England Memoir

If the news about Harry, William, Kate, Meghan, and the rest of the British royals has you wondering about how this latest generation of princes, princesses, dukes, and duchesses got their start, you're not alone. Queen Elizabeth II For Dummies takes you on a fascinating journey through the life of Great Britain's longest-serving monarch.

For history buffs and memoir lovers of the good old days, the way things used to be.... Escape to the past with this second-in-series, local history, and memoir-biography. Margaret Bramford presents the life and times, and true accounts of Spa town Malvern, Worcestershire (UK), as recollected by Malverners themselves looking back over the last century.

Lady Bette, the 14-year-old heiress to the vast Northumberland estates, becomes the victim of a plot by her grandmother, the Countess Howard, to marry her to the dissident fortune-hunter Thomas Thynn, a man three times her age with an evil reputation. Revolted by her new husband, Lady Bette flees to Holland. Within weeks, Thynn is gunned down in the street by three hired assassins. Who is behind the contract killing? Is it the Swedish Count Coningsmark, young and glamorous with blond hair down to his waist?

Beleaguered by scandal, betrayed by faithless spouses, bedeviled by ambitious children, the kings and queens of Great Britain have been many things, but they have never been dull. Some sacrificed everything for love, while others met a cruel fate at the edge of an axman's blade. Behind the Palace Doors features stories covering every monarch, from randy Henry VIII to reserved Elizabeth II.

Tracing family histories is a popular pursuit and everyone loves the idea of discovering where they really come from. But when Bobbie Neate began to investigate her own family's past, she made some shocking discoveries which would cause shockwaves within her own family as well as on a much wider, national scale. The result of Bobbie's quest is an enthralling journey not only into her own past but also into the history of this country and its leaders. It was after the death of her beloved mother that Bobbie started to question strange events from her childhood.

The year is 1939. As war breaks out across Europe, nine-year-old Susie and her older sister Gyll are dispatched to Africa by their mother. Alone on the dusty continent, the sisters find little sympathy in their new guardians, and little to like about their new way of life: patched-up clothes, a 6 o'clock bedtime (a particular indignity), and regular obsessive cleanliness rituals. Their continued presence a nuisance, and overwhelmed by fear of doing the wrong thing, Susie and Gyll seek an ally in Mavis.

An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child.

From one of the greatest political journalists of recent times, an insider's account of four decades of covering the British political scene, packed with tales of the biggest political happenings of the last half century. Philip Webster covered politics for The Times newspaper for 43 years, including 18 years as its political editor.

As Maureen Quilligan wrote in The New York Times Book Review of The First Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn "was a real victim of the sexual scandals her brilliant daughter escaped, and a subject Ms. Erickson's sensitivity to sexual and political nuance should well serve." Indeed, Carolly Erickson could have chosen no more fascinating and appropriate a subject. Alluring and profoundly enigmatic, Anne Boleyn has eluded the grasp of historians for centuries.

Peggy was born on the eve of the Great War and lived well into the 21st century. She grew up in rural Britain when horses jostled with cars on the streets and the country had not yet broken with the values of the previous century. Many of her experiences were shared with other women of the time. She saw her young husband leave Britain for the next war and did not meet him again for several years. She gave birth to her children when peace was new but England was a ravaged country with rationing still in place.

In autumn 1933, Albert Einstein found himself living alone in an isolated holiday hut in rural England. There, he toiled peacefully at mathematics while occasionally stepping out for walks or to play his violin. But how had Einstein come to abandon his Berlin home and go "on the run"? In this lively account, Andrew Robinson tells the story of the world’s greatest scientist and Britain for the first time, showing why Britain was the perfect refuge for Einstein from rumored assassination by Nazi agents.

Sir Walter Ralegh’s life is romantic, irresistible, and of central importance to our island story. His death is a convoluted and contested tale of bargaining, failure and betrayal. Through the Elizabethan golden age and Ralegh’s famous adventures to the final act, Anna Beer presents his stranger-than-fiction life in all its richness. How could a man once the Queen’s favorite find himself consigned to the Tower by her successor? Should his legacy be fame or infamy? Who was the real Sir Walter Ralegh?

In literature and film, the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence? This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the US and UK from the early 1940s to the present.

Combinando tres facetas fundamentales de la vida de Winston Churchill - su vida privada, su trayectoria políticay bélica, y el contexto histórico en el que ambas se desarrollaron-, Breve Historia de Winston Churchill nos presenta la biografía del político que gobernó Inglaterra durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pero que, además, luchó en la Guerra del 98, en la Guerra de los Boers, que participó en la Primera Guerra Mundial como Lord del Almirantazgo y asistió al duro proceso de descolonización de Inglaterra.

Discover the fascinating lives of the iconic figures that have shaped Scotland from the early 19th century to the present day. Explore the rich history of Scotland's cultural, social and political landscape, with more than 100 obituaries carefully curated from The Times archive.

The unlikely man at the roiling center of this intrigue was Robert Bunch, an American-born Englishman who had maneuvered his way to the position of British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew to loathe slavery and the righteousness of its practitioners. Bunch used his unique perch and boundless ambition to become a key player, sending reams of dispatches to the home government and eventually becoming the Crown's best secret source on the Confederacy.

Queen Victoria's reign was an era of breathtaking social change, but it did little to create a platform for women. But not so within the social sphere of the seance - a mysterious, lamp-lit world on both sides of the Atlantic, in which women who craved a public voice could hold their own. Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and, most important, influence, as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead.

Nigel Hamilton's Mantle of Command, long-listed for the National Book Award, drew on years of archival research and interviews to portray FDR in a tight close-up as he determined Allied strategy in the crucial initial phases of World War II. Commander in Chief reveals the astonishing sequel - suppressed by Winston Churchill in his memoirs - of Roosevelt's battles with Churchill to maintain that strategy.

Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End Factories. On an autumn day in 1944, Ethel Alleyne walked the short distance from her house to Tate & Lyle’s refinery on the shining curve of the Thames. Looking up at the giant gates, Ethel felt like she had been preparing for this moment all her life. She smoothed down her frizzy hair, scraped a bit of dirt off the corner of her shoe and strode through. She was quite unprepared for the sight that met her eyes …

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB. Yet Burgess was never challenged by Britain's spy catchers: his superiors were convinced he was too much of a liability to have been recruited by Moscow. Now, with a major new release of hundreds of files into the National Archives, Purvis and Hulbert reveal just how this charming establishment insider was able to fool everyone for so long.