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THE REAL GAME OF THRONES...
The Wars of the Roses were a prolonged brawl over an inheritance by a
deeply dysfunctional extended family. The inheritance in question was
the throne of England; the story is one of unbridled ambition and
murderous treachery.
From the 1450s, when the mentally unstable Henry VI struggled to
control the violent feuding of his magnates, through the rise and fall
of Richard of York, to the chaos and bloodshed of the 1470s which
followed Edward IV's accession and his secret marriage to Elizabeth
Woodville, this is a saga of ambition, intrigue and bloodshed.
Charting a clear course through the dynastic and factional minefield of
the era, and offering an authoritative analysis of the battles that
ensued, Hugh Bicheno's The Wars of the Roses is a compelling one-volume
account of England longest and bloodiest civil war.
Controversial and revisionist history of America's first civil war.
Published with hugely successful accompanying four-part BBC TV
series - written and presented by star military historian, Richard
Holmes. Most people view the American Revolutionary War of the
1775-83 (also known as the War of Independence) as a popular
struggle for liberty against an oppressive colonial power. REBELS
& REDCOATS by historian Hugh Bicheno, written to accompany a
four-part BBC television series presented by Richard Holmes,
demonstrates that it was in fact America's first civil war.
Employing the latest scholarship and vivid eyewitness accounts,
Bicheno argues t that the war was the product of a broad French
imperial design, and greed of many prominent colonials. As many
Americans remained loyal to the Crown as rebelled against it, and
the reasons for adopting or changing sides were as varied as the
men and women who had to make the unenviable decision. Native and
African Americans overwhelmingly favoured the British cause.We hear
not only the voices of Rebels and Redcoats, but also of German
mercenaries and aristocratic French adventurers, as well as Indian
warriors and Black slaves fighting for their independence, which
together shed new light on events that forged a nation. The main
loser was the French monarchy, which ruined itself to gain no
lasting influence over the United States, while unable to exploit
the distraction the war created either to invade Britain or gain
control of the West Indies, which at the time were considered a far
bigger prize than all of North America.
The controversial memoir of a top British spy which finally reveals
what really went on behind the scenes of the Falklands War For five
years before the Falklands War, Hugh Bicheno was one of the top
British spies in Argentina. As such, he gathered hard, corroborated
intelligence on Argentine intentions over the Falklands - which the
British establishment then chose to ignore. The reasons behind this
British decision, and its disastrous and inevitable consequences in
the South Atlantic, are the main story of this book. There were
three main players in the war, each of them trying to overcome
their own cultural baggage. The Argentines were riddled with guilt:
after years of fighting a morally repugnant campaign against its
own people, the Argentine military saw a war for the Malvinas
islands as a perfect opportunity to win back their self-respect.
The hands of the Americans were also bloody from the likewise dirty
wars they had sponsored and abetted in Central America. For Britain
it was simply the last straw after decades of humiliation.
In Italy, the Renaissance was more than a time of sweeping cultural
advancement; it was also an age of nearly continuous military
conflict and vicious personal feuds between powerful public
figures. A lifelong vendetta pitted two of Italy's most prominent
"condottieri," or mercenary warlords, against each other in a
struggle that moved from the battlefield to the political halls of
power to the papacy itself. Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of
Urbino, and Sigismondo Malatesta, "the Wolf of Rimini," were more
than ruthless generals; they were cultured patrons of the arts who
nonetheless took their rivalry to bloody excess. Here their story
is set against the rich backdrop of 15th-century Italy, a sweeping
epic of nobility and war, betrayals and vengeance.
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