England Biography

General Benedict Arnold's failed attempt to betray the fortress of West Point to the British in 1780 stands as one of the most infamous episodes in American history. In the light of a shining record of bravery and unquestioned commitment to the Revolution, Arnold's defection came as an appalling shock. Contemporaries believed he had been corrupted by greed; historians have theorized that he had come to resent the lack of recognition for his merits and sacrifices. In this provocative book, Stephen Brumwell challenges such interpretations and draws on unexplored archives to reveal other crucial factors that illuminate Arnold's abandonment of the revolutionary cause he once championed.

In May 2003 prominent philosopher, author, and professor J. P. Moreland awoke in the middle of the night to a severe panic attack. Though often anxious by temperament and upbringing, Moreland had never experienced such an incident before. Thus began an extended battle with debilitating anxiety and depression. More than a decade later, Moreland continues to manage mental illness. Yet along the way he's moved from shame and despair to vulnerability and hope. In Finding Quiet Moreland comes alongside fellow sufferers with encouragement and practical, hard-won advice.

In Royal Sisters, Anne Edwards, author of the best-selling Vivien Leigh: A Biography and Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor, has written the first dual biography of Elizabeth, the princess who was to become Queen, and her younger sister, Margaret, who was to be her subject. From birth to maturity, they were the stuff of which dreams are made.

Queen Bees looks at the lives of six remarkable women who made careers out of being society hostesses, including Lady Astor, who went on to become the first female MP, and Mrs Greville, who cultivated relationships with Edward VII, as well as Lady Londonderry, Lady Cunard, Laura Corrigan and Lady Colefax. Told with wit, verve and heart, Queen Bees is the story of a form of societal revolution and the extraordinary women who helped it happen.

As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.

Henry II had all the gifts of the gods. He was charismatic, clever, learned, empathetic, a brilliant tactician, with great physical strength and an astonishing self-belief. Henry was the creator of the Plantagenet dynasty of kings, who ruled through eight generations in command of vast lands in Britain and Europe. Virtually unbeaten in battle, and engaged in a ceaseless round of conquest and diplomacy, Henry forged an empire that matched Charlemagne's.

One of our finest narrative historians, and journalist for the Sunday Times and Literary Review, Lawrence James, has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, set within a fully detailed historical context, but solely focusing on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late 19th century, Churchill's first experience of the Empire was serving in conflicts in India, South Africa and the Sudan.

Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry’s last great charge and inventor of the tank - Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction, and an investigation of the contradictions and complexities that haunt biography.

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted the most international power and influence: as a matchmaking grandmother. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the glittering, decadent palaces of Europe from London to Saint Petersburg, weaving in scandals, political machinations, and family tensions. It is at once an intimate portrait of a royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the marriages the Queen arranged. At the heart of it all is Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment, determined Queen Empress the next.

Edward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest British frigate captain in the age of sail. Left fatherless at age eight, with a penniless mother and five siblings, Pellew fought his way from the very bottom of the navy to fleet command. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet he had a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, and he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves.

Spanning the end of the Regency, Ackroyd takes listeners from the accession of the profligate George IV, whose government was steered by Lord Liverpool, whose face was set against reform, to the "Sailor King" William IV, whose reign saw the modernization of the political system and the abolition of slavery. But it was the accession of Queen Victoria, at only 18 years old, that sparked an era of enormous innovation. Technological progress - from steam railways to the first telegram - swept the nation, and the finest inventions were showcased at the first Great Exhibition in 1851.

Royal unions have always been the stuff of scintillating gossip, from the passionate Plantagenets to Henry VIII’s alarming head count of wives and mistresses, to the Sapphic crushes of Mary and Anne Stuart right on up through the scandal-blighted coupling of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Thrown into loveless, arranged marriages for political and economic gain, many royals were driven to indulge their pleasures outside the marital bed, engaging in delicious flirtations, lurid love letters, and rampant sex with voluptuous and willing partners.

Sometime between 1610 and 1611, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest. The idea for the play came from the real-life shipwreck in 1609 of the Sea Venture, which was caught in a hurricane and grounded on the coast of Bermuda during a voyage to resupply England's troubled colony at Jamestown, in present-day Virginia. A lesser known passenger was Stephen Hopkins. During the 10 months the Sea Venture passengers were marooned on Bermuda, Hopkins was charged with trying to incite a mutiny and condemned to die, only to have his sentence commuted moments before it was to be carried out.

In the spring of 1621, Plymouth Colony sent Stephen Hopkins to make the first visit to Wampanoag sachem Massasoit to present a red horsemans coat as a gift and sign of friendship. For most ordinary Englishmen, venturing off into the depths of unexplored America would have been a once in a lifetime adventure - but not for Stephen.

In this engaging and deeply informed audiobook, Stephen Knight looks at the different manifestations of Robin Hood at different times and places in a mythic biography with a thematic structure. The best way to get at the essence of the Robin Hood myth, Knight believes, is in terms not of chronological and generic progression but of the purposes served by heroes.

After Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England, and May Week Was in June comes the next instalment in the ongoing saga that is Clive James's life. His fourth volume of autobiography is every bit as eventful, entertaining, engrossing, and honest as the previous three.

In this hard-hitting account of her work representing parents in care proceedings in the Family Court, child protection lawyer Teresa Thornhill conveys the dilemmas inherent in the job and shows how our under-resourced system of child protection – in both its social work and legal aspects – often fails to provide support that could enable the most vulnerable parents to continue to care for their children.

Who is Erik ten Hag? With an air of unperturbability, he ignores critics, follows his own methods and relentlessly pursues perfection on the pitch. His uncanny ability to analyse and solve problems—the 'process' as Ten Hag calls it—has unfailingly led to breakthrough. There is no magic. There is only intelligence at work, personal devotion to players and near-obsessive attention to detail. Maarten Meijer's definitive biography follows Erik ten Hag, from his upbringing in the Dutch countryside to his domestic triumphs and European victories.

While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence.

In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age 42, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.