Gibson Square – serie

Diana Mitford, the most glamorous of the Mitfords, rivetingly narrates her life populated with key characters of 20th century history. Evelyn Waugh and Oswald Mosley fell in love with her, while not only Winston Churchill but also Adolf Hitler adored her. She lived in the grandest houses as well as in Holloway Prison. Later the Duke and Duchess of Windsor entered her life, followed by Nelson Mandela... Meanwhile her mordant Mitford wit developed later into an elegant arch writing style as journalist and (auto)biographer.

Ghislaine Maxwell's life of privilege was unimaginable. Her jetset world was not only made up of Presidents, top billionaires, Hollywood stars, Kennedys and Rockefellers, but also of princes, princesses, dukes and duchesses, all as regular friends - including university friend Prince Andrew, the favorite son of the Queen of England. Yet she still wanted more. Ghislaine met shadowy billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and amassed a fortune of almost $30 million over the course of their friendship. Her arrest by the FBI in July 2020 - almost a year to the day of Epstein's second arrest on sex charges - proved a stinging fall from grace as $30 million bail was refused. GHISLAINE MAXWELL leaves no stone unturned and is the first investigation based on all new sources available. An explosive true story, GHISLAINE MAXWELL is a riveting tale of wealth, power and the almost impervious Teflon power surrounding America's richest citizens.

Through the infamous divorce of her parents, Ada Lovelace became the most talked-about child in Georgian Britain. This riveting biography tells the extraordinary yet little known story of her life and times-when mathematics was as fashionable as knitting among women and Ada became the world's first computer programmer. But for her era's view on gender, Ada would single-handedly have started the digital age more than two centuries ago.

'Dull skin, oily breakouts, wrinkles - argh, when will it end?! You've tried 'miracle' product after 'miracle' product ... Ingeborg van Lotringen, top beauty-industry watchdog and journalist, provides the answers. She knows the good, the bad, and what the beauty industry doesn't necessarily tell you. For more than twenty years, she's been testing and researching every possible skincare product and treatment. Put down that expensive little jar with its sparkling top. Great Skin is about finding skincare tailored to you. Your skin is unique and has its own special requirements. With Ingeborg, you'll become your own expert and soon pick products like a pro so that your skin will look brighter and healthier - for life.

A consummate writer and intimate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Diana Mosley was a frequent guest at their parties in Paris or at 'the Moulin' in Orsay, where they were neighbours. Written in her inimitable style - archly intelligent, witty and perceptive - Diana Mosley paints a remarkable portrait of her friend that is both extremely life-like and realistic with regards to her flaws. What was it that utterly captivated the heir to the throne and made him renounce it so that he might never be parted from her? It is this question which Diana Mosley seeks to answer and which she is perhaps better qualified to answer than anyone else.

Before Fridtjof Nansen's Greenland expedition of 1888, the vast impenetrable arctic regions exasperated nineteenth-century scientists. The twenty-six-year-old thought he knew better. Convinced that he would succeed by skiing, a sport practically unknown at the time, he put together a group of only six members to cross the arctic interior of Greenland for the first time. They would pull their own sledges and, on a shoe-string, arrange transport to Greenland on two steam liners to drop them off in the icy Arctic sea. They could only afford a basic camera to document their trip. Astonishingly, this audacious but much criticised plan succeeded! Nansen's riveting expedition classic including his diary entries are here republished for the first time in full. His words and captivating expedition photographs caught with a student camera set in motion a golden age of exploration.

