HarperPress – serie

This first volume of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs, which encompasses the entirety of her career as Prime Minister.Margaret Thatcher was the towering figure of late-twentieth-century British politics. This is the story of her remarkable life in her own words.This first volume of her memoirs is a riveting first-hand portrait of the events and personalities of her eleven years in power. She recalls the triumphs and the critical moments of her premiership – the Falklands War, the miners' strike, the Brighton bomb, the Westland Affair and her unprecedented three election victories. Her judgements of the men and women she encountered, whether world statesmen or Cabinet colleagues, are astonishingly frank. She is lavish with her praise; devastating with her criticism. The book reaches a gripping climax with an hour-by-hour description from inside 10 Downing Street of her dramatic final days in office.Margaret Thatcher's compelling account stands as a powerful testament to her influential legacy.Although ‘The Downing Street Years’ is not available as an ebook, the ebook ‘Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography’ (ISBN 978-0-00-741694-3) comprises abridged versions of this and the first volume of Thatcher’s memoirs, ‘The Path to Power’.

Three thousand years of Chinese history in an accessible and authoritative single volume.Despite the recent rise of China to a position of dominance on the world economic stage, Chinese history remains an elusive subject. Yet it is this vast narrative of appalling loss, superhuman endeavour and incredible invention that has made China the superpower it is today. From the dawn of legend to the succession of great dynasties, from Confucius to Chairman Mao and from the clamour of revolution to the lure of slick capitalism, John Keay takes the reader on a sweeping tour through Chinese history. This is a definitive and indispensable account of a country set to play a major part in our future.

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes’s dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement. The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook’s first Endeavour voyage, who stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769 fully expecting to have located Paradise. Back in Britain, the same Romantic revolution that had inspired Banks was spurring other great thinkers on to their own voyages of artistic and scientific discovery – astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical – that together made up the ‘age of wonder’.In this breathtaking group biography, Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period’s celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic sight to the miner’s lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration.

‘More than just a work of first-class scholarship, Liberty’s Exiles is a deeply moving masterpiece that fulfils the historian’s most challenging ambition: to revivify past experience.’ Niall FergusonLiberty’s Exiles was shortlisted for the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize.Early in the afternoon of 25 November 1783, the American Revolution was finally over; the British were gone, the patriots were back and a key moment inscribed itself in the annals of the emerging United States. Territorial independence from Great Britain had effectively begun.In 'Liberty’s Exiles’, Maya Jasanoff examines the realities of the end of the Revolution, through looking at the lives of the Loyalist refugees – those men and women who took Britain's side. She tells the story of Elizabeth Johnston from Savannah, whose family went on to settle in St Augustine, Scotland, Jamaica and Nova Scotia; Reverend Jacob Bailey, who fled from New England across rough seas to Canada with his family and little more than the clothes on his back; five-year-old Catherine Skinner – the daughter of a loyalist – who was trapped as a prisoner in her home, hiding from the gunshots of rebel raiders. Their experiences speak eloquently of a larger history of exile, mobility and the shaping of the British Empire in the wake of the American War.Beautifully written and rich with source material, 'Liberty’s Exiles' is a history of the American Revolution unlike any before.

From the bestselling author of ‘Elizabeth and Mary’, the remarkable love story of Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, set against the turbulence and romance of 17th-century England.Sir William Temple (1628-99), handsome and intelligent, son of a staunch Parliamentarian, become a celebrated essayist and diplomat in Charles II’s time. Captivating him from their first meeting, when he was just 20, Dorothy Osborne (1627-1696) was an intellectual romantic from a family of committed Royalists. After a long and at times desperate courtship, in which Dorothy rejected numerous other suitors (including Henry Cromwell, son of the Lord Protector), they married in 1654. Their union had been fiercely opposed by both their families, but they went on to build a passionate marriage that brought personal tragedies and public triumphs and betrayals during the huge political upheavals of the age.Their relationship was intellectually collaborative; both were gifted writers, and possessed of strikingly modern sensibilities. Seventy-seven letters written by Dorothy to William during their long clandestine courtship survive, masterpieces of wit and style, with a conversational intimacy that transports the reader to her side. Both were at the social and political centre of life: confidants of William of Orange and Mary, who were instrumental in promoting their marriage, contemporaries of Pepys, and employers of Jonathan Swift.Drawing upon extensive research and the Temples’ own extraordinary writings, Jane Dunn brings to life their remarkable story, offering a rare perspective on one of the most turbulent periods of British history. In illuminating the personal lives, politics and passions of two endearing and independent-minded people, she brilliantly captures not only the story of a marriage, but the spirit of a dawning modern age.

