Deborah Mcdonald – författare

This absorbing account of the life and work of Clara Collet, a leading economist, statistician and champion of women's employment, is the first biography of this remarkable woman and reveals through Collet's diaries her fascinating personal life. An early female university graduate (1880), then teacher, she campaigned for the secondary education provision of girls at a time when it was negligible. Her other major contribution was in raising the status of working-class women, becoming a Commissioner for the Royal Commission on Labour (1892). She was close to the family of Karl Marx, particularly with Eleanor Marx, and with Beatrice Webb. Her enduring friendship with the cult Victorian author George Gissing deeply influenced his writing. Her working relationships with Charles Booth, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill are also celebrated

Of the many attempts to discover Jack the Ripper's identity, few omit the name of James Kenneth Stephen, tutor to Queen Victoria's eldest grandson, fondly known as Prince Eddy. While Stephen superficially fit the profile investigators established, was he really capable of the demented violence perpetrated by England's most famous serial killer?This volume takes an in-depth look at the life and experiences of James Kenneth Stephen, examining the relevant evidence and attempting to determine whether or not Stephen could actually have been involved in the Ripper murders. Delving into what little is known of Stephen's early years, the work discusses his relationship with his mother and his family's struggle with a hereditary mental illness. It follows him through his formative years at Eton, which he considered his true home and where he was introduced to the Greek notion of homosexuality. The work's primary focus is Stephen's relationship with Prince Eddy, who also became a suspect in the infamous London murders. The way in which Stephen's life intertwined with those of Prince Eddy and Montague Druitt, another Ripper suspect, is examined in detail. Other incidents of the fateful fall of 1888 and Stephen's final surrender to mental illness are also discussed. Appendices contain Stephen's poetry and details regarding his family ancestry.

Moura Budberg: spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century’s greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness. But after she met the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, she sacrificed everything for love, only to be betrayed.When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain’s envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart’s plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin’s secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her.Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.