A vivid and moving portrait of the inimitable Lily Budge, who overcame poverty and class to become the 13th Countess of Galloway, and one of Scotland's most colourful eccentrics. In 1916, Lily Miller was born into a working class family in Duns, in the Borders region of Scotland. She became determined to escape, both from the small town gossip and from her terrifying mother, who thought Lily was born only to serve. Lily could not have predicted that her flight would eventually lead her to the heart of the Scottish establishment. Her spirited, eccentric and at times self-destructive nature shaped every decision she made, and her life became increasingly rackety. In 1975, living in Edinburgh as a self-styled dealer in porcelain dolls, with two failed marriages and four sons (one adopted) to her name, not to mention posts as a housekeeper and a boarding house owner, she met Randolph Stewart, the future 13th Earl of Galloway. On the surface, Randolph's aristocratic childhood could not have seemed more different. His was a world of great privilege, emotional restraint and overwhelming expectation. man, lobotomised. Much of the rest of his life had been spent hidden away, either in a mental institution or with a religious order of monks. But a curious bond formed between Lily and Randolph, and marriage followed, beginning a deep family feud that was played out in newspaper headlines. Was such a union doomed to failure? An Unlikely Countess is a masterpiece of storytelling and biography, teeming with historical detail and famous names. Louise Carpenter has brought to life not only two extraordinary characters in Lily and Randolph, but also the worlds in which they moved, with sensitivity, humour and expert observation. Her affection for her subjects is matched by a wry awareness of their idiosyncrasies, and the rich backdrop she paints serves as a vibrant portrait of twentieth-century Scotland.

In this intimate and extraordinary memoir, Ziauddin Yousafzai, the father of Malala, gives a moving account of fatherhood and his lifelong fight for equality – proving there are many faces of feminism.

“Whenever anybody has asked me how Malala became who she is, I have often used the phrase. ‘Ask me not what I did but what I did not do. I did not clip her wings’”

For over twenty years, Ziauddin Yousafzai has been fighting for equality – first for Malala, his daughter – and then for all girls throughout the world living in patriarchal societies. Taught as a young boy in Pakistan to believe that he was inherently better than his sisters, Ziauddin rebelled against inequality at a young age. And when he had a daughter himself he vowed that Malala would have an education, something usually only given to boys, and he founded a school that Malala could attend.

Then in 2012, Malala was shot for standing up to the Taliban by continuing to go to her father's school, and Ziauddin almost lost the very person for whom his fight for equality began.

Let Her Fly is Ziauddin’s journey from a stammering boy growing up in a tiny village high in the mountains of Pakistan, through to being an activist for equality and the father of the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and now one of the most influential and inspiring young women on the planet.

Told through intimate portraits of each of Ziauddin’s closest relationships – as a son to a traditional father; as a father to Malala and her brothers, educated and growing up in the West; as a husband to a wife finally learning to read and write; as a brother to five sisters still living in the patriarchy – Let Her Fly looks at what it means to love, to have courage and fight for what is inherently right. Personal in its detail and universal in its themes, this landmark book shows why we must all keep fighting for the rights of girls and women everywhere.