A clear, chronological narrative exploring many of the ethical dilemmas posed for real people during and after the Second World War.Literature on the Second World War is voluminous. In ‘Moral Combat’, however, Michael Burleigh achieves what few historians can claim to have done; by exploring the moral sentiment of entire societies and their leaders, and how this changed under the impact of total war, he presents readers with an entirely fresh perspective of this conflict.Opening with the 'predators' – Mussolini, Hitler, Prince Hirohito of Japan – and moving onto appeasement (a popular policy or a 'wrong' policy?), the rape of Poland, Barbarossa, the role of Churchill, and the Holocaust, Burleigh analyses the moral dimension of the Second World War's most important moments. More than merely a history of 'great men', however, Burleigh also examines the moral reasoning of individuals who had to make choices under circumstances difficult to imagine. Stressing the maxim that the past is used to make sense of the present world we live in, he takes us right up to today's war on terror – a war of competing ideas. What, in the end, will constitute its victory? Burleigh's fascinating and deeply engaging exploration refuses to draw lessons from the past for the future, remaining instead firmly focused on the on-the-spot decisions that came to define the conflict.Original, perceptive and remarkable in scope, this is an unforgettable and hugely important Second World War history.

Using examples ranging from Ikea to the slums of Mumbai, leading economic expert Hamish McRae studies which businesses, organisations and initiatives have what it takes to succeed, and what it is that distinguishes them in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.Calling on years of experience as an award-winning financial journalist and international public speaker, the author brings a fresh perspective to the question of success, differentiating the few 'big ideas' that have transformed the marketplace from passing trends and over-hyped blind alleys.Through an extraordinary range of case studies and an authoritative grasp of his material, the author demonstrates that although there is no surefire recipe for success, there are several key ingredients – such as sense of mission and market sensitivity – which ambitious readers can apply to their own business practices. This is a book of very real successes rather than overblown ideologies: each case study is based around an on-site visit by an author and interviews with the people in charge. Bearing in mind the role of fashion, scale and other less predictable factors, ‘What Works’ ultimately offers the general reader the chance to learn from some of the grandest economic successes and unexpected failures in the world today, through a series of imaginative, unusual and insightful examples.

An awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures that have survived from earlier times.In this groundbreaking book, prize-winning science writer Richard Fortey chronicles life’s history not through the fossil record, but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, through geological time.Fortey takes us on a journey to ancient worlds: on a moonlit beach in Delaware where the horseshoe crab shuffles its way through a violent romance, we catch a glimpse of life 450 million years ago. Along a stretch of Australian coastline, we bear witness to the sights and sounds that would have greeted a Precambrian dawn. And, in the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the secretive velvet worm burrows into the rotting timber of the jungle floor, we marvel at a living fossil which has survived unchanged since before the break-up of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent, over 150 million years ago.Written with Fortey’s customary sparkle and gusto, this wonderfully engrossing exploration of the world’s oldest flora and fauna brilliantly combines the best science writing about the origins of life with an explorer’s sense of adventure and a poet’s wonder at the natural world.

From the redcoat who served Charles II to the modern, camouflage-clad guard at Camp Bastion, from battlefield to barrack-room, this is a magisterial social history of the British soldier.Since 1660 the army has evolved and adapted, but the social organisation of the men has changed less, with the major combat arms retaining many of the characteristics familiar to those who fought at Blenheim, Waterloo and the Somme. The Duke of Marlborough, who built up the British army to become a world-class fighting force in the 1660s, would recognise in the tired heroes of Helmand the descendants of the men he led to victory at Blenheim over three hundred years ago.‘Soldiers’ is exhaustively researched, and Holmes’s affection for the soldier shines through on every page. Above all, this book is brimming with great stories, from the chaos of the battlefield to the fug of the barrack-room, from Ulster to Bengal, from Flanders’ fields to the Afghan hills. This is a magisterial social history of the British soldier – and Richard Holmes’s fitting last tribute to the British soldier to whom he was so devoted.

