Biography: historical, political & military

Showing 1–16 of 47 resultsSorted by latest

  • Ladies Man

    £25.00

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a born leader-bold, charismatic, and able to charm his peers and disarm critics with nothing more than a witty phrase and a winning smile. He was also obsessive, manipulative, and haunted by his complex desires. More than drugs, JFK was addicted to shiny, remarkable women, collecting them voraciously and carelessly on his rise to the White House and beyond. Once one entered his orbit, she might become his secret lover, his trusted helpmate, or his close confidant – only to be summarily dismissed when she no longer suited his needs. But these women were perhaps the only witnesses to the real JFK – the private man outside the glare of the spotlight – and it’s time their stories were finally told. In ‘Ladies’ Man’, Laurence Leamer reveals the harrowing, definitive life of JFK, from his early years to his shocking assassination, through the lens of these diverse, fascinating women he surrounded himself with.

  • Sleuth-Hound

    £25.00

    Edinburgh, 1878. A medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle squeezes into the Royal Infirmary’s packed operating theatre, hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebrated professor whose uncanny powers of observation blur the line between diagnosis and detective work. That professor was Joseph Bell, who became one of the most celebrated surgeons and medical reformers of his age. With a flair for the theatrical and an eye for clues hidden in the tiniest details, he astonished his students with lightning-fast deductions about his patients’ backgrounds and ailments. Together with Edinburgh’s chief police surgeon, Henry Duncan Littlejohn, Bell also investigated some of the highest-profile murders of the century, including those of Jack the Ripper, and collaborated with forensic specialists such as a ballistics expert named Dr Watson. And as Conan Doyle’s mentor, Bell inspired the creation of literature’s most iconic sleuth: Sherlock Holmes.

  • Napoleon and His Marshals

    £40.00

    In 1804, immediately after his coronation as Emperor, Napoleon created the Marshalate, the supreme martial rank of the empire. Over the next decade, he elevated to it some of his most outstanding generals, who played leading roles in his extraordinary campaigns – including the brave Ney, the flamboyant Murat, the vain Massena, the iron Davout and the logistics master Berthier. Some of them were son of aristocrats, others of innkeepers or coopers, but all carried the baton of a Marshal of France. Andrew Roberts masterfully captures their personalities and ambitions, capacities and rivalries. But unlike Lincoln, who forged a team of rivals, Napoleon created a nest of vipers whose lust for glory descended into destructive competitiveness and mutual recrimination. For all his inspiring qualities as a leader, he manipulated and controlled those whose loyalty he most needed to survive, and ultimately only two of them rode beside him at Waterl

  • Plunder

    £25.00

    The last weeks of World War II on the Western Front in Europe witnessed extraordinary scenes of heroism, horror, melodrama and pathos.

  • House of Cromwell

    £25.00

    'Fascinating, gripping, revelatory' KATE WILLIAMS

    'An epic and clever history' GARETH RUSSELL

    'I know no rival to this book in its presentation of a major dynasty in English history' DIARMAID MACCULLOCH

    THOMAS MADE ENGLAND. OLIVER MADE BRITAIN.

  • The Real Nigel Farage

    £22.00

    Nigel Farage is arguably the most consequential British politician of our age, and on current polling he is set to become the UK prime minister after the next general election. But aspects of his life story remain shrouded in mystery. Who is the real Nigel Farage, and does he possess the qualities to lead the country at a time of domestic turmoil and international peril? Based on interviews and reporting in the UK and across Europe by the fearless John Sweeney, ‘The Real Nigel Farage’ will be published just ahead of the 2026 autumn party conference season as battle lines are drawn for the next election and the contest to lead the Right intensifies.

  • Redwood

    £25.00

    The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. ‘Redwood’ is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.’Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets, compelled to swap sides by a shaming secret of his own. Facing exposure, with both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and his own KGB colleagues closing in, he demanded that MI6 try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape pla

  • A Dangerous Game

    £30.00

    Cochrane’s life was even more remarkable than the fiction it inspired. A hero of the Napoleonic Wars, known for destroying the French Atlantic fleet in one explosive attack, he was an equally aggressive force in British politics as the Radical MP for Westminster. Cochrane’s fortunes turned in 1814 when he was convicted of a fraud on the Stock Exchange. Escaping from prison, he later reinvented himself as a revolutionary admiral, helping the Chileans, Peruvians, Brazilians and Greeks in their struggles for independence. In ‘A Dangerous Game’, historian Peter Moore draws on newly uncovered materials to bring Cochrane vividly to life. Bold, rebellious and uncompromising, he saw the world as a contest to be won – at sea, in politics, even in scandal – and played it more dangerously than any man of his age.

