themselves.

Statesman, pre-eminent leader and founder of the free world's then largest and most formidable trade union, Ernest Bevin was one of the most rousing figures of the twentieth century. Minister of Labour in the wartime coalition during the Second World War, he was Churchill's right-hand man, masterminding the home front while the war supremo commanded the battle front. Afterwards, he was Foreign Secretary at one of the most critical moments in international history, responsible for keeping Stalin and communism out of Western Europe, and for creating West Germany, NATO and the transatlantic alliance, all of which underpin European democracy and security to this day. An orphan farm boy from Bristol, Bevin's astonishing rise to fame and power is unmatched by any leader to this day. In this discerning and wide-ranging biography, Andrew Adonis examines how 'the working-class John Bull' grew to a position of such authority, and offers a critical reassessment of his life and influence. Finally exploring Bevin's powerful legacy and lessons for our own age, Adonis restores this charismatic statesman to his rightful place among the pantheon of Britain's greatest political leaders.

In an era where Americans are desperately seeking heroes and mentors, here is the story of how a saucy young lady from Denver, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, meets her match in handsome Ike Eisenhower, a farm boy fresh out of West Point, and becomes the Army wife par excellence. They were two very passionate and private people whose 53-year marriage, much of it lived in the public eye, survived great tragedies, misunderstandings, and adventures - and led to glowing triumphs in World War II and the White House. Mrs. Ike is not only a biography of a beloved American but a superb account of a complex marriage. Susan Eisenhower helps readers see her grandmother as her husband did - a heroic and irresistible figure in her own right.

Raider. Conqueror. King. Saint. This is the story of Olav Haraldsson, the greatest Viking who ever lived. A ruthless Viking warrior who named his most prized battle weapon after the Norse goddess of death, Olav Haraldsson and his mercenaries wrought terror and destruction from the Baltic to Galicia in the early eleventh century. Thousands were put to the sword, enslaved or ransomed. In England, Canterbury was sacked, its archbishop murdered and London Bridge pulled down. The loot amassed from years of plunder helped Olav win the throne of Norway, and a century after his death he was proclaimed 'Eternal King' and has been a national hero there ever since. Despite his bloodthirsty beginnings, Olav converted to Christianity and, in a personal vendetta against the old Norse gods, made Norway Christian too, thereby changing irrevocably the Viking world he was born into. Told with reference to Norse sagas, early chronicles and the work of modern scholars, Desmond Seward paints an intensely vivid and colourful portrait of the life and times of arguably the greatest Viking of them all.

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'A great, thrusting codpiece of a book. It is big, bombastic and richly brocaded... A jewel in its own right' The Times 'Evokes the painter and his world as vividly as a Holbein masterpiece. Beautifully written and illustrated, this book is a must for lovers of Tudor history' Tracy Borman Full of insight... This is a gorgeous book, to which I am sure I shall return again and again' Dan Jones Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realised portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies he encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the world of the Henrician court, Holbein was a protean and multi-faceted genius: a humanist, satirist, political propagandist, and contributor to the history of book design as well as a religious artist and court painter. The rich layers of symbolism and allusion that characterise his work have proved especially fascinating to scholars. Franny Moyle traces and analyses the life and work of an extraordinary artist against the backdrop of an era of political turbulence and cultural transformation, to which his art offers a subtle and endlessly refracting mirror.

Stalin was one of the most ruthless and authoritarian dictators in world history. This concise title presents Lenin's heir from his beginnings for priesthood to General Secretary of the Communist Party.