England Memoir

Delicious staples of a great meal, bread, cheese, and wine develop their complex flavors through a process known as fermentation. Katie Quinn spent months as an apprentice with some of Europe’s most acclaimed experts to study the art and science of fermentation. Visiting grain fields, vineyards, and dairies, Katie brings the stories and science of these foods to the table, explains the process of each craft, and introduces the people behind them.

In 1346, at the age of sixteen, he won his spurs at Crécy; nine years later he conducted a brutal raid across Languedoc; in 1356 he captured the king of France at Poitiers; as lord of Aquitaine he ruled a vast swathe of southwestern France. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, but better known to posterity as 'the Black Prince'. Michael Jones tells the remarkable story of a great warrior-prince – and paints an unforgettable portrait of warfare and chivalry in the late Middle Ages.

Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: Neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life.

Queen Mary I ruled England and its territories for only five years, from 1553 to 1558, yet she has been remembered for nearly 500 years as Bloody Mary, the Catholic oppressor of a Protestant country. The truth, as usual, is more complicated than the myth. Mary grew up in a era of religious and political turmoil. Mary's life was shaped by her experience of this, and by the twisted family politics of her father, Henry VIII.

The unlikely man at the roiling center of this intrigue was Robert Bunch, an American-born Englishman who had maneuvered his way to the position of British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew to loathe slavery and the righteousness of its practitioners. Bunch used his unique perch and boundless ambition to become a key player, sending reams of dispatches to the home government and eventually becoming the Crown's best secret source on the Confederacy.

Educator. Innovator. Inventor. These three words sum up Alexander Graham Bell, one of the greatest scientific men of his era. He is most famous for the invention of the telephone, a device which he predicted would transform human society. And it did. But the telephone is just one of the many innovations and inventions that Bell brought into being. A man who epitomizes the word visionary, Alexander Graham Bell predicted the use of light as a medium for transmitting information and how humanity would be transformed by flight. This is his story.

Kenneth Rose was one of the most astute observers of the establishment for over 70 years. The wry and amusing journals of the royal biographer and historian made objective observation a sculpted craft. His impeccable social placement located him within the beating heart of the national elite for decades. He was capable of writing substantial history, such as his priceless material on the abdication crisis from conversations with both the Duke of Windsor and the Queen Mother.

Each Tudor monarch made their name with a Dudley by their side - or by crushing one beneath their feet. The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I. Under Elizabeth I, the family were once again at the centre of power and would do anything to remain there. With three generations of felled favourites, what was it that caused this family to keep rising so high and falling so low?

For over four decades the story of the extraordinary evil that occurred at the Kincora Boys’ Home in East Belfast in the 1970s and the shocking attempts by MI5 to cover it up have haunted our political and social terrain for decades.

Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland in the first half of the 16th century, is one of history’s most famous monarchs for many reasons. He ruled ruthlessly, was quick to cry “treason!” and execute, and equally quick to fall in and out of love. Henry changed the religious fabric of England forever and left his mark on the wider world - but what of the six women he took as his queens? From the regal and capable Catherine of Aragon to the patient and generous Katherine Parr, Henry’s wives represented a range of personalities, goals, beliefs, and influences on the king.

Royal biographer Helen Cathcart's fascinatingly intimate account charts Elizabeth's extraordinary life, from her birth and early years growing up in the royal palaces—sleeping in the dungeons of Windsor Castle during the air raids of the Blitz—through to her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947, and their life together as new parents.

Jane Austen wrote that in her novels she painted the world on a “little bit (two inches wide) of ivory,” working “with so fine a brush.” Her well-known books, such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma, display the power of this approach; her observations about human nature have proven so accurate and entertaining that her books continue to be beloved 200 years after they were written.

History’s most unlikely friendship - this is the astonishing story of Queen Victoria and her dearest companion, the young Indian Munshi Abdul Karim. In the twilight years of her reign, after the devastating deaths of her two great loves - Prince Albert and John Brown - Queen Victoria meets tall and handsome Abdul Karim, a humble servant from Agra waiting tables at her Golden Jubilee. The two form an unlikely bond and within a year Abdul becomes a powerful figure at court, the Queen’s teacher, her counsel on Urdu and Indian affairs, and a friend close to her heart.

At the time of his death, Christopher Hitchens was the most notorious atheist in the world. And yet, all was not as it seemed. "Nobody is not a divided self, of course," he once told an interviewer, "but I think it's rather strong in my case." Hitchens was a man of many contradictions: a Marxist in youth who longed for acceptance among the social elites; a peacenik who revered the military; a champion of the Left who was nonetheless pro-life, pro-war-on-terror; and, after 9/11, something of a neocon.

Peter Ratcliffe served in the SAS for 25 years. Blooded in Oman in the 1970s, he also saw action in Northern Ireland, in the Falklands War, and in the Gulf campaign. From his early days in the Paras to his time as Regimental Sergeant-Major in the Gulf, he has lived and fought by the motto 'who dares wins'. Eye of the Storm is his insider's account of that exceptional career.

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.

In 1941, the United Kingdom faced its darkest hour: It stood alone against the Germans, who had chased British forces out of France, Norway, and Greece. All it had left were desperate measures - commando raids, intelligence coups, feats of derring-do. Any such "novel enterprise", wrote Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence, required "an officer with drive and imagination of the highest order". He found one in Commander Ian Fleming.

In a rich and riveting narrative, Jane Dunn reveals the extraordinary rivalry between the regal cousins. It is the story of two queens ruling on one island, each with a claim to the throne of England, each embodying dramatically opposing qualities of character, ideals of womanliness (and views of sexuality) and divinely ordained kingship. As regnant queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were deplored for their femaleness, compared unfavorably with each other and courted by the same men.

The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard - who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom - provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British royal family.

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.