Michael Korda – författare

"Journey to a Revolution" is at once a history and a compelling memoir, the story of four twenty-four year old Oxford undergraduates who took off for Budapest in a beat-up old Volkswagon convertible in October 1956, to bring badly needed medicine to the Budapest hospitals and to participate, at street level, in one of the great, heroic battes of post-war history. Korda paints a vivid and richly detailed picture of the events and the people, explores such major questions as the extent to which the British and the American intelligence services were involved in the uprising and made the Hungarians feel they could expect military support from the West, and describes, day by day, the course of the revolution, from its heroic beginnings, to the sad martyrdom of its end.

In Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee, Michael Korda, the New York Times bestselling biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, and T. E. Lawrence, has written the first major biography of Lee in nearly twenty years, bringing to life one of America's greatest, most iconic heroes. Korda paints a vivid and admiring portrait of Lee as a general and a devoted family man who, though he disliked slavery and was not in favor of secession, turned down command of the Union army in 1861 because he could not "draw his sword" against his own children, his neighbors, and his beloved Virginia. He was surely America's preeminent military leader, as calm, dignified, and commanding a presence in defeat as he was in victory. Lee's reputation has only grown in the 150 years since the Civil War, and Korda covers in groundbreaking detail all of Lee's battles and traces the making of a great man's undeniable reputation on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, positioning him finally as the symbolic martyr-hero of the Southern Cause.Clouds of Glory features dozens of stunning illustrations, some never before seen, including eight pages of color, sixteen pages of black-and-white, and nearly fifty battle maps.

Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolise the war’s tragic arc and lethal fury.His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, “the handsomest young man in England” and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice.Korda’s dramatic account not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation.As Korda demonstrates, the poets of the First World War were soldiers, heroes, martyrs, victims, their lives and loves endlessly fascinating—that of Rupert Brooke alone reads like a novel. Muse of Fire is at once a portrait of their lives and a narrative of a civilisation destroying itself, among the rubble, shadows, and the unresolved problems of which we still live.

In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of the Second World War, Alone brings to resounding life perhaps the most critical year of twentieth-century history. May 1940 was a month like no other, as the German war machine blazed into France while the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line crumbled, and Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in an astonishing political drama as Britain, isolated and alone, faced a triumphant Nazi Germany. Against this vast historical canvas, Michael Korda relates what happened and why, and also tells his own story, that of a six-year-old boy in a glamorous family who would himself be evacuated. Alone is a work that seamlessly weaves a family memoir into an unforgettable account of a political and military disaster redeemed by the evacuation of more than 300,000 men in four days—surely one of the most heroic episodes of the war.

It was a warm April in Pleasant Valley when Margaret Korda, normally a fearless horsewoman, dropped her horsewhip while she was riding. Such a mild slip was easy to ignore, but when other troubling symptoms accumulated, she confided to her husband, “Michael, I think something serious is wrong with me.” Within a few rapid weeks, the fiercely independent, former fashion model was diagnosed with brain cancer, while Michael, once reliant on her steeliness, became her caregiver, deciphering bewildering medical reports and packing her beloved toiletries for the hospital. An operation performed by a renowned surgeon allowed Margaret to ride her favorite competition horse Logan go Bragh a few more times, but Margaret’s tumors quickly returned—leaving her to grapple with the reality of impending death. In rapturous prose, Korda, a modern- day Orpheus, braids her heroic story with heartrending details of their final year together. Passing, a tender memoir, is a testament to the transcendent possibilities of love.

In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of the Second World War, Alone brings to resounding life perhaps the most critical year of twentieth-century history. May 1940 was a month like no other, as the German war machine blazed into France while the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line crumbled, and Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in an astonishing political drama as Britain, isolated and alone, faced a triumphant Nazi Germany. Against this vast historical canvas, Michael Korda relates what happened and why, and also tells his own story, that of a six-year-old boy in a glamorous family who would himself be evacuated. Alone is a work that seamlessly weaves a family memoir into an unforgettable account of a political and military disaster redeemed by the evacuation of more than 300,000 men in four days—surely one of the most heroic episodes of the war.

Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War not in any conventional way but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolize the war’s tragic arc and lethal fury.His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, “the handsomest young man in England” and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen’s mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war’s end.Korda’s dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognised; Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war.As Korda demonstrates, the poets of the First World War were soldiers, heroes, martyrs, victims, their lives and loves endlessly fascinating—that of Rupert Brooke alone reads like a novel, with his journey to Polynesia in pursuit of a life like Gauguin’s and some of his finest poetry written only a year before his tragic death. Muse of Fire is at once a portrait of their lives and a narrative of a civilisation destroying itself, among the rubble, shadows, and the unresolved problems of which we still live, from the revival of brutal trench warfare in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

With the imagination of a writer and the eye of an artist, Michael Korda doodled on the backs of old manuscripts in his tackroom while his wife, Margaret, was out riding. They loved and acquired cats—a habit written about previously in their book, Cat People—and the few in residence at this time would serve as inspiration for the drawings. These are no ordinary cat illustrations, though. Korda’s cats read newspapers and books; go ice skating in the small country town where they live; comfort Margaret’s horse, Monty, after a stressful vet visit; sell fried mice at the Farmer’s Market, and undertake (on paper, at least) whatever fanciful endeavours their keeper conjures up.The result is a collection of magical pieces, filled with joy, that represent a year in the life of a couple in love with one another, and certainly with their cats.