Further adventures on life in a small French town from Susan Loomis, cookery book writer and author of On Rue Tatin.On Rue Tatin was a delightful discovery, and every reader asked for more. The life on Rue Tatin seemed like a dream fulfilled.Now in Tarte Tatin, Susan Loomis shares with us how she, her husband and two children settled into life in a small French town, learnt about their neighbours and how to be accepted as inhabitants of the town. With her son going to a French school and her husband finding work in the town, Susan Loomis discovers the joys of the French lifestyle – the markets and the food in particular – but also some of the difficulties, particularly for those who are not born French.The creation of the long dreamt-of cookery school is a story of great appeal – everyone who has ever thought of starting their own small business will enjoy the ups and downs of their enterprise, and long to go to Rue Tatin.

A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson of the history of Nicolson’s own national treasure, his family home: Sissinghurst.Sissinghurst is world-famous as a place of calm and beauty, a garden slipped into the ruins of a rose-pink Elizabethan palace. But is it entirely what its creators intended? Has its success over the last thirty years come at a price? Is Sissinghurst everything it could be?The story of this piece of land, an estate in the Weald of Kent, is told here for the first time from the very beginning. Adam Nicolson, who now lives there, has uncovered remarkable new findings about its history as a medieval manor and great sixteenth-century house, from the days of its decline as an eighteenth-century prison to a flourishing Victorian farm and on to the creation, by his grandparents Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, of a garden in a weed-strewn wreck.Alongside his recovery of the past, Adam Nicolson wanted something else: for the land at Sissinghurst to live again, to become the landscape of orchards, cattle, fruit and sheep he remembered from his boyhood. Could that living frame of a mixed farm be brought back to what had turned into monochrome fields of chemicalised wheat and oilseed rape? Against the odds, he was going to try.This paperback edition will be fully updated to cover the first year of Adam Nicolson’s endeavour to revive the estate and return it to the glories of its past. More than just a personal biography of a place, this book is the story of taking an inheritance and steering it in a new direction, just as an entrepreneur might take hold of a company, or just as all of us might want to take our dreams and make them real.

Shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2008.Part historical narrative, part travelogue through the wilds of the West and part environmental polemic, ‘Selling Your Father’s Bones’ is a thrilling journey through the history and wilderness of the stunning area of landscape that is Continental USA.In the summer of 1877, around seven hundred members of the Nez Perce Native American tribe set out on one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of the American West, a 1,700-mile exodus through the mountains, forests, badlands and prairies of modern-day Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. They had been forced from their homes by the great wave of settlement that crashed over the West as the American nation was born.Led by their charismatic chiefs, the Nez Perce used their unerring knowledge of the landscapes they passed through to survive six battles and many more skirmishes with the pursuing United States Army, as they raced, with women, children and village elders in their care, towards the safety of the Canadian border. But all Chief Joseph, the young pastoral leader of the exodus, wanted was to return home – to his beloved Wallowa valley, which his dying father had ordered him never to abandon: 'Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.’Now, Brian Schofield retraces the steps of that epic exodus, to tell the full dramatic story of the Nez Perce's fight for survival – and to examine the forces that drove them to take flight. The white settlement of the West had been largely motivated by patriotic fervour and religious zeal, a faith that the American continent had been laid out by God to fuel the creation of a mighty empire. But as he travels through the lands that the Nez Perce knew so well, Schofield reveals that the great project of the Western Empire has gone badly awry, as the mythology of the settlers opened the door to ecological vandalism, unthinking corporations and negligent leadership, which have lest scarred landscapes, battered communities and toxic environments.

An extraordinary collection of reportage that tells the story of some of the most important world events of the past 16 years, from one of the most talented and intrepid female journalists at work today.Since leaving England aged 21 with an invitation to a Karachi wedding and a yearning for adventure, Christina Lamb has spent 20 years living out of suitcases, reporting from around the world and becoming one of Britain’s most highly regarded journalists. She has won numerous awards, including being named Foreign Correspondent of the Year a remarkable four times.‘Small Wars Permitting’ is a collection of her best reportage, following the principal events of the last two decades everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. But Lamb’s main interest has always been in the untold stories, the people and places others don’t visit. Undaunted by danger, disease or despots, she has travelled by canoe through the Amazon rainforest in search of un-contacted Indians, joined a Rio samba school to infiltrate crime rackets behind Carnival and survived a terrifying ambush by Taliban.No less remarkable are the characters that Lamb meets along the way, from Marsh Arabs who covet Play Stations instead of buffaloes to an Armenian compère for performing dolphins with whom she travelled during the war in Iraq.Lamb’s writing is passionate, powerful and poetic, transforming reportage into literature. Through the stories she tells – and her own development from a self-confessed ‘war junkie’ to a devoted mother – Lamb attempts to comprehend the human consequences of conflict in the countries she has come to know.

