Brian Moynahan – författare

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin,drinker, thief, womanizer,arrived in St. Petersburg in 1903 as if from the medieval past . . . tattered, black-clad, muttering. By the time of his sensational murder thirteen years later, the peasant was the "beloved Friend" of Czar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra, with a seemingly supernatural power to stop the bleeding attacks of their hemophiliac son, Alexis. How could it have happened? As on society lady of the time asked, How could so pitiful a wretch throw so vast a shadow?"Drawing on confidential police reports, cabinet meeting memos, and many documents only now available, Moynahan sheds new light on Rasputin's life and disputes some of the widely held details of his death. The Washington Post Book World called the book balanced and well-researched" hailed its shrewd analysis of the ways in which Rasputin's manipulative abilities meshed with the emotional needs of isolated, superstitious members of czarist aristocracy. It is an unforgettable portrait of an age as well as of a man.

The great echoing phrases of the King James Bible that have boomed through the English-speaking mind for 400 years - an eye for an eye . . . eat, drink and be merry . . . . death, where is thy sting? . . . man shall not live by bread alone - are largely the work of a man whose genius for words matches Shakespeare. But William Tyndale, the young Gloucestershire tutor who wrote them, paid for them with his life. He was persecuted, exiled and eventually burned at the stake. Book of Fire is the thrilling, moving story of the man who first translated the word of God into the English vernacular. Tyndale did so in defiance of church and state, hunted by the implacable enmity and the agents of the sainted Thomas More. He was finally betrayed, but by then his courage and poetic instinct had provided the backbone of the single most significant work in the English language. The Tudor heretic had changed the literary, religious and political landscape for ever.

Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was first played in the city of its birth on 9 August, 1942. There has never been a first performance to match it. Pray God, there never will be again. Almost a year earlier, the Germans had begun their blockade of the city. Already many thousands had died of their wounds, the cold, and most of all, starvation. The assembled musicians - scrounged from frontline units and military bands, for only twenty of the orchestra's 100 players had survived - were so hungry, many feared they'd be too weak to play the score right through. In these, the darkest days of the Second World War, the music and the defiance it inspired provided a rare beacon of light for the watching world. Setting the composition of Shostakovich's most famous work against the tragic canvas of the siege itself and the years of repression and terror that preceded it, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony is a magisterial and moving account of one of the most tragic periods in history.

Arctic explorer, survival expert and naturalist Freddy Spencer Chapman was trapped behind enemy lines when the Japanese overran Malaya in 1942. His response was to begin a commando campaign of such lethal effectiveness that the Japanese deployed an entire regiment to hunt him down, believing that a 200-strong guerrilla army was responsible for the wholesale destruction of their convoys. He was wounded, and racked by tropical disease. His companions were killed, or captured and then beheaded. Cut off from friendly forces, his only shelter the deep jungle, Chapman held out for three years and five months. Jungle Soldier recounts the thrilling and unforgettable adventures of the North country orphan who survived against all odds to become a legend of guerrilla warfare.

Forgotten Soldiers is an enthralling work of military history that shows how the courage, intelligence or simple good fortune of the individual can exert a decisive influence on the outcome of a battle or campaign. It tells the stories of fifteen unsung heroes, none of a rank higher than major, whose deeds changed the course of important battles and - arguably - the course of history. These vivid and gripping accounts - largely drawn from the Second World War, but with tales too from other conflicts - have each been selected to illustrate one of the dictums of the great Prussian theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz, about the importance of having the right man in the right place at the right time. From the Roman standard bearer who plunged into the waves off Deal in 55 BC, saving Julius Caesar's military honour and political career, to the young Israeli tank lieutenant who almost single-handedly stalled the advancing Syrian armour in 1973, these are above all tales of courage.But it is not just courage that wins wars, as these stories demonstrate: such elements as surprise, determination, good intelligence, chance, insight, inventiveness and clear thinking all play their parts in eventual victory. And it may only take one man, often of lowly rank, his name largely forgotten, to embody such qualities for the effect to be felt around the world.