The history of modern Russia traditionally has Communism at its centre: Lenin defines its rise, Gorbachev its fall, and Putin its aftermath. In this radical new history, Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov, however, introduce a new historical axis: the Cheka-the Bolsheviks' nebulous revolutionary intelligence service. Wrapped around the Party in a fight to the death from 1918 under its first head Felix Dzerzhinsky, only Stalin was able to resist its stranglehold at the cost of enormous bloodshed. Luring Russia into submission over less than a century, its murder-plots and unrivalled scheming culminated in the capture of the Kremlin in 2000.Drawing on Popov's secret documents of over two decades as a senior officer in one of the KGB's key covert sections, and on Felshtinsky's encyclopedic knowledge of Russian state archives open in the 1990s, little-known sources, and access to leading oligarchs, a new Russian history emerges. The story they tell is often unexpected while introducing a new cast of characters still of great influence-potentially surpassing Lenin's role-on our world today.In addition, the authors introduce a host of hitherto unknown characters who should be considered as pivotal, not least Felix Dzerzhinsky the ruthless first head of the Cheka. Obscure in comparison to Lenin or Stalin, he should however be considered as important an architect of modern Russia as Lenin.From Red Terror to Terrorist State is the first comprehensive history of the Cheka, its vice-like hold over Russia, global reach and ambitions. A monumental record by two exceptional Russian-intelligence experts, it presents an unrivaled wealth of unknown, authoritative, and detailed facts. Narrated from inside the intelligence services, it fundamentally transforms our understanding of how Russia works and how the Kremlin should be viewed.

Dim and dimmer? You decide! Spares Prince Harry and Prince Andrew have rarely been out of the news since 2019. They both have proved to have a rare knack for creating a royal soap opera and turning their humdrum lives into a major embarrassment to their family. Royal author Nigel Cawthorne unravels their princely lives in this dual portrait and asks. Join this frank and hilarious celebration of this royal double act. Covering all the stations of the cross for royal pain from wives, money, relatives, having to scrounge for millions, being turfed out of the HRH club.

On 29 May 1953 Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary conquered Everest, three days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Before their success, Everest had claimed the lives of dozens of climbers, including George Leigh Mallory in 1924. Norgay, the descendant of generations of yak herders, was destined to become a llama, but his love for the mountains was that much stronger. He had but one dream all his life, despite seven sherpas dying in 1922, and that was to conquer Everest. For thirty years expeditions had been struggling to scale its fiendishly difficult icy slopes and he was part of every single one until the one with Hillary succeeded. No adventure enthusiast will want to miss this unique Buddhist perspective on climbing.

Few military organisations have had a greater importance than the Wagner Group: at a cursory glance no more than a disreputable private mercenary group dedicated to committing war crimes yet also, astonishingly, the challengers of the Kremlin on 23-24 June, 2023-unheard of in over two decades of Vladimir Putin's rule.From its inception in 2014 this nebulous organisation operating from Russia was intentionally cloaked in questions. How was it able to operate alongside Russia's top government officials? How could it deploy the logistical systems of the Russian army up to and including ordering air attacks with fighter planes of the Russian Federation, despite the deep antipathy of Russia's powerful defence minister Sergei Shoigu? Why did the Kremlin provide such an ample helping hand to its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, for over a decade?In this compelling book, former Financial Times journalist Owen Wilson investigates the Wagner Group and their ties to Vladimir Putin. It skilfully sets out its history and the dramatic death of Yevgeny Prigozhin to cast a searching light on the person who ultimately stands behind the group.

30 pre-eminent voices capture Russia's soul-top Kremlin dissidents, key NATO commanders, investigative journalists, leading historians, human rights specialists, a Nobel laureate and the only Duma deputy to vote against the invasion of Ukraine.For decades, the West has struggled to reconcile Russia's 'greatness' with its barbaric behaviour. This is a unique, multi-faceted dissection that strips away the Kremlin's propaganda and reveals Russia's people as well as its psychopathic vertical autocracy-from the chilling legacy of the USSR to the modern petro-tyranny of Putin's regime. Authoritative and sobering, this is a concise ledger to understanding Russia and the inventive ways in which Ukraine has neutralised Russia's cultural sabotage.

The idea of population diversity and its benefits seem irresistible both in theory and in fact, as well as an ever-present element of the human condition. In this ground-breaking analysis, Ed West investigates the causes for Britain's disenchantment with a fifty year experiment with diversity gone wrong. He uncovers shocking mismanagement by the politicians on both the left and the right that has created increasingly deep enchantment with immigration and how to manage these problems in a constructive way.