The extraordinary story of the eccentric family of Britain's most outstanding military historian, Max Hastings.The author is the son of broadcaster and adventurer Macdonald Hastings and journalist and gardening writer Anne Scott-James. One of his grandfathers was a literary editor while the other wrote plays and essays, and penned an enchanting memoir of his own Victorian childhood. His great-uncle was an African hunter who wrote poetry and became one of Max's heroes. The author tells a richly picaresque story, featuring guest appearances by a host of celebrities from Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad to John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster, who became Anne Scott-James's third husband. 'All families are dysfunctional', Anne asserted impenitently to Max, but the Hastingses managed to be more dysfunctional than most. His father roamed the world for newspapers and as a presenter for BBC TV's legendary Tonight programme, while his mother edited ‘Harper's Bazaar’, became a famous columnist and wrote bestselling gardening books.Here, the author brings together this remarkable cast of forebears, 'a tribe of eccentrics', as he himself characterises them. By turns moving, dramatic and comic, the book portrays Max's own childhood fraught with rows and explosions, in which the sudden death of a television set was only one highlight. His story will make a lot of people laugh and perhaps a few cry. It helps to explain why Max Hastings, whose family has produced more than eighty books over three generations, felt bound to follow their path of high adventure and popular journalism.

The true story of one man's determination to master the world's deadliest helicopter and of a split-second decision that changed the face of modern warfare.May 2006. Pilot Ed Macy arrives in Afghanistan with a contingent of the Apache AH Mk1. It’s the first operational tour for the deadly machines and confidence in the cripplingly expensive attack helicopter is low. It doesn’t help that for their first month ‘in action’, Ed and his mates see little more than the back-end of a Chinook.But when the men of 3 Para get pinned down during Op Mutay, reservations about the fearsome new attack helicopters are thrown out the window. In the blistering firefight that follows, Ed unleashes the first ever Hellfire missile in combat and, with one squeeze of the trigger, changes the war in Afghanistan forever. What had been rumoured as a £4.2 billion mistake quickly becomes the British Army’s greatest asset, as the awe-inspiring Apache is dramatically redirected to fight the enemy head-on.In this gripping account of war on the ground and in the skies above the dusty wastes of Helmand, Ed recounts the intense months that followed: the steep learning curve, the relentless missions, the evolving enemy and the changing Rules of Engagement. As he comes to grip with the Apache, his early career as a paratrooper stands him in good stead, as does his operational baptism as a pilot. Both shaped his ability to fly, fight and survive during that fateful first Afghanistan tour against a cunning and ruthless enemy.Ed will need every ounce of willpower and skill to succeed over the long, hot Helmand summer, as he and his colleagues find themselves on trial for their lives and for the reputation of a machine on which the British government has staked a fortune. The crucible of fire that awaited them would cement the fate of man and machine forever.

Afghanistan, 2008. After their eighteen-month epic tour of Helmand Province, the troops of 3 Para are back. This time, the weight of experience weighs heavily on their shoulders.In April 2006 the elite 3 Para Battle Group was despatched to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on a tour that has become a legend. All that summer the Paras were subjected to relentless Taliban attacks in one of the most gruelling campaigns fought by British troops in modern times.Two years later the Paras are back in the pounding heat of the Afghanistan front lines. The conflict has changed. The enemy has been forced to adopt new weaponry and tactics. But how much progress are we really making in the war against the insurgents? And is there an end in sight?In this searing account of 3 Para’s return, bestselling author Patrick Bishop combines gripping, first-person accounts of front-line action with an unflinching look at the hard realities of our involvement in Afghanistan. Writing from a position of exclusive access alongside the Paras, he reveals the ‘ground truth’ of the mission our soldiers have been given. It’s a sombre picture. But shining out from it are stories of courage, comradeship and humour, as well as a gripping account of an epic humanitarian operation through Taliban-infested country to deliver a vitally needed turbine to the Kajaki Dam.Frank, action-packed and absorbing, ‘Ground Truth’ is a timely and important book that will set the agenda for discussion of the Afghan conflict for years to come.

