Siegfried Sassoon is mostly remembered for the devastating poetry he wrote during World War One as a result of leading his troops "over the top" to certain death. This episode in his life--when he was sent to military hospital suffering from shell-shock and his heroic return to the Front--is covered extensively in his own writing, and has overshadowed his later literary output. But his more mature poetry is resuscitated in this sensitive, exhaustively researched biography. As well as recou...

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read"One of the most—if not the most—beloved of American novels." —The New YorkerHarper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatredOne of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into mo...

This is a fascinating portrait of royal life at Sandringham, from the early life of Albert Edward to the modern day. Drawing on letters, diaries and contemporary reports, it is a rich exploration of the private lives of Britain's royal family. From family life at the estate to the first visit of Queen Victoria, the glittering parties of the early twentieth century and all the way up to the death of King George V, the reigns of his sons and the Sandringham of today, it will...

WINNER OF THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014.Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo scandal, An English Affair is a sharp-focused snapshot of a nation on the brink of social revolution.Britain in 1963 – Harold Macmillan was the Prime Minister of a Conservative government, dedicated to tradition, hierarchy and, above all, old-fashioned morality. But a breakdown of social boundaries saw nightclub host...

She was a spirited young heiress. He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. The marriage of Lady Seymour Dorothy Fleming and Sir Richard Worsley had the makings of a fairy tale—but ended as one of the most scandalous and highly publicized divorces in history.In February 1782, England opened its newspapers to read the details of a criminal conversation trial in which the handsome baronet Sir Richard Worsley attempted to sue his wife's lover for an astronomical ...

From the New York Times– bestselling author of The Rebel Romanov , an "absorbing account of the making of a queen through her awful, protracted grief" ( Kirkus Reviews ).As she did in her critically acclaimed The Last Days of the Romanovs, Helen Rappaport brings a compelling documentary feel to the story of this royal marriage ...

This account of British life in the wake of World War I is "social history at its very best . . . insightful and utterly absorbing" ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune).As the euphoria of Armistice Day in 1918 quickly subsided, there was no denying the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. Grief and shock overwhelmed the psyche of the British people—but from their despair, new life would slowly emerge.For veterans with faces demolished in the tre...

A "sparkling social history" that brings the twilight of the Edwardian era to life ( Entertainment Weekly).The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer just over a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. That summer of 1911, a new king was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. But perfection was not for all. Cracks in the social fabric were showing. The country was...

The life and mind of C. S. Lewis have fascinated those who have read his works. This collection of his personal letters reveals a unique intellectual journey. The first of a three-volume collection, this volume contains letters from Lewis's boyhood, his army days in World War I, and his early academic life at Oxford. Here we encounter the creative, imaginative seeds that gave birth to some of his most famous works.At age sixteen, Lewis begins writing to Arthur Greeves, a boy his ag...

"A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."—Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book ReviewRenowned biographer Michael Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But an investigation into the Holroyd past—guided by old photograph albums, crumbling documents, and his parents' wildly divergent accounts of their lives—gradually yields clues to a constellation of startling events and eccen...

The diaries of the National Trust's country house expert James Lees-Milne (1908-97) have been hailed as 'one of the treasures of contemporary English literature'. The first of three, this volume, which includes interesting material omitted when the diaries were originally published during the author's lifetime, covers the years 1942 to 1954, beginning with his wartime visits to hard-pressed country house owners, and ending with his marriage to the exotic Alvilde Chaplin.

From the author of the critically acclaimed THE VICEROY'S DAUGHTERS, the story of a glittering aristocrat who was also at the heart of political society in the interwar years.At the age of twenty-one, Edith Chaplin married one of the most eligible bachelors of the day, the eldest son of the sixth Marquess of Londonderry. Her husband served in the Ulster cabinet and was Air Minister in the National Government of 1934-5. Edith founded the Women's Legion during the Fi...