Aubrey Jones was born in Merthyr Tydfil the oldest son of a miner father and a teacher mother. He was educated at the local Cyfarthfa Castle school from where he won a scholarship to the London School of Economics. He left the LSE with a first class honours degree, as well as the Gladstone memorial prize and a Gerstenberg award for postgraduate studies. Shortly after leaving the LSE he joined the Times, departing his desk in Berlin just days before the outbreak of the Second World War. On return to London he served in the War Office and army intelligence, finally seeing theatre in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war he returned to the Times but soon tired of journalism and took a post as assistant to the director of the British Iron and Steel Federation, eventually becoming its director. He was first elected to Parliament as an unlikely member of the Conservative party in 1950 and appointed first, Minister for Fuel and Power and then Minister of Supply under successive Conservative Prime Ministers. But Macmillan's re-election in 1959 saw him return to the back-benches and reinvigorate his industrial experience. From that time he was convinced that the UK should join the European Community, as it then was. He also took a strong position in support of technological development, believing the country would benefit from a Government policy encouraging closer cooperation between military and civil technology. When Harold Wilson won the 1964 election for Labour he and George Brown, surprisingly, picked Aubrey Jones to become chairman of the newly formed National Board for Prices and Incomes. He was selected for the role from a dozen names as the only candidate acceptable to both the TUC and the CBI. The decision to take the job saw him give up his Conservative seat and face a wider rejection by the Conservative party. George Brown told him there'd be a peerage at the end of his chairmanship of the NBPI but that was never Aubrey Jones' goal. Instead he returned to industry, taking up various directorships in the UK and he later spent time abroad, first consulting on reforming the civil service for the military Government of Nigeria and then acting in various consultancy roles for the Government of the Shah of Iran until just before the revolution in that country. Upon his return to the UK Aubrey Jones sought to return to the House of Commons. He fought and lost the 1983 General Election in the Birmingham constituency of Sutton Coldfield for the Liberal Alliance. He later joined the Social Democrats and eventually the Liberal party. He firmly believed there was a role for the State in civil society, more so than the politics of the Conservative party would allow. He also passionately believed that, with the Empire gone, the UK needed to be part of a much larger entity to make its voice heard in the world. That entity was, for Aubrey Jones, the European Community and the Liberal Party was the only political party of the day, which was firmly committed to membership of the Community. Unfortunately Aubrey Jones ended his memoirs when he departed from Iran but his views on Europe come across strongly in the selection of notes and letters he wrote subsequently. It's fair to say he would be deeply frustrated by the result of the 2016 EU referendum and the ensuing debacle about the manner and terms of the final withdrawal from the European Union.

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come. Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular bestseller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival. Through the story of three generations of women in her own family - the grandmother given to the warlord as a concubine, the Communist mother and the daughter herself - Jung Chang reveals the epic history of China's twentieth century. Breathtaking in its scope, unforgettable in its descriptions, this is a masterpiece which is extraordinary in every way.

On 15 April 1989, ninety-six spectators lost their lives at Sheffield's Hillsborough Stadium as they gathered for an FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. The events of that spring afternoon sparked a controversy that continues to reverberate through British football and policing to this day.Norman Bettison, a Chief Inspector in the South Yorkshire Police at the time of the Hillsborough disaster, witnessed the tragedy as a spectator at the match. Since then, he has found himself one of the focal points of outrage over the actions of the police. Comments he made in the wake of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012 stoked further criticism in the press and in Parliament and, in October 2012, he resigned from his job as Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police.This personal account describes how the Hillsborough disaster unfolded, provides an insight into what was happening at South Yorkshire Police headquarters in the aftermath, and gives an objective and compassionate account of the bereaved families' long struggle for justice, all the while charting the author's journey from innocent bystander to a symbol of a perceived criminal conspiracy.

Within Argentina, Juan Domingo Peron continues to be the subject of exaggerated and diametrically opposed views. A dictator, a great leader, the hero of the working classes and Argentina's "first worker"; a weak and spineless man dependent on his strongerwilled wife; a Latin American visionary; a traitor, responsible for dragging Argentina into a modern, socially just 20th century society or, conversely, destroying for all time a prosperous nation and fomenting class war and unreasonable aspirations among his client base. Outside Argentina, Peron remains overshadowed by his second wife, Evita. The life of this fascinating and unusual man, whose charisma, political influence and controversial nature continue to generate interest, remains somewhat of a mystery to the rest of the world. Peron remains a key figure in Argentine politics, still able to occupy so much of the political spectrum as to constrain the development of viable alternatives. Jill Hedges explores the life and personality of Peron and asks why he remains a political icon despite the 'negatives' associated with his extreme personalism.

The rivalry between the brilliant seventeenth-century Italian architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini is the stuff of legend. Enormously talented and ambitious artists, they met as contemporaries in the building yards of St. Peter's in Rome, became the greatest architects of their era by designing some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and ended their lives as bitter enemies. Engrossing and impeccably researched, full of dramatic tension and breathtaking insight, "The Genius in the Design" is the remarkable tale of how two extraordinary visionaries schemed and maneuvered to get the better of each other and, in the process, created the spectacular Roman cityscape of today.