British Politics

Raised for vastly different futures, one burdened with the responsibility of becoming the future king and the other destined to live in his shadow, Charles and Andrew have spent their lives on different sides of the same coin. War of the Windsors tells, for the first time, the complete story of Charles and Andrew from their diverging childhoods to their current struggles.

The British Imagination is a masterful journey through 500 years of history, from Shakespeare to Woolf, the Royal Society to the industrial revolution, and from the first New World colonies to the empire that by the 1920s had colonised a quarter of the world. The key tenets of British history, Peter Watson argues, are religion, empirical science, commerce and empire.

Gloriana XII--The Original Wolf of Wall Street. In this hilarious sequel to The Mouse That Roared, Grand Fenwick is at it again, this time upsetting the world's economy. The tiny country's secret weapon this time is its Grand Pinot chewing gum. When sales boom during an anti-smoking campaign, Grand Fenwick's investment is suddenly worth millions. In an attempt to rid Grand Fenwick of its crippling budget surplus, Duchess Gloriana XII decides the stock market is the perfect place to lose it all. Instead, she makes millions more and ends up wreaking havoc on the world economy. Never has "the ...

Beginning with her solitary childhood in London, it took years for Melanie Phillips to understand her parents' emotional frailties and even longer to escape from them. But Phillips inherited her family's strong Jewish values and a passionate commitment to freedom from oppression. It was this moral foundation that ultimately turned her against the warped and tyrannical attitudes of the Left, requiring her to break away not only from her parents - but also from the people she had seen as her wider political family.

He is one of the most reviled English kings in history. He drove his kingdom to the brink of civil war a dozen times in less than twenty years. He allowed his male lovers to rule the kingdom. He led a great army to the most ignominious military defeat in English history. He was Edward II, and this book tells his story. Kathryn Warner strips away the myths which have been created about him over the centuries, and provides a far more accurate and vivid picture of him than has previously been seen.

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that England had an active fascist party in the years before World War II. Yet, by 1936, the British Union of Fascists of Sir Oswald Mosley had become a growing threat. Many British admired Mussolini for his accomplishment of making the trains run on time and some of them agreed with the direction of Germany under Hitler. Many also, unfortunately, were convinced that his Jewish policy was not unreasonable. On October 4th of that year, thousands of fascists and members of the Communist Party of Great Britain met in what was a virtual one-day civil ...

World War II has finally come home to Britain, but it takes more than nightly air raids to rattle intrepid spy and expert code breaker Maggie Hope. After serving as a secret agent to protect Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, Maggie is now an elite member of the Special Operations Executive–a black ops organization designed to aid the British effort abroad–and her first assignment sends her straight into Nazi-controlled Berlin, the very heart of the German war machine. Relying on her quick wit and keen instincts, Maggie infiltrates the highest level of Berlin society, gathering information to pass on to London headquarters. But the secrets she unveils will expose a darker, more dangerous side of the war–and of her own past.

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that probes the country's pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe.

At the beginning of 1937, the British monarchy was in a state of turmoil. The previous king, Edward VIII, had abdicated the throne, leaving his unprepared and terrified brother Bertie to become George VI, surrounded by a gaggle of courtiers and politicians who barely thought him up to the job. Meanwhile, as the now-Duke of Windsor awaited the decree that would allow him to marry his mistress Wallis Simpson, he took an increased interest in the expansionist plans of Adolf Hitler. He may even have gone so far as to betray his country in the process.

For seventy years, Queen Elizabeth ruled over an institution and a family. During her lifetime she was constant in her desire to provide a steady presence and to be a trustworthy steward of the British people and the Commonwealth. But times change. Recent years have brought grief and turmoil to the House of Windsor. In The New Royals, journalist Katie Nicholl provides a nuanced look at Elizabeth’s remarkable and unrivalled reign, with new stories from Palace courtiers and aides, documentarians, and family members.

In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: Coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women.

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue.

The highly acclaimed unexpurgated notes taken by James Pope-Hennessy for his official biography of Queen Mary, the present Queen's grandmother. Published in full for the first time and edited by much-admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers. When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years....

Tina Brown has been observing and chronicling the British monarchy for three decades, and her sweeping account is full of powerful revelations, newly reported details, and searing insight gleaned from remarkable access to royal insiders. Stylish, witty, and erudite, The Palace Papers will irrevoca­bly change how the world perceives and under­stands the royal family.

Turning her back on her privileged life in Victorian England, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), fired by her innate curiosity, journeyed the world and became fascinated with all things Arab. Traveling the length and breadth of the Arab region, armed with a love for its language and its people, she not only produced several enormously popular books based on her experiences but became instrumental to the British foreign office. When World War I erupted, and the British needed the loyalty of the Arab leaders, it was Gertrude Bell's work and connections that helped provided the brain for T. E. Lawrence's military brawn.

The fourth book in the bestselling The Mouse That Roared series brings the Duchy of Grand Fenwick's most extraordinary achievement yet--the defeat of OPEC and the happy solution to the world's oil crisis, which came about through the best that international diplomacy has to offer: duplicity and dumb luck. It all began when the Count of Mountjoy, the prime minister of Grand Fenwick, was unable to get a hot bath because of the fuel shortage... Books in The Grand Fenwick Series: Books 2 through 5 are best read after The Mouse That Roared, but all of the books can be read and enjoyed at any ...

She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer.

Philip—elusive, complex, controversial, challenging, often humorous, sometimes irascible—is the man Elizabeth II once described as her 'constant strength and guide.' Who was he? What was he really like? What is the truth about those 'gaffes' and the rumors of affairs? This is the final portrait of an unexpected and often much-misunderstood figure. It is also the portrait of a remarkable marriage that endured for more than seventy years.

Anne Boleyn may be best known for losing her head, but as Tudor expert Tracy Borman reveals in a book that recasts British history, her greatest legacy lies in the path-breaking reign of her daughter, Elizabeth.

Bremen, 1951. An MI6 officer, haunted by an SS atrocity, kills a Nazi war criminal in the ruins of a U-boat bunker. The German turns out to be a CIA asset being rat-lined to South America. Britain, 1947. A young cabinet minister negotiates a deal with Moscow trading Rolls-Royce jet engines for cattle fodder and wood. The fates of the two men become entwined as one rises through MI6 and the other to Downing Street where, in the mid-1970s, a secret plot unfolds on both sides of the Atlantic to overthrow the prime minister. Can MI6 officers Catesby and Bone prevent it?