From the author of ‘Britain BC’, ‘Britain AD’ and ‘Britain in the Middle Ages’ comes the fourth and final part in a critically acclaimed series on Britain's hidden pastThe relevance of archaeology to the study of the ancient world is indisputable. But, when exploring our recent past, does it have any role to play? In ‘The Birth of Modern Britain’ Francis Pryor highlights archaeology’s continued importance to the world around us.The pioneers of the Industrial Revolution were too busy innovating to record what was happening around them but fortunately the buildings and machines they left behind bring the period to life. During the Second World War, the imminent threat of invasion meant that constructing strong defences was much more important than keeping precise records. As a result, when towns were flattened, archaeology provided the only real means of discovering what had been destroyed.Surveying the whole post-medieval period, from 1550 until the present day, Francis Pryor takes us on an exhilarating journey, bringing to a gripping conclusion his illuminating study of Britain’s hidden past.

“You can keep the internet. You can keep the computer and the mobile phone. In the bicycle humanity has its most perfect invention of the last three hundred years and in Bella Bathurst the bike has found the best and brightest booster so far.” BORIS JOHNSON‘At last – a bicycle book for the rest of us…. A book for the sort of cyclist who likes cycling and reading and stories.’ GuardianTwo wheels. A frame. Two pedals. What could be simpler than a bicycle?And yet the bike continues to inspire a passionate following. Since the millennium its use in Britain has doubled, and then doubled again. Thousands now cycle to work, with more and more taking it up every day.Acclaimed author Bella Bathurst takes us on a journey through cycling’s best stories and strangest incarnations, from the bicycle as a weapon of warfare to the secret life of couriers and the alchemy of framebuilding. With a cast of characters including the woman who watercycled across the Channel, the man who raced India’s Deccan Queen train and several of today’s top cyclists, she offers us a brilliantly engaging portrait of cycling’s past, present and world-conquering future.

Lifting the lid on the most captivating story in British politics today, ‘Back from the Brink’ charts the Conservative Party's remarkable journey from the political wilderness to the threshold of power.Based on unprecedented access to key figures in the Conservative party, including every leader from John Major to David Cameron, political journalist Peter Snowdon sheds new light on the dramatic decline and renaissance of the party that dominated 20th century British politics.He reveals how the Conservatives were torn apart by in-fighting as they struggled to come to terms with their catastrophic electoral defeat in 1997 and the continuing trauma of Margaret Thatcher's sudden removal from office several years earlier. Under a succession of hapless leaders – William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard – the party lost two further elections and at times effectively ceased to function as a political force across whole swathes of Britain. It took the emergence of a new generation of Conservatives, and David Cameron's election as leader in 2005, to set the party on the uneven road to electoral recovery.Packed full of fresh insights into what really goes on behind closed doors at Westminster, ‘Back from the Brink’ exposes the bitter rivalries and recriminations that have blighted the Conservatives in Opposition, and gets to the heart of Cameron's quest for power and ambitions for office.

The price for a country. The price for a King. The price for a marriage. The dramatic story of Tom Neave continues…The second book in the Tom Neave Trilogy, ‘Cromwell’s Blessing’ sees Tom still determined to fight for his principles – democracy, freedom and honour – despite the growing threat to his young family, as England finds itself in the throes of bloody civil war.The year is now 1647. The King has surrendered to Parliament. Lord Stonehouse, to show his loyalty to Parliament, has named grandson Tom as his successor. But Lord Stonehouse’s son, Richard, is also Tom’s estranged father and a fervent Royalist. If the King reaches a settlement with Parliament Richard will inherit…Parliament itself is deeply divided with those demanding a strict Puritan regime pitted against more liberal Independents like Cromwell. King Charles, under house arrest, tries to exploit the divisions between them. When Richard arrives from France with a commission from the Queen to snatch the King from Parliamentary hands, he and Tom are set on a collision course. Caught between his love for his wife Anne and their young son, and his loyalty to the new regime, Tom must struggle to save both his family and the estate.