A detailed, gripping and urgent account of Russia's persistent attempts to reclaim Ukraine over more than two decades, culminating in the 2022 invasion. This book offers a comprehensive history, beginning with early aggression in 1999, through the annexation of Crimea in 2014, to the full-scale invasion of 2022. The authors provide a chilling narrative that exposes Russia's geopolitical strategies and the global threat they pose. Drawing on historical analogies and contemporary analysis, Felshtinsky and Stanchev highlight the mounting atrocities and the potential for broader conflict if the West does not respond effectively. The book weaves personal anecdotes and meticulous research, creating a gripping account of the ongoing struggle. It serves as a powerful call to action, emphasizing the need for international awareness and intervention to address the escalating crisis and protect global stability.

The first comprehensive book on thesubject, authored by an expert who has studied the Syrian civil war for over adecade. This gripping account delves into the collapse of Bashar al-Assad'sdictatorship, tracing the 2011 uprising and Assad's brutal atrocities. Throughdetailed narratives and eyewitness testimonies, it chronicles the relentlessoppression and war crimes that fuelled the opposition's struggle. The fall ofDamascus in December 2024 not only marked the end of over 50 years of Assadfamily rule but also threatened Russia's strategic naval port, highlighting asignificant geopolitical shift.

AsRupert Murdoch’s tech advisor and founder of the leading communications journalin the US, Jonathan Miller rode the exhilarating first technology wave of thenews with satellite TV that made Murdoch the Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg of hisday. But he was also the founder of Britain’s first news website, Camden Lock,and was a first-hand witness how Murdoch lost the internet revolution by beingunfocused and misunderstanding the nature of the news.Concernedabout the AI revolution and control passing entirely from the journalists toengineers, Jonathan wrote this passionate plea about the function of the newsmachine and how its important function to shock is being squandered in acatch-up chase for traffic by old media companies. There is still time to pullit back if only we understand why news can neither be replaced by AI and whatwe need to do.Theyoung Jonathan Miller had an innate talent to annoy authority as a pupil atBedales school. When he discovered that the news can be like a hand grenade, hehad found his calling.  pursuit ofcreating a stir, he ended up in many different places, from Rupert Murdoch’stech adviser and disruptor-in-chief, to war reporting in Kosovo, the UK’s firstnews site, Piers Morgan’s Uncensored and bare-knuckle reporting on the folliesof rural Britain.Thesespiky confessions trace through the Murdoch empire’s secrets, the techrevolution that preceded the web, Bart Simpson, Margaret Thatcher, the doomedfate of wokeness, and trouble in an era flattened by AI. Tech and the mediaworld will never look the same...

In this spy-on-the-canvas portrait of James McNeill Whistler, Sarah Walden—the renowned restorer of The Mother—pieces together the intriguing relationship between the sitter and her famous son, the role of women in his life, and his friendships with Oscar Wilde, Proust, Manet, and Monet. Walden's unique vantage point offers a rare insight into Whistler's larger-than-life personality, the birth of modern art, and America’s first masterpiece.

From the Iron Age to the High Middle Ages, the ancient Celts were an engine of change for the whole of Europe. Here, Simon Young travels back in time to the moments when this ancient people defined indelibly the ancient, medieval and modern world. On this entertaining voyage, the reader will visit the hills of ancient Rome in the company of violent mohicaned warbands, pass into Dark-Age Christendom and witness Celtic monks' peculiar customs of curses and talking to animals. And move on to later medieval France, Germany and England where the ruthless vagabond-hero Arthur was to cast his spell over Britain's and Europe's aristocracy. While modern Celtic culture is an eighteenth-century invention, Simon Young shows that the real Celts turned upside down an area from the New World to Turkey and beyond. Leaving their mark on history, they were no less important than the Romans, Greeks and Etruscans.

What is the connection between God and East Sheen? How do you talk your way out of an Albanian jail? Why do dictators love to make comic books? How does a missed penalty-kick lead to a bloody war? Theodore Dalrymple, a psychiatrist who gives expert witness in murder cases, has a passion for sideways thinking. In The Pleasure of Thinking he takes us on a witty and erudite voyage along the hidden pathways that bring ideas together. At once light-hearted and enlightening, it is an amusing flight of the imagination in which we discover the happy accidents that befall those who remain endlessly curious.