British Memoirs

On today's world stage, there is one leader who stands apart from the rest. Queen Elizabeth II has seen more of the planet and its people than any other head of state and has engaged with the world like no other monarch in modern history. The iconic monarch never ventured further than the Isle of Wight until the age of 20 but since then has now visited over 130 countries across the globe in the line of duty, acting as diplomat, hostess, and dignitary as the world stage has changed beyond recognition.

Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993) was an international celebrity in her youth. But in 1963, the year of the Profumo Affair, the 11th Duke of Argyll shocked the country when he alleged that his adulterous wife had slept with over 80 men behind his back. The duke won a divorce, and Margaret was abandoned by most of her friends. Lyndsy Spence tells a tragic story of the life and downfall of this fascinatingly complex woman, and shows how she fell victim to a cruel husband, harsh social mores, and an unforgiving class.

Henrietta Maria is British history's most reviled queen consort. Condemned in her lifetime as a traitor and adulteress, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches in her marriage, the woman who turned her husband Catholic (and so caused the English Civil War), and a cruel mother. This clear-eyed biography unpicks the myths and considers the story from her point of view. A portrait emerges of a woman whose closest friends included Puritans as well as Catholics, who crossed swords with Cardinal Richelieu, and led the anti-Spanish faction at the English court.

Philip—elusive, complex, controversial, challenging, often humorous, sometimes irascible—is the man Elizabeth II once described as her 'constant strength and guide.' Who was he? What was he really like? What is the truth about those 'gaffes' and the rumors of affairs? This is the final portrait of an unexpected and often much-misunderstood figure. It is also the portrait of a remarkable marriage that endured for more than seventy years.

Who was Jimmy Savile? More than anything he was a list of contradictions. He was a practising Catholic who raped young boys and girls and had sex with corpses. He was a God-fearing believer who participated in satanic rituals. He was an unprecedentedly generous charity fundraiser who was too tight to buy his own meals. He was a friend of princes and dukes who ate bacon sandwiches at his local greasy spoon. He was a peace activist who tied up troublemakers in his nightclubs and had them brutally beaten. He was a fairy godfather who hated children.

To Britain's criminal underworld, Freddie Foreman is the Godfather. Held responsible for the gangland killings of Ginger Marks and Frank 'The Mad Axeman' Mitchell, he was the punisher to those who broke the underworld's strict code of conduct. Foreman's dramatic kidnap and arrest for Britain's biggest cash robbery made headlines around the world, yet this daring raid was just the peak of the safe-blowing, bank-robbing career that spanned decades.

William Wilberforce is chiefly remembered as the reformer who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade in England. He was at the heart of British politics for over 40 years during the inflammatory times of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. He lived just long enough to see the passage of the Act to emancipate all slaves in British territories.

From an acclaimed military historian, a bold reappraisal of young George Washington, an ambitious if reckless soldier destined to become the legendary general who took on the British and, through his leadership, defined the American character.

The British Legion was one of the most remarkable regiments, not only of the American Revolution, but of any war. A corps made up of American Loyalists, it saw its first action in New York and then engaged in almost every battle in the Southern colonies. Relying on firsthand accounts - letters, diaries, and journals - War at Saber Point: Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion is the enthralling story of those forgotten Americans and the young Englishman who led them.

By the time of his death, Wellington had been prime minister twice, a shrewd personal advisor to four British monarchs, and one of the nation's most prominent politicians for three decades. Despite his nearly four decades of peacetime service in and out of politics, Wellington has remained one of the titans of the 19th century because of one June day in 1815. Then, as now, the duke of Wellington is best remembered for defeating Napoleon in the famous battle of Waterloo.

Meticulously researched by a senior private banker now turned historian, No More Champagne reveals for the first time the full extent of the iconic British war leader's private struggle to maintain a way of life instilled by his upbringing and expected of his public position. Lough uses Churchill's own most private records, many never researched before, to chronicle his family's chronic shortage of money, his own extravagance, and his recurring losses from gambling or trading in shares and currencies.

The British monarchy is at a turning point. Concise and engaging, this book charts the very beginnings of British reign through to the longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II—and looks forward to the reign of King Charles III. Much more than a linear history, this is the intertwined story of royalty and state, of divisions, invasions, rivalries, death and glory; the story of nation fates tied with the personal endeavours of monarchs through the ages. This book is a necessary and comprehensive guide to the British Monarchy and how it has shaped history—and our lives today.

Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her “weak and feeble woman’s body” to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton’s fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince—an expert in Machiavellian statecraft.

The remarkably honest and brilliantly entertaining memoir of one of our finest acting Dames whose long and celebrated career includes her much-loved performance as Livia in I, Claudius and who was married for 20 years to the hell-raising Hollywood star Peter O'Toole. Siân Phillips has a long and celebrated career on both stage and screen. For the first time, her two best-selling volumes of memoir Private Faces and Public Places will be available as a single volume with a brand new foreword by the author.

Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers plunged into the jungle, trying to find evidence of Fawcett's party or Z. Some died from disease and starvation; others simply disappeared.

Winston Churchill is generally considered one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, revered for his opposition to appeasement, his defiance in the face of German bombing of England, his political prowess, and his memorable speeches. He became the savior of his country, as prime minister during the most perilous period in British history, World War II, and is now perhaps even more beloved in America than in England. This revelatory book takes on Churchill in his entirety, separating the man from the myth that he so carefully cultivated.

Gary Barlow is one of the most successful British musicians and songwriters of all time, but 15 years ago, as he himself admits, he hit rock bottom - he was out of shape, out of work, depressed. Food for him had become an addiction, a means not only of comfort but almost of self-medication as he grappled with the cruel twists of fate of musical stardom. In 2003, as he struggled with the disappointment of an underperforming solo career alongside the tireless media taunts; Gary turned to food.

The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.

One was a married American socialite who embarked on a scandalous affair with the future king of England. Another was an aristocratic ingenue whose winsome charm captured the world’s imagination. And the third was a thirty-something actress whose outspokenness put her on a collision course with the British public. The marriages of Wallis Simpson, Diana Spencer, and Meghan Markle into the British royal family sparked a series of crises that at times seemed to threaten the future of the monarchy itself.

Jacob Torney, uprooted from his Cumbrian home at the tender age of fifteen-and-a-half, had to get to grips with a new language and culture whether he liked it or not. Thrust into small-town Spanish life just when he should have been studying for his GCSEs, his candid account tells not only of his own ups and downs, but also those of his Guinness-guzzling, tax-evading father, his long-suffering mother, and his happy-go-lucky younger sister, Katie. After steering a shaky course between the pitfalls of adolescence and the huge demands of school life, Jacob holds nothing, or very little, back ...