A major biography of Michael Faraday (1791-1867), one of the giants of 19th century science and discoverer of electricity who was at the centre of an extraordinary scientific renaissance in London. Faraday's life was truly inspirational. Son of a Yorkshire blacksmith who moved to London in 1789, he was a self-made, self-educated man whose public life was underpinned by his devotion to a minor Christian sect (the Sandemanians) and to his wife. He was also a fine writer and brilliant lecturer. This book is a passionate exploration of his life, work and times (he was a pioneering scientific all-rounder who also experimented with electromagnetism, techniques for preserving meat and fish, optical glass, the safety lamp, and the identification of iodine as a new element). It will also tell the story of the dawn of the modern scientific age and interweave Faraday's life with the groundbreaking work of the Royal Institution and other early scientists like Humphrey Davey, Charles Babbage, John Herschel and Mary Somerville.

Frederick William Dwelly died over 50 years ago, but his vision for the place of worship that both made and broke him still pervades. His influence is there in the philosophy of inclusion that typifies the Cathedral's religious and educational activities; in the liveliness and relevance of services; and even in the rust and unbleached cotton of the cassocks and surplices, and the cream, black and red of special service papers. In the estimation of many eminent figures in the Church of England Dwelly was nothing short of a liturgical genius, but one whose life history could so very easily be lost. It was this realisation that spurred former Cathedral Education Officer Peter Kennerley to embark upon research into the great man's life and legacy. Using letters, sermons, newspapers and the testimony of those still alive who knew him, the author paints a fascinating, though inevitably incomplete, portrait of a truly inspirational man who was full of contradictions. He was ground-breakingly liberal in his views about interdenominational cooperation, but he could also be dictatorial. He knew how to make everyone who was involved with the Cathedral feel valued, but though widely loved he was greatly held in awe. It was certainly impossible to say 'no' to the first Dean of Liverpool Cathedral! Such a mixture of character traits is, however, what made Dwelly such an attractive, charismatic and effective dean. His foibles were at once his weakness and his strength; yes, he was less than perfect, but in the end his human faults merely served to make people warm to him. This is the book that might never have been written. For Peter Kennerley, the sifting of the archives has been a huge challenge which at times he has doubted his ability to overcome. The material available to him has been both copious and tantalisingly vague, and he has had to distil from it the essence of a man who in many ways is impossible to portray with total clarity. What is certain is that everyone who knew the Dean, everyone who knows the Cathedral, as well as all students of religious and liturgical history, will be grateful to the author for committing to posterity the life and work of such an intriguing, controversial and pivotal figure, and for doing it so well.

The story of Galileo's daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, as told through her letters to her father. A companion to the bestselling Galileo's Daughter, the letters are edited and introduced by Dava Sobel. Galileo Galilei was at the heart of the most dramatic collision in history between science and religion. But the great Italian scientist was also a loving father who treasured his illegitimate daughter, Virginia. She was perhaps her father's equal in brilliance, industry and sensibility, and became his greatest source of strength during his most difficult years. Now readers can follow their story, as she told it, in this beautiful volume of her surviving 124 letters to Galileo. Both in their original Italian and translated into English by the author of Galileo's Daughter, these entrancing letters still speak in the present tense, suspended in the urgency of their once current affairs.

'Based on research among thousands of unpublished documents concealed in the Communist Party archives until the fall of the regime, Lenin: Life and Legacy is a crushing indictment of the regime's founder...' Sally Laird, Observer In the first fully documented life of one of the greatest revolutionaries in history, Dmitri Volkogonov is free for the first time to assess Lenin's life and legacy, unconstrained by demands of political orthodoxy. In addition to showing conclusively that the violence and coercion that characterised the Soviet system derived entirely from Lenin, the author also describes in detail the personal life of Lenin: his family antecedents, his private finances, the early funding of the Bolshevik Party, his relationship with his mistress Inessa Armand, and the debilitating illness that crippled the final months of his life

'Absorbing... I now place Volkogonov's great biographical triptych [Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky] at the top of my reading list on the Russian revolution.' Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times Following Stalin (1991) and Lenin (1994), Dmitri Vokogonov completes his grand trilogy of biographies of the giants who dominated the history of the Soviet Union. A dynamic and inspiring public speaker, military hero of the Russian civil war, and a brilliant organiser and theorist, Trotsky also played a large part in advocating the system of state terror which was ultimately to lead to the nightmare of Stalinism. Widely regarded as Lenin's likely successor, he was outmanoeuvred by his implacable enemy, Stalin, expelled from the Communist Party, exiled, and finally murdered in Mexico in 1940 by Stalin's agents.

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