During the first half of the nineteenth century, Alexis Soyer, a Frenchman from Meaux, was the most famous cook in London. A combination of chance, talent and social conscience took him into many of the great events of his time. Born in 1810, he cooked his was through the Paris July Days in 1830; he oversaw the building of Londona s most modern kitchen at the Reform Club, where he ran the kitchen from 1837--1850; he designed a model soup--kitchen which he took to Ireland, at the Lord Lieutenanta s request, during the 1847 famine; he opened Londona s first Parisian--type restaurant in conjunction with the Great Exhibition in 1851; and in 1855, he went to the Crimea to take over the running of the kitchens in Florence Nightingalea s hospital at Scutari. When he died in 1858, Soyer was helping Miss Nightingale reform British army catering.

First published in 1973, Wrongful Imprisonment aims to combine the human interest of individual cases of wrongful imprisonment with a general analysis of how and why they occur. It deals in detail with the English system, but also provides comparisons with Scotland, France, and the United States. The authors spent three years collecting material from newspaper reports, trial transcripts, books, lawyers, the Home Office and - most important - interviews with the persons concerned. As a result, they have been able to analyse objectively the existing system of justice; they have isolated and identified the areas in which the system is at fault, and the successive hazards which may confront the innocent man suspected of a criminal offence; they have also revealed the many obstacles which have to be overcome by the wrongfully imprisoned man seeking to establish his innocence and regain his liberty. This topical and convincingly argued book should appeal not only to students of law and sociology, or to lawyers, policemen, criminals, and others involved in the system of criminal justice, but also to the man in the Wormwood Scrubs omnibus.

In 1913 Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase exploded through the American art world.  This is the story of how he followed the painting to New York two years later, enchanted the Arensberg salon, and—almost incidentally—changed art forever.  In 1915, a group of French artists fled war-torn Europe for New York.  In the few months between their arrival—and America’s entry into the war in April 1917—they pushed back the boundaries of the possible, in both life and art.  The vortex of this transformation was the apartment at 33 West 67th Street, owned by Walter and Louise Arensberg, where artists and poets met nightly to talk, eat, drink, discuss each others’ work, play chess, plan balls, organise magazines and exhibitions, and fall in and out of love.  At the center of all this activity stood the mysterious figure of Marcel Duchamp, always approachable, always unreadable.  His exhibit of a urinal, which he called Fountain, briefly shocked the New York art world before falling, like its perpetrator, into obscurity.  Many people (of both sexes) were in love with Duchamp. Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood were among them; they were also, briefly, and (for her) life-changingly, in love with each other.  Both kept daily diaries, which give an intimate picture of the events of those years.  Or rather two pictures—for the views they offer, including of their own love affair, are stunningly divergent.   Spellbound by Marcel follows Duchamp, Roché, and Beatrice as they traverse the twentieth century. Roché became the author of Jules and Jim, made into a classic film by François Truffaut.  Beatrice became a celebrated ceramicist. Duchamp fell into chess-playing obscurity until, decades later, he became famous for a second time—as Fountain was elected the twentieth century’s most influential artwork.  'Breezily entertaining...There's a fabulous cast of supporting characters on this busy stage' - The Spectator 'A delicious and deeply researched portrait of its time' - New York Times 'Part drama, part page-turning history, this paints the complexities of art and love in a seductive light' - Publishers Weekly

For many performers, stage life and real life are separate identities. For master illusionist Harry Houdini, the two were inextricably linked. In this widely acclaimed biography, Ruth Brandon shows how Houdini’s obsession with his own mortality drove him to create death-defying stunts that not only captivated the public but also subdued his own raging psychological demons.


As Brandon relates Houdini’s methods of escape, she asks: What was he trying to escape from? Her exploration of the psychic landscape of one of the most enduringly famous performers of the twentieth century makes for utterly fascinating reading. Brandon reveals much that is new: how Houdini invented a phantom son; why he wrote long daily letters to his wife, Bess, who lived one floor below him; his combative relations with mediums and spiritualists, including Arthur Conan Doyle; and the first full description of his fabled death. This definitive biography allows readers to peer into Houdini’s psyche and understand him more deeply than ever before.