British Memoirs

We're living in some incredibly dark and strange times, but whatever coronavirus throws at us, it's failed to dent the great British spirit. Every day, we're heartened by incredible stories of rare and wonderful people going above and beyond - and some sadly losing their lives in the process. With celebrities turning their hands to educating our children with daily sports and music lessons and weekly community doorstep celebrations for our incredible NHS and service industries who are stalwartly keeping us fed and nurtured, our get-up-and-go attitude is in full swing!

This audio edition is read by the author, Floella Benjamin. Winner at the 2022 Parlimentary Book Awards Baroness Floella Benjamin is an inspiration, an actress and much-loved children’s television presenter who is a member of the House of Lords. But how did the girl from Trinidad end up...

When 21-year-old Gwendoline Crockford signed up to join the Berkshire Constabulary in 1951, she had little idea of what she was getting herself into. Whether carrying a human skeleton out of the woods, finding a missing child, investigating thefts, or chasing an escaped zebra, every day brought fresh adventures. In this nostalgic, tender and honest account of post-war British society, we follow a bright, determined woman navigating a man's world, serving as many people as she can.

The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

Ed Owens has won for himself key roles as a historian of the monarchy and as a royal commentator, but one who is meticulously objective in his judgements. Nothing seems certain. Will the monarchy survive with its continuing echoes of an Imperial past? Will young people - disenchanted with the political status quo - find the ritual and practice of the monarchy quite so mesmerising as previous generations have done? What might a republican Britain look like?

An Amazon Best Non-Fiction Book of 2022 'Essential reading' - The Guardian 'Sharp and witty with moments of startling candour' - The i 'Makes a powerful case' - Rt Hon Lady Hale ‘Revealing and beautifully written’ - David Harewood ________ Before Jeffrey Boakye was a black teacher, he was a...

Black women are at higher risk of developing postnatal depression but are the least likely to be identified as depressed. Sharing the voices of other mothers, Sandra examines how culture, racism, stigma and a lack of trust in services prevent women getting the help they need. Breaking open the conversation on motherhood, race, and mental health, she demands that Black women are listened to, believed and understood.

Albemarle Street: Portraits, Personalities and Presentations at The Royal institution is a lively and compelling personal selection of the remarkable personalities and achievements of some of the extraordinary scientists and individuals who, during the 19th and 20th centuries, worked or lectured at 21 Albemarle Street in Mayfair, central London. John Meurig Thomas offers a unique and valuable insight into the history of this prestigious address, having himself lived and worked at the Royal Institution for some 20 years.

From his earliest days Winston Churchill was an extreme risk taker, and he carried this into adulthood. Today he is widely hailed as Britain’s greatest wartime leader and politician. Deep down though, he was foremost a warlord. In this audiobook, historian Anthony Tucker-Jones explores the record of Winston Churchill as a military commander, assessing how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office. This audiobook assesses his choices in the some of the most controversial and high-profile campaigns of World War II.

Running with Scissors meets Grey Gardens in this “vivid tragicomedy” (People), a riveting riches-to-rags tale of a wealthy family who lost it all and the unforgettable journey of a man coming to terms with his family’s deep flaws and his own hidden secrets. “Wake up, you filthy beasts...

You are not an executive who can make and enforce decisions. You are a legislator who votes on making laws. You are not a counsellor, a housing officer, benefits clerk, bank or trading standards officer, but you are often expected to provide a new home, sort out benefits, provide a loan, or settle a dispute about a computer game bought for little Jimmy that doesn't work. You are, in fact, a 21st-century Member of Parliament representing about 125,000 good folk from your constituency....

A “fascinating slice of rarely considered American history” (Booklist)—the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs...

“A personal look behind the scenes” (Publishers Weekly) of the presidency of Gerald Ford as seen through the eyes of Donald Rumsfeld—New York Times bestselling author and Ford’s former Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff, and longtime personal confidant. In the wake of Richard Nixon’s...

The first full-length biography of Sarah Winchester, the subject of the movie Winchester starring Helen Mirren, now available for the first time in audio. Since her death in 1922, Sarah Winchester has been perceived as a mysterious, haunted figure. After inheriting a vast fortune upon the death...

Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, was the most intelligent of Queen Victoria's four sons. He was the youngest, a strong-willed, likeable character with an immense thirst for life who faced two overwhelming handicaps. One was haemophilia, then barely understood, which might have killed him at any moment, and in any case subjected him to recurring pain and disability. The other was his mother's determination to keep complete control over his life.

Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.

In 1888, five gruesome murders shocked the civilized public. A bloodthirsty killer was on the loose in the slums of London. The world was on the lookout for Jack the Ripper. Scotland Yard never found their man - or so they said publicly. The police knew the killer's identity but concealed it to save the ruling class from embarrassment. The Escape of Jack the Ripper reveals how British elites manipulated the public to protect one of their own. Through meticulous research, Jonathan Hainsworth and Christine Ward-Agius have uncovered the killer's identity.

Shehnaz was a beautiful, erudite woman from the royal family of Bhopal, who was almost cast to play Anarkali in K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam. Her daughter Sophia Naz tells her story as she heard it from her-about her childhood as part of the royal household in Bhopal, where she led a revolt among the...

In this remarkable memoir, a harrowing true story of family, violence, guilt and atonement, a journalist reflects on his own journey to come to terms with his brother’s terrible crimes—and to find justice for the young girl he killed. In the gritty docklands of south-east England, Alix...

Did you know that until April 1975 women in the UK were not permitted to race more than four miles and were banned from racing against men? Back in the 1960s, women started to break the rules and ‘crash’ men’s road races, challenging discrimination and showing that they were perfectly capable of running marathons – or even further.