What price betrayal? The bloody saga of revolution and republicanism reaches its climax in the final instalment of the Tom Neave trilogy.1659. Tom Neave, now Lord Stonehouse and feared spymaster for the republic, must do what he can to maintain the reins of power. With Oliver Cromwell dead, a ruthless struggle for control of the country begins.A Royalist rebellion is easily put down, but is of concern for Tom – his son Luke is among those imprisoned. Having been freed by his father and back with his family, Luke claims he is disillusioned with the Royalist cause. But can Tom trust him? Pre-occupied by his son’s uncertain allegiance, by the distant, manipulative behaviour of his beloved wife Anne, and by rumours of his treacherous father Richard, Tom is ill at ease. His own long-buried secrets threaten to erupt, with irrevocable consequences.As the struggle for power in England becomes more urgent, rumours abound of the return of the exiled king. Copies of the ‘King’s List’ are in circulation – the names of those who signed the death warrant of the late king, of which Tom is one. While an army marches on London, the fate of the nation – and that of Tom and his family – lies at stake.

Marking the centenary of the Titanic disaster, ‘Titanic Lives’ is a fresh investigation of the lives of the passengers and crew on board the most famous ship in history.On the night of 14 April 1912, midway through her maiden voyage, the seemingly unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg, sustaining a 300-feet gash as six compartments were wrenched open to the Atlantic Ocean. In little over two hours, the palatial liner nose-dived to the bottom of the sea. More than 1,500 people perished in the freezing waters. But who were they?In this impeccably researched and utterly riveting social history, Richard Davenport-Hines brings to life the stories of the men who built and owned the Titanic, the crew who serviced her and the passengers of all classes who sailed on her. We are introduced to this fascinating cast of characters and follow their lives on board the ship through to the supreme dramatic climax of the disaster.Universally critically acclaimed, ‘Titanic Lives’ is the must-read Titanic book of the centenary year.

Set in the aftermath of a harrowing plane crash, this is the true story of one young boy’s fight for survival in nature’s most treacherous conditions.Eleven-year-old Norman Ollestad was a gifted skier. After winning the 1979 Southern California Slalom Skiing Championship, his father chartered a small plane to fly Norman home, so that his son could collect his trophy and train with his team.Moments later the Cessna, engulfed in a blizzard, crashed into the San Gabriel Mountains and was left suspended at 8,000 feet. Norman's father, his coach and his hero, was dead.Climbing out of the wreckage, young Norman begins a gruelling descent, thousands of feet down an icy mountain. Blinded by heavy snow and faced with a raging wind and below-freezing temperatures, he attempts to guide his father's injured girlfriend to safety. Kept alive by sheer will, Norman summons everything his father taught him about determination and courage to save his own life.Powerful, inspiring and utterly compelling, this is a unique and unforgettable memoir.

A controversial and important book by BBC reporter and terrorism expert Peter Taylor. Newly updated to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and to include the death of Osama Bin Laden.During his 40-year career, award-winning journalist Peter Taylor has come face-to-face with some of the world’s most notorious terrorists. In 1972 he was sent to Northern Ireland to report on ‘Bloody Sunday’ and in the aftermath of 9/11, he focused on Al Qaeda, breaking stories in the period up to the July bombings and the plot to blow up passenger planes mid-Atlantic.In Talking to Terrorists Taylor wrestles with a range of complex questions: What are terrorists like? What motivates them? Should governments talk to them? When does interrogation become torture? In this journey from Northern Ireland’s Bogside to the notorious Guantanamo Bay, he uncovers this deadly phenomenon, unavoidably at the centre of our lives.Newly updated to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and in the aftermath of the death of Osama Bin Laden, Talking to Terrorists is controversial, revelatory and an unquestionably important book for our times.

In 1930 a sixteen-year-old boy left England to become one of the last of the 'gentlemen adventurers' – the fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the Arctic he found adventure, love and sadness as he came to grips with Eskimo life. Beautifully written, inspiring and funny, this is a boy's own story that captures a world now lost forever.

