Lieutenant Colonel Charles Bevan was the key figure in an extraordinary, controversial and ultimately tragic episode during the Peninsula War. He was the commanding officer held responsible for the dramatic night escape of the French garrison from Almeida over a vital bridge. For this disaster he incurred the extreme wrath of the Duke of Wellington but whether this was fair remains highly debatable.

The new King of the Elves has disappeared while searching for stolen gold and missing Leprechaun children.As a last resort, the elves turn to humans for help. Once again, Henry, along with Tom and Flora, must step into a parallel world to find the lost king and the missing children. Their epic journey is steeped in ancient folklore, ghostly encounters, and a battle against the evil Goblin Empire.The dangers they face are many: bloodthirsty werewolves, a deadly maze, and a r...

The Welsh Marches have for centuries been witness to a mighty struggle between elves and goblins. Now, the elfish kingdom is facing defeat, or worse, extinction. Their only hope lies in the heir to the ancient elfish kingdom of Gwydden. Only he can turn the tide against the goblin hordes and lead them back to victory and prosperity.However, the elves have one major problem to overcome. The heir to the crown is living in the human world, in the quiet border town of Ludlow, oblivious...

This is the first book to tell the story of on eof the most contentious figures in Victorian and Edwardian politics: that of the independent-minded and exceptionally able Conservative politician, Sir John Eldon Gorst.

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the Briti...

The award-winning biography of William Pitt the Younger by William Hague, the youngest leader of the Tory Party since Pitt himself.William Pitt the Younger was one of the most extraordinary figures in British history. Prime minister at the age of twenty-four, he went on to dominate British politics for two decades, presiding over such complex and treacherous national crises as the madness of King George III, the beleaguered union with Ireland, the fallout from the French Revolution...

Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera were the two most charismatic leaders of the Irish revolution. This joint biography looks first at their very different upbringings and early careers. Both fought in the 1916 Easter Rising , although it is almost certain they did not meet during that tumultuous week. Their first encounter came when Collins had been released from jail after the rising but de Valera was still inside. Collins was one of those who wanted to run a Sinn Féin candidate in the L...

Daniel O'Connell, often referred to as The Liberator, was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century. One of the most remarkable historical figures in Irish history, he campaigned for Catholic Emancipation, including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, and repeal of the Act of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland. Famous in his day as the most feared lawyer in Ireland, O'Connell tormented judges, terrorised opposing barristers, and w...

This is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history: a decade of unleashed passions that came close to destroying the parliamentary system and to causing civil war in the United Kingdom. It was also the decade of the cataclysmic Great War, of an officers' mutiny in an elite cavalry regiment of the British Army and of Irish armed rebellion. It was a time, argues Ronan Fanning, when violence and the threat of violence trumped democratic politics.This i...

First published in 1964, Asquith was one of the most crucial and controversial of modern Prime Ministers. He was opposed with a bitterness and a violence that English politicians have not subsequently known, yet he enjoyed eight and a half years of unbroken power, and for at least the first six years of these he presided with an easy authority over the most talented government of this century. The issues which he confronted were momentous – Peers v. People, Ireland, and the Great ...

When President of the Irish Republic Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he remarked to Lord Birkenhead, 'I may have signed my actual death warrant.'In August 1922 during the Irish Civil War, that prophecy came true – Collins was shot and killed by a fellow Irishman in a shocking political assassination.So ended the life of the greatest of all Irish nationalists, but his visions and legacy lived on.This authorative and comprehensive biogr...

Michael Bloch gives a new twist to the oft-told story of King Edward's short reign.Drawing on a decade-long study of the King's personality, and on privileged access to his papers, he sees the King's abdication partly as the result of a plot to get rid of him by men who mistrusted his modernity and popular touch, but also explainable by the fact that he did not really want to be king or fight for his throne.