Winner of the Elizabeth Longford prize for Historical Biography'Engrossing' Claire Tomalin / 'Superb' Sunday Times / 'A triumph' Daily MailWhether honoured and admired or criticized and ridiculed, Florence Nightingale has invariably been misrepresented and misunderstood. As the Lady with the Lamp, ministering to the wounded and dying of the Crimean War, she offers an enduring image of sentimental appeal and one that is permanently lodged in ...

Bloomsbury presents In Pursuit of Love by Mark Bostridge, read by John Hastings.From Normandy to the Caribbean Islands, this innovative biographical pursuit follows Adèle Hugo on her reckless journey of unrequited love – and the writer who chased after her more than 150 years later.It’s 1863. The daughter of the most famous writer in the world, Victor Hugo, who has ambitions as a writer and composer, suddenly leaves her family’s home on the Channel Islands bound for Nova Sc...

The inspiration for the film Testament of Youth, this book from Mark Bostridge (Vera Brittain's biographer) tells the story of a remarkable woman and her extraordinary account of the destructive power of war.In the midst of her studies at Oxford when war broke out across Europe, Vera Brittain left university in 1915 to become a V.A.D (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse, treating soldiers in London, Malta and Etaples in France. The events of the First World Wa...

The definitive biography of Vera Brittain, acclaimed author of Testament of Youth. With a new introduction by Mark Bostridge.'Riveting and authoritative' Kate Figes, Independent on Sunday'Honest, precise and smart' Natasha Walter, Guardian'They succeed triumphantly... A fascinating portrait' Fiona MacCarthy, ObserverVera Brittain is most widely known as th...

A selection of the powerful and poignant wartime letters of Vera Brittain and her friends.‘If war spares me,’ wrote Vera Brittain to her brother Edward in 1916, ‘it will be my one aim to immortalise in a book the story of us four.’ Seventeen years later, Vera was to achieve her aim with the acclaimed Testament of Youth.This series of letters was the inspiration behind Testament. Written between Vera, her brother, her fiancé Roland Leighton and their two best frien...

For nearly a decade I have wanted; with a growing sense of urgency; to write something which would show what the whole War and post-war period — roughly; from the years leading up to 1914 until about 1935 — has meant to the men and women of my generation; the generation of those boys and girls who grew up just before the war broke out. I wanted to give too; if I could; an impression of the changes which that period brought about in the minds and lives of very different groups of individual...

Nothing in the papers, not the most vivid and heart-rending descriptions, have made me realise war like your letters' Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton, 17 April 1915.This selection of letters, written between 1913 & 1918, between Vera Brittain and four young men - her fiance Roland Leighton, her brother Edward and their close friends Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow present a remarkable and profoundly moving portrait of five young people caught up in the cataclysm of total war....

National BestsellerIn the tradition of All The Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale, comes an incandescent debut novel about a young Dutch man who comes of age during the perilousness of World War II.Beginning in the summer of 1939, fourteen-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lig...

WRITTEN WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARK BOSTRIDGEIn her bestselling first volume of autobiography, Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain passionately recorded the agonising years of the First World War, lamenting the destruction of a generation which for her included those she most dearly loved - her lover, her brother and her closest friends.In Testament of Friendship Brittain tells the story of the woman who helped her survive those tragic y...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERDeepen your insight into and appreciation for the writings J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis as you explore the untold story of how the First World War shaped their lives, faith, and writings.Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia—perhaps even no conversion to Christianity by C.S. Lewis.The First World War laid waste to a contine...

Readers of the Harry Potter seriesand Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are sure to be mesmerized by Dan Vyleta’s thrilling blend of historical fiction and fantasy, as three young friends scratch the surface of the grown-up world to discover startling wonders—and dangerous secrets.“Dan Vyleta writes with intricacy and imagination and skillful pacing; never once would I have considered putting his book down. In the manner of both a Dickens novel and ...

Scotland Yards Ian Rutledge finds himself caught in a twisted web of vengeance, old grievances, and secrets that lead back to World War I in the nineteenth installment of the acclaimed bestselling series.On the eve of the bloody Battle of the Somme, a group of English officers having a last drink before returning to the Front make a promise to each other: if they survive the battle ahead-and make it through the war-they will meet in Paris a year after the fighting ends. They will ...