  • Indignity

    £12.99

    When Lea Ypi discovers that a photo of her grandmother, Leman honeymooning in the Italian Alps in 1941 has been posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with deeply unsettling questions. Growing up, she had been told all records of her grandmother’s youth were destroyed ‘when the police came and took everything’ in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan Ypi: glamorous newlyweds while World War II was raging in the background. What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy in Salonica, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans, through secret police archives and muddied memories. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi?

  • American Scoundrel

    £30.00

    From the 1950s to the 1980s, the many dramas of American political life had one common denominator: Roy Cohn. In his twenties, the infamous young prosecutor sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair and burned 30,000 books by ‘communist’ authors. Later in life, he was invited to Reagan’s Oval Office. Nancy Reagan called Cohn often for advice and gossip – indeed, much of his influence derived from his transactional relationship with gossip columnists. Perhaps most significantly, he mentored the young Donald Trump. The real estate developer, whom Cohn called his ‘best friend’, phoned him a dozen times a day. Indicted by the Feds on three occasions for bribery, perjury, extortion and other white-collar crimes, Cohn was acquitted every time. To achieve his ends, he did whatever it took. This biography sheds light on the life of the man who is arguably the mastermind behind the current arc of American political life.

  • Sunak at 10

    £25.00

    From taking office amidst the cost of living and energy supply crises and the panic caused by Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget, through the agenda-dominating Ukraine and Gaza wars and the Rwanda Asylum Plan, to the stunning 2023 local election results, this book is the definitive and jaw-dropping window into Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

  • Mao

    £11.99

    Based on new archival information and startling revelations from his inner circle Clements offer a clear and accessible portrait of a leader whose persistent influence reminds us why Mao’s story remains essential to understanding the global power dynamics of today.

  • The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor Hart

    £20.00

    Writer and journalist Peter Stephan Jungk tells the story of Edith Tudor-Hart, his great-aunt, informed by lived experience and years of research into her mysterious and enigmatic life and career. With The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart he paints a vivid portrait of one of the most important Austrian-British photographers of the twentieth century. 

  • The Lifesavers

    £25.00

    The Lifesavers were a small number of men and women who during WW2 were at the forefront of global progress in saving lives through collecting, preserving and courageously delivering blood – trailblazers whose work was then adopted around the world. This tiny and short-lived service (1939-45) created ground-breaking advances to improve survival rates with an impact comparable to the discovery of penicillin. In this compelling story from historian Roderick Bailey, we meet the nurses who built and tapped the bank of volunteer donors (1.5m registered by the end of the war); the unsung technicians responsible for storing, preserving and moving the blood; and the specialist medical officers who risked their lives in traversing battlefields across the globe to give transfusions.

  • Lumumba

    £12.99

    This book explores the life of Patrice Lumumba (1926-61), the iconic leader of the Congo’s independence movement and a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle. Revised with new intelligence archives, it traces his transition from nationalist to revolutionary and details the crisis that exposed Western colonialism.

  • The Traveller

    £30.00

    ‘The Traveller’ spreads out before us the life and times of George Forster, who journeyed to the far reaches of the known world, and whose radical ideas about humanity, equality and freedom challenged the worldviews of 18th-century Europe. Andrea Wulf paints a picture of a man of profound curiosity and brilliance. He joined Cook’s second voyage at the age of 17, an exploration of vast contrasts from the icy world of Antarctica to tropical islands of the South Pacific. Studying the diverse nature, peoples and cultures he encountered, he came back imbued with a deep belief in the equality of races – an understanding far ahead of his time. On his return he was feted in England, France, Germany and Poland, using his fame to advocate for freedom and women’s rights and against empire, racism and slavery.