In this sweeping and beautiful biography of a city, Artemis Cooper tell the story of the cultural life of Paris.A View of Paris is a story which covers the great sprawling novels of Balzac and Hugo to those of Gide and Camus; painting from the revolutionary but strictly neo-classical David, through the new ways of seeing developed by the Impressionists and the Surrealists to the wild exuberance of Picasso; fashion from Worth to Channel; architecture from Haussmann to the Ei...

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water; he was a self-educated polymath, a lover of Greece and the best company in the world.Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Paddy and his cloest friends as...

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress; but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write fourteen more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet ...

For troops in the desert, Cairo meant fleshpots or brass hats. For well-connected officers, it meant polo at the Gezira Club and drinks at Shepheard's. For the irregular warriors, Cairo was a city to throw legendary parties before the next mission behind enemy lines. For countless refugees, it was a stopping place in the long struggle home.The political scene was dominated by the British Ambassador Sir Miles Lampson. In February 1942 he surrounded the Abdin Palace with tanks and at...

Post liberation Paris – an epoch charged with political and conflicting emotions. Liberation was greeted with joy but marked by recriminations and the trauma of purges. The feverish intellectual arguments of the young took place amidst the mundane reality of hunger and fuel shortages. This is a stunning historical account of one of the most stimulating periods in twentieth century French history.

Elizabeth David was born into a upper-class family and pursued a rebellious and bohemian life as a student of art and then an actress in Paris, before running off with a married man to Greece and then settling in Cairo, where she worked for the British government. After the Second World War, she returned to England, where she was shocked by poor food into writing first articles, then books on Meditteranean cooking. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in 1950, inspiring a co...

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress; but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write fourteen more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet ...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Paris After the Liberation by Antony Beevor, read by Sean Barrett.Antony Beevor's Paris After Liberation: 1944-1949 is a remarkable historical account of the chaos and uncertainty that followed the liberation of Paris in August, 1944Post-liberation Paris: an epoch charged with political and conflicting emotions. Liberation was greeted with joy but marked by recriminations and the t...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Ardennes 1994 by Antony Beever, read by Sean Barrett.On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes on the Belgian/German border. Although Hitler's generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. The Ardennes offensiv...

**"Glorious, horrifying...D-Day is a vibrant work of history that honors the sacrifice of tens of thousands of men and women."—TimeBeevor's Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge is now available from Viking Books**Renowned historian Antony Beevor, the man who "single-handedly transformed the reputation of military history" (The Guardian) presents the first major account in more than twenty years of the Normandy invasion and the liberatio...

The final volume in Richard J. Evans’s masterly trilogy on the history of Nazi Germany traces the rise and fall of German military might, the mobilization of a “people’s community” to serve a war of conquest, and Hitler’s campaign of racial subjugation and genocideAlready hailed as “a masterpiece” (William Grimes in The New York Times) and “the most comprehensive history… of the Third Reich” (Ian Kershaw), this epic trilogy reaches its terrifying climax in this volume.Evans...

Winner of the British Book Awards History Book of the YearLonglisted for the Samuel Johnson PrizeThis thrilling biography of Stalin and his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of Stalin as Soviet dictator, Marxist leader and Russian tsar.Based on groundbreaking research, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals in captivating detail the fear and betrayal, privilege and debauchery, family l...