Political leaders & leadership

  • The Lion House

    £20.00

    Set in Venice, 1522, this is ‘eye-witness history’ telling the story of Suleyman’s rise to power in the 16th century. Sensitive intelligence arrives from the east confirming the European powers’ greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has amassed all he needs to wage total war – and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on their entrails.

  • Becoming Kim Jong Un

    £10.99

    The first book from a former intelligence community insider

  • The Dictator’s Wife

    £16.99

    I learned early in life how to survive. A skill that became vital in my position. I was given no power, yet I was expected to hold my own with the most powerful man in the country. My people were my children. I stood between him and them. I am not the person they say I am. I am not my husband. I am innocent. Do you believe me?

  • Churchill, Master and Commander

    £20.00

    From his earliest days Winston Churchill was an extreme risk taker and he carried this into adulthood. Today, he is widely hailed as Britain’s greatest wartime leader and politician. Deep down though, he was foremost a warlord. Just like his ally Stalin, and his arch enemies Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill could not help himself and insisted on personally directing the strategic conduct of World War II. In this fascinating book, historian Anthony Tucker-Jones explores Churchill as a military commander, assessing how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office.

  • Strong Female Lead

    £18.99

    Women have been taught to ‘lean in’ and act like men to get ahead. But as the financial, environmental, and social systems crumble, isn’t it time we had a different plan? The first two decades of the 21st century have seen financial collapse, a global pandemic, the devastation of our environment and the disintegration of democracies. But while some at the top are telling us ‘it is what is it’, there’s a new generation of leaders showing the world how to be better. They’re building trust, investing wisely and acting decisively. And they’ve got one thing in common. In this book, Arwa Mahdawi investigates the qualities demonstrated by female leaders who show us how it’s done, including original research and interviews with Madeleine Albright, Mary Robinson, Alicia Garza and many others.

  • Renegades

    £35.00

    ‘Renegades’ is a candid, revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything from their origin stories and career-defining moments to their country’s polarized politics and the growing distance between the American Dream and the American reality. Filled with full-colour photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders – one Black and one white – looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself.

  • Spider Woman

    £20.00

    Lady Hale is an inspirational figure admired for her historic achievements and for the causes she has championed. ‘Spider Woman’ is her story. As ‘a little girl from a little school in a little village in North Yorkshire’, she only went into the law because her headteacher told her she wasn’t clever enough to study history. She became the most senior judge in the country but it was an unconventional path to the top. How does a self-professed ‘girly swot’ get ahead in a profession dominated by men? Was it a surprise that the perspectives of women and other disadvantaged groups had been overlooked, or that children’s interests were marginalised?

  • The Prime Ministers We Never Had

    £20.00

    Was Harold Wilson a bigger figure than Denis Healey? Was John Major more ‘prime ministerial’ than Michael Heseltine? What would Britain look like today if David Miliband had become Labour leader instead of his brother Ed? Would Jeremy Corbyn have done a better job of handling the COVID-19 pandemic than Boris Johnson? In this piercing and original history, Steve Richards looks at twelve prime ministers we never had, examining what made each of these illustrious figures unique and why they failed to make the final leap to the top.

  • Churchill’s Shadow

    £25.00

    Winston Churchill towered over his own age, when he was variously described as ‘the saviour of his country’, ‘the leader of humanity’, or ‘the man of the century’. More remarkably, he has towered over fifty years and more since his since his death in 1965. He overshadows both his country, whose recent history has been called ‘an extended footnote to Churchill’, and the United States, where a great cult of Churchill has burgeoned. This account of Churchill’s life and afterlife has been more than ten years in the making. It is not a conventional biography but an account of Churchill’s long life, the cult that arose almost immediately after his death, and his place in popular culture, up to the Oscar-winning film ‘Darkest Hour’ in 2017.

  • The Hero’s Way

    £20.00

    In the summer of 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi was finally forced to abandon his defence of Rome. He and his men had held the besieged city for three long months, but now it was clear that only surrender would prevent slaughter and destruction at the hands of a much superior French army. Against all odds, Garibaldi was determined to turn defeat into moral victory. In ‘The Hero’s Way’, Tim Parks follows the hair-raising journey of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, 250-miles on foot from Rome to Ravenna, to explore Italy’s past and present.

  • In the Thick of It

    £25.00

    ‘Sensational ? One of the most explosive political diaries ever to be published ? As candid, caustic and colourful as the sensational Alan Clark Diaries of the 1990s’ DAILY MAIL

    The Sunday Times bestseller