Popular childrens author, Alison Uttley (Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig) spent over 40 years writing diaries. Professor Denis Judd, who knew Alison and has previously written her biography, reveals a different side to the writer whose husband committed suicide and whose close relationship with her son is recorded in detail. But the magic of the author rings through on every page as she writes about her daily life in Berkshire, the red lipped fisherwife near neighbor (better known as Enid B...

British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston has enjoyed a rakish reputation as a womanizer, a careless aristocrat and the apostle of big-stick diplomacy. His lengthy life linked the American Revolution and the Assasination of Lincoln, the French Revolution and the birth of the future of King George V, the age of Pitt with the days of Gladstone and Disraeli. His political career brought him three times to the Foreign Office and twice to the Premiership. He set out as a dutiful Conservative, beca...

George VI was the man not born to be king. He nonetheless rescued the British monarchy in the aftermath of the abdication crisis and cemented its prestige with his well-judged performance during World War II and the Blitz. In this acclaimed biography, Denis Judd tells the story of Prince Bertie's transformation into King George VI including his struggle with a crippling shyness and sense of inadequacy, exacerbated by the stammer which was the focus of the Oscar-winning film The King's Spee...

Rufus Isaacs was in his day the first commoner to rise to the rank of marquess since the Duke of Wellington. Born into a lively Jewish family, he left school aged 14, yet made his name as a brilliant QC before being elected to the Commons as a Liberal in 1904. Smeared during the Marconi scandal of 1913 he survived to be appointed Lord Chief Justice, and elevated to the peerage in 1914. He would go on to be Ambassador to the United States, Viceroy of India, and Foreign Secretary.For...

The Boer War of 1899-1902 was an epic of heroism and bungling, cunning and barbarism, with an extraordinary cast of characters - including Churchill, Rhodes, Conan Doyle, Smuts, Kipling, Gandhi, Kruger and Kitchener. The war revealed the ineptitude of the British military and unexpectedly exposed the corrupt underside of imperialism in the establishment of the first concentration camps, the shooting of Boer prisoners-of-war and the embezzlement of military supplies by British officers. Thi...

Professor Denis Judd-London Metropolitan University In the second part of a two-part course on the nearly six-century- long history of the British Empire, Professor Denis Judd picks up the narrative at the beginning of the 20th century. The fascinating saga unfolds from the death of Queen Victoria, through the First World War, the resulting tensions and divisions created within the Empire after the war, the enormous energy and resources the Empire used to fight World War II, and the final ...

This course will examine the growth and development of the largest empire in world history -the British Empire-beginning with the late 15th-century Tudor dynasty in England and ending with the death of the Queen-Empress Victoria in 1901. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were very few countries or people who had not been affected, one way or another, by the impact of the British. The Empire itself by then covered over a quarter of the world's land surface, the Royal Navy dominate...

The Incas were a small ethic group from the southern Peruvian highlands who created the greatest empire ever seen in the independent Americas--an empire of 10 to 12 million people. Inca history, largely presented to us by the conquering Spanish, reveals a rich culture of stunning achievement. In many ways, Inca life was defined by its unique geographical setting in the Andes, whose climate influenced everything from the crops the Incas grew to the altitudes in which they lived. This course...

A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action.Fry has already ...

A bestselling historian shows how the British Empire created the modern world.**“Scrupulous scholarship and a rattling good tale.” —**Wall Street JournalThe British Empire was the largest in all history, its reach the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of the Second World War, over a fifth of the world's land surface and nearly a quarter of the world's population were under some form of British rule. Yet fo...

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was the twentieth century's most influential economist. His ideas inspired Franklin D. Roosevelt to launch the New Deal and instructed Western nations on how to ward off revolutionary unrest, economic instability, high unemployment, and social dissolution. Keynes was nothing less than the Adam Smith of his time: his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Moneybecame as important in the twentieth century as Smith's The Wealth of Nations

Closet Queens is a fascinating study of gay men in twentieth century British politics, from Lord Rosebery and Lord Beauchamp in Edwardian times to Michael Portillo and Peter Mandelson in our own era.As all homosexual activity was illegal until 1967, and exposure meant ruin and disgrace, such men were obliged either to repress their sexual feelings or else lead double lives, indulging their tastes secretly while respectably married with children.The need to cover up...