British Memoirs

"This intellectual biography of Tagore, perhaps the first of its kind, portrays him as a man who was deeply skeptical, self-critical, tormented by conflicts in his inner life , aware of the historical significance of his times and continually interacted with adversaries and friends across the...

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...

Royal Lodge is one of a scattered group of dwellings, mansions, forts, and follies in the southern recesses and environs of Windsor Great Park which have served royal pleasures and private needs ever since the carefree days of Charles II. It has been the home of artists and courtiers and farmers and foresters, the picnic pavilion of queens and the private abode of two kings. Meticulously researched, royal chronicler Helen Cathcart paints a vivid picture of the evolving architecture, changing decor, and esteemed inhabitants of Royal Lodge from earliest days through to the mid-twentieth century.

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes in hotels? Hotels represent nations, hosting visiting monarchs, politicians, and diplomats. Hotels underpin global networks of travel and communication, on which national and international prosperity have increasingly depended since the end of the First World War. Yet hotels are also places where people can be anonymous; where murderers and thieves mix with adulterers and con artists; and where prejudice finds expression in who is refused access, and in the forms of 'service' provided by staff in the lowest-paid roles.

The Crossing is a groundbreaking, unprecedented look inside the UK's newest and most chilling underworld. Wensley Clarkson's insider account reveals the emergence of numerous organised crime networks more powerful and violent than anything ever seen before in this country. These often foreign gangs run elaborate international systems dealing in drugs, people smuggling, prostitution and money laundering, and they have gained a huge foothold in the UK underworld thanks to The Crossing.

When he turned 65, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the days' events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. One of Britain's most amusing and original writers reflects on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters - a record of shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have ever been so frank about themselves and even fewer so entertaining.

Simon Gray is determined to give up smoking. Really. At last. Can he kick the habit of 60 years? Will he, sometime soon, be able to leave his house without nervously feeling for his two packets of 20 and his two lighters, and add no more singes to his cardigan? As this wonderful, wayward record of Gray's life progresses, these questions are overtaken by much larger ones. What is that lady on the plane to Athens doing with her nose? What was sex like before 1963? Will his name be in lights on Broadway? Why did he leave the bedside of his dying mother?

This "funny, dark, and true" (Caitlin Moran) memoir is Bridget Jones's Diary for the Fleabag generation: What happens when you have an unplanned baby on your own in your mid-thirties before you've worked out how to look after yourself, let alone a child? This is the story of one woman's...

In 1940 Winston Churchill established the Special Operations Executive to "set Europe ablaze". Three years later David Smiley and Billy McLean were parachuted into Northern Greece and crossed the border into Albania to do just that. For the next eight months Smiley mediated between the competing resistance factions and organized them to conduct ambushes and acts of sabotage on fascist armies and infrastructure.

Margaret Thatcher was a British stateswoman and the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1990, she was the Leader of the Conservative Party. She was elected Prime Minister three times and served for 11 years, longer than any other British prime minister of the 20th century. Her political views, based on loose economics and individual self-realization, along with her policies, were referred to as Thatcherism, which for decades remained an influential political concept in the United Kingdom.

For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. But amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period.

In Shaggy Muses, we visit Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Flush, the golden Cocker Spaniel who danced the poet away from death, back to life and human love. We roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Emily Brontë, whose fierce Mastiff mix, Keeper, provided a safe and loving outlet for the writer’s...

Corporal Andy Reid was an ordinary soldier, serving in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. But his life changed for ever on Tuesday 13 October 2009, when he was blown up by a Taliban improved explosive device (IED). Evacuated to the UK, it was touch-and-go whether he would survive. He had lost both legs and his right arm, while the index finger of his left hand was almost completely removed. Yet survive he did and less than a month after being blown up, he was reunited with his patrol back in Warminster.

Jack rescues a very public figure, and he’s drawn into a gilded world with few rules and heady stakes. It’s 1880: The world is small; the players have perilous ambitions. Espionage has always been a polite game, but now the stakes are changing.

A fascinating biography of Freda Bedi, an English woman who broke all the rules of gender, race, and religious background to become both a revolutionary in the fight for Indian independence and then a Buddhist icon. She was the first Western woman to become a Tibetan Buddhist nun - but that pioneering ordination was really just one in a life full of revolutionary acts. Freda Bedi broke the rules of gender, race, and religion - in many cases before it was thought that the rules were ready to be challenged.

From a hunchbacked dwarf to a paranoid poet-assassin, a history of Victorian England as seen through the numerous assassination attempts on Queen Victoria while she ruled the British empire. During Queen Victoria’s 64 years on the British throne, no fewer than eight attempts were made on her life. Murphy follows each would-be assassin and the repercussions of their actions, illuminating daily life in Victorian England, the development of the monarchy under Queen Victoria, and the evolution of the attacks in light of changing social issues and technology.

Codenamed Operation Telic, the British component of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the largest gathering of British troops since the Second World War. While the British public prepared for the worst as its soldiers were facing weapons of mass destruction, most servicemen and women were under no illusion that they were invading Iraq to rid the people of Saddam Hussein.

A great many writers use their own lives as the raw material for their work, but few have done it with the wit and courage of Simon Gray. Like his previous best seller, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer has the rare ability to make you laugh aloud one moment and ponder the sad mysteries of mortality the next - and sometimes to do both at the same time.

The two reigns - both unusually long - could scarcely have been more different. Queen Elizabeth I brought a much needed (and appreciated) stability to England at a key moment in the history of the nation. Queen Elizabeth II has, by contrast, been the constitutional monarch par excellence.