Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-03-04
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.42
Review The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327-1330 / Pimlico:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1999-03-04
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.37
Review The Life of Thomas More / Vintage:Peter Ackroyd is the quintessential London writer. His wonderful biography of Dickens was lit not only by his love and understanding of the writer, but also of the city which Dickens made his own. Recent novels such as The House of Doctor Dee and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem may have taken liberties with historical fact, but their London is a fascinating, pulsating place, more their true protagonist than their eponymous heroes. Thomas More is a prime candidate for the London treatment. Born in the city, with a life of official city duties at a time when London was highly distinct from Westminster and the court, he imbued his writings (especially Richard III and his print debate with Tyndale) with a real sense of London's uniqueness. Ackroyd's treatment is thus both apposite and, of course, highly readable. He possesses a real gift for making dry history come alive with telling detail and vivid swathes of local colour. But while the new angle might imply a new understanding of the man, ultimately, the picture is overly familiar. Ackroyd's More comes out looking very much like Robert Bolt's Man for All Seasons More-a hinge between dark medievalism and modern secular conscience. Only this time he has an inner London postcode. [+]-Alan Stewart.
Publication date: 2002-06-01
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £22.95
Price: £17.55
Review Black Edelweiss / Aegis Consulting Group:
Publication date: 2008-09-04
RRP: £17.99
Price: £4.00
Review Attila the Hun: Barbarian Terror and the Fall of the Roman Empire / The Bodley Head Ltd:
Edition: Tra
Publication date: 2006-11-30
Dewey code: 952.01092
RRP: £10.99
Price: £5.46
Review The Pillow Book (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2001-11-28
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £9.95
Price: £6.28
Review Old Soldiers Never Die / Naval & Military Press Ltd:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1998-02-01
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £5.99
Price: £46.90
Review Fifty Dead Men Walking / John Blake Publishing Ltd:
Publication date: 2008-04-01
Dewey code: 813.54
RRP: £14.00
Price: £5.07
Review The Secret Bride: In the Court of Henry VIII / New American Library:
Publication date: 2005-01-01
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £3.95
Price: £1.41
Review The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin / Digireads.com:
Publication date: 2006-06-05
RRP: £6.99
Price: £2.74
Review Under the Wire / Bantam Books:
Publication date: 2005-10
Dewey code: 940.41241
RRP: £7.99
Price: £5.97
Review Machine Gunner 1914-1918: Personal Experiences of the Machine Gun Corps / Leo Cooper Ltd:
Publication date: 2006-08-04
Dewey code: 959.3044092
RRP: £22.50
Price: £17.47
Review The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej / Yale University Press:
Creator: Lewis Thorpe
Edition: New impression
Publication date: 2004-07-29
Dewey code: 941.01
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.78
Review The History of the Kings of Britain (Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2002-02
Dewey code: 973.40922
RRP: £9.74
Price: £4.86
Review Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation / Vintage Books USA:
Creator: Victor Neuburg
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2006-04-27
Dewey code: 305.56909421
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.56
Review London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-04-01
RRP: £8.99
Price: £5.45
Review The Devil in the White City / Bantam Books:
Publication date: 2008-06-12
Dewey code: 941.081092
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.12
Review Robert Peel: A Biography / Phoenix:
Authors
- Ulrich Steinhilper
- Peter Osborne
Edition: 2nd Revised edition
Publication date: 1990-05
Dewey code: 940.544943
RRP: £17.95
Price: £9.90
Review Spitfire on My Tail: A View from the Other Side / Independent Books:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1999-12-30
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.05
Review The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45 / Phoenix:The last live broadcast on Polish Radio, on September 23, 1939, was Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp Minor, played by a young pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman, until his playing was interrupted by German shelling. It was the same piece, and the same pianist, when broadcasting resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years in between, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically, it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. [+]In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000. Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. -David Vincent.
Publication date: 2006-08-31
Dewey code: 959.704348092
RRP: £17.95
Price: £10.88
Review To the Limit: An Air Cav Huey Pilot in Vietnam / Potomac Books Inc:
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Models & Brands:
The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327-1330, The Life of Thomas More, Black Edelweiss, Attila the Hun: Barbarian Terror and the Fall of the Roman Empire, The Pillow Book (Penguin Classics), Old Soldiers Never Die, Fifty Dead Men Walking, The Secret Bride: In the Court of Henry VIII, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Under the Wire, Machine Gunner 1914-1918: Personal Experiences of the Machine Gun Corps, The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej, The History of the Kings of Britain (Classics), Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics), The Devil in the White City, Robert Peel: A Biography, Spitfire on My Tail: A View from the Other Side, The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-45, To the Limit: An Air Cav Huey Pilot in Vietnam |