In this inspiring and original book, former editor of The Times, Sir Peter Stothard, re-traces the journey taken by Spartacus and his army of rebels.In the final century of the first Roman Republic an army of slaves brought a peculiar terror to the people of Italy. Its leaders were gladiators. Its purpose was incomprehensible. Its success was unprecedented.The Spartacus Road is the route along which this rebel army outfought the Roman legions between 73 and 71 BC, bringing both fears and hopes that have never wholly left the modern mind. It is a road that stretches through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside and out into 2,000 years of world history.In this inspiring and original memoir, the former editor of The Times, Peter Stothard, takes us on an extraordinary journey. The result is a book like none other – at once a journalist’s notebook, a classicist’s celebration, a survivor’s record of a near fatal cancer and the history of a unique and brutal war.As he travels along the Spartacus road – through the ruins of Capua to Vesuvius and the lost Greek cities of the Italian south – Stothard’s prose illuminates conflicting memories of times ancient and modern, the simultaneously foreign and familiar, one of the greatest stories of all ages. Sweepingly erudite and strikingly personal, On the Spartacus Road is non-fiction writing of the highest order.

A new edition of Adam Zamoyski’s definitive biography of Chopin, first published in 1979 and unavailable in English for many years.Few composers elicit such strong emotions as Chopin. Few have been more revered and cherished. And few have had so much sentimental nonsense written about them.Published to coincide with the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, Adam Zamoyski's compelling new biography cuts through the mass of anecdote and myth that has sprung up around the composer's life and the ebullient and striking personalities of Romantic Paris among whom he lived, including Liszt, Berlioz, Victor Hugo and George Sand, in search of the real Chopin.Zamoyski brings to the subject an unrivalled knowledge of the historical, social and cultural background of the composer's native Poland as well as of the France in which he spent most of his creative life. He has scoured the archives of Warsaw, Krakow, Paris and London in his quest for the truth, and has based his account exclusively on primary sources and contemporary accounts.The result is a biography of authority, perception and wit. Chopin emerges from the sugary romantic mist in which he has been shrouded as a real, palpable personality, a man of intelligence and humour; in music an innovator of genius; in business a feckless spendthrift; in love hesitant and tender; in friendship passionately loyal but often intolerably exacting. Through a close reading of his letters and the use of everyday detail, Zamoyski draws the reader into the private world of this most complicated and reticent of men – 'a man made for intimacy', as the poet Heinrich Heine called him – and reveals the real passions, suffering and ultimate tragedy of his life.

Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and Winner of the Crossword Prize for Non-fiction‘“Curfewed Night” is a passionate and important book – a brave and brilliant report from a conflict the world has chosen to ignore.' Salman RushdieBasharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years countless young men, fuelled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the ‘Line of Control’ to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to boarding school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir – angrier, more violent, more hopeless – was never far away.In 2003 Peer, now a young journalist, left his job and returned to his homeland. Drawing a harrowing portrait of Kashmir and her people – a mother forced to watch her son hold an exploding bomb, politicians living in refurbished torture chambers, picturesque villages riddled with landmines – this is above all, a story of what it really means to return home – and the discovery that there may not be any redemption in it.Lyrical, spare, gut-wrenching and intimate, Curfewed Night is a powerful and intensely moving debut, combining the insight of a journalist with the prose of a poet.

A chronicle of travels, some homely some exotic, from the man who can make a schoolboy holiday in Swanage as colourful as a walk in the Hindu Kush.Eric Newby's life of travel began in 1919, on pram-ride adventures with his mother into the dark streets of Barnes and the chaotic jungles of Harrods, and progressed to solo, school-bound adventures around the slums of darkest Hammersmith. His interest piqued, Newby's wanderlust snowballed, and his adventures multiplied, as he navigated the London sewer system, bicycled to Italy and meandered the wilds of New York's Broadway. Whether travelling abroad as a high-fashion buyer for a British department store or for pure adventure as a travel writer, even when reluctantly participating in a tiger shoot in India, Newby chronicles his adventures with verve, humour and infectious enthusiasm.After nine years as the travel editor for the Observer, Newby reluctantly gave up the post, eschewing the new form of human-as-freight travel. However, this change was certainly no pity for his readers, as the latter-day Newby continued on his unwavering quest for fascinating detail and adventure wherever he roamed, whether on two feet or two wheels. ‘A Traveller's Life’ chronicles the incredible adventures of one of the best-loved tour guides in the history of travel writing.