Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy by Paul Thomas Murphy

$20.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: very good

During her long reign, Queen Victoria was the target of no fewer than eight assassination attempts. In seven of these cases her life was saved by poor marksmanship or misfiring weaponry, but one assailant managed to strike her with a finely wrought cane. Remarkably, all eight of her attackers lived to t ell their tales, and were variously incarcerated in asylums, deported to Australia, or in a few cases eventually released into society again. Paul Thomas Murphy shows how these obscure would-be assassins effected a change in history. Their attacks on Victoria galvanised her to face them down by presenting a more public face than her forebears, thereby laying the groundwork for the monarchy as we know it today. SHOOTING VICTORIA opens up a new window onto Victorian England. In exploring contemporary attitudes to madness, crime and criminality, it reveals a wealth of little-known and often surprising aspects of 19th-century British society and monarchy. ...Show more

Elizabethans: How Modern Britain Happened by Andrew Marr

$20.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: very good

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James

$12.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: good

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE covers the history of British expansion overseas from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Narrative and analysis are interwoven with revealing eyewitness quotation to provide keen insight into the minds of those involved in conquering, settling and ruling th e greatest Empire the world has seen. Throughout, there are consistant themes; the search for profit and the moral misgivings it generated; domestic developments which made imperial expansion desirable; and the sense of national and personal destiny felt by the empire-builders. Spanning four centuries and six continents, James' magnificent survey examines the imperial experience and its legacy with tremendous verve. Informed, comprehensive and perceptive, it is the essential summary of the era. 'James' epic is not only a first-rate narrative, but also a penetrating portrait of the British...Having largely, if often inadvertently, selfishly or ham-fistedly, engineered the world we live in, we need the courage now to face up to our record as coolly and intelligently as Lawrence James has done' - John Spurling, TLS ...Show more

Lights Out for the Territory - 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London by Ian Sinclair; Marc Atkins (Illustrator)

$15.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

This is a record of long journeys on foot, from Hackney to Chingford and down to the river, around the City in its ring of steel, and through the heart of Westminster, Lambeth and Millbank.

Noblesse Obilge - An enquiry into the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy by Nancy Mitford

$6.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: good

Night Haunts - A journey through the London night by Sukhdev Sandhu

$12.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

London at night, from Shakespeare's time to Dickens to Jack the Ripper, was always seen as a lawless orgy of depravity and pestilence, teeming with rogues and bandits. But is it now as bland and unthreatening as any new town? Sukhdev Sandhu journeys across London to find out whether the London night rea lly has been rendered neutral by street lighting and CCTV cameras. Sandhu's forays see him prospecting in the London night with the people who drive its pulse, from the avian police to security guards, zookeepers and exorcists. He wades through the sewers, hangs out with pirate DJs and accompanies the marine patrol looking for midnight corpses. In a beautifully written and wonderfully illustrated book he seeks to reclaim the mystery and romance of the city - to revitalise the great myth of London for a new century. ...Show more

The Pax Britannica Trilogy by James Morris

$25.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: very good

An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo by Richard Davenport-Hines

$12.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: good

A sharp focus snapshot of Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo Affair. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo scandal, An English Affair is a sharp-focused snapshot of a nation on the brink of social rev olution. Britain in the early 1960s was dominated by the legacy of two world wars. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the Edwardian stalwart, led a Conservative government dedicated to tradition, hierarchy and, above all, old-fashioned morality. But the tide was changing. A breakdown of social boundaries saw nightclub hostesses mixing with aristocrats, and middle-class professionals dabbling in criminality. Meanwhile, Cold War paranoia gripped the public imagination. The Profumo Affair was a perfect storm, and when it broke it rocked the Establishment. In An English Affair, the masterly biographer Richard Davenport-Hines introduces us to the key players and brings seedily glamorous Swinging London to life. The cast list includes familiar names such as louche society doctor Stephen Ward, good-time girls Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, and Secretary for War John Profumo himself. But here for the first time we also encounter the full complement of tabloid hacks, property developers and hangers-on whose roles have, until now, never been fully revealed. As the drama builds to its deadly climax, Davenport-Hines exposes the hypocrisy and prejudice of a country undergoing extraordinary change. Sex, drugs, class, race, chequebook journalism and the criminal underworld - the Profumo Affair had it all. This is the story of how Sixties England cast off respectability and fell in love with scandal. ...Show more

The King's Speech by Mark Logue

$10.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: very good

One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century - he wasn't a prime minister or an archbishop of Canterbury. He was an almost unknown, and self-taught, speech therapist named Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed 'The Quack who saved a King'. Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain's greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love of Mrs Simpson. This is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue's grandson and drawing exclusively from his grandfather Lionel's diaries and archive. It throws an extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men, and the vital role the King's wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband's reputation and reign. The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy is an astonishing insight into a private world. Logue's diaries also reveal, for the first time, the torment the future King suffered at the hands of his father George V because of his stammer. Never before has there been such a personal portrait of the British monarchy - at a time of its greatest crisis - seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King. ...Show more

Blair's Wars by John Kampfner

$10.00 NZD

Category: Military | Reading Level: very good

Through first-hand interviews with the main players, Blair's Wars describes how the Prime Minister took Britain to war five times in six years. When first published, it created a sensation across government and around the world. Now updated with new revelations, it is the dispassionate yet devastating s tory of a man who had convinced himself that his powers of persuasion could overcome all obstacles - only to see those powers disappear. ...Show more

George VI by Sarah Bradford

$12.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

The definitive biography of George VI, the hero of The King's Speech George VI reigned through taxing times. Acceding to the throne upon his brother's abdication, he was immediately confronted with the turmoil in European politics leading up to the Second World War, then the War itself, followed by a pe riod of austerity, social transformation and loss of Empire. George was unprepared for kingship, suffering from a stammer which could make public occasions very painful for him. Moreover he had grown up in the shadow of his brother, a man who had been idolized as no royal prince has been, before or since. However, as Sarah Bradford shows in this sympathetic biography, although George was not born to be king, he died a great one. 'A triumph ... Sarah Bradford looks set to inherit Lady Longford's mantle as royal biographer supreme' Mail on Sunday 'Lucid, convincing and admirably fair ... George VI has been fortunate in his biographer' Philip Ziegler 'Vivid, thorough and enjoyable' Independent Sarah Bradford is a historian and biographer. Her books include Cesare Borgia (1976), Disraeli (1982), winner of the New York Times Book of the Year, Princess Grace (1984), Sacherevell Sitwell (1993), Elizabeth- A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen (1996), America's Queen- The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2000), Lucrezia Borgia (2005) and Diana (2007).She lives in London and is married to the 8th Viscount Bangor. She is currently working on a full scale biography of Queen Victoria. ...Show more

Scotland's Empire 1600-1815 by T.M. Devine

$12.00 NZD

Category: United Kingdom | Reading Level: very good

A dazzling account of Scotland's role in the world by Scotland's bestselling historian. The Scots had an enormous impact on the global development of the British Empire as emigrants, soldiers, merchants and colonial administrators. Scotland's Empire provides a comprehensive examination of their cru cial role during the formative era of the long eighteenth century. The book ranges from the Americas to Australia and from the Caribbean islands to India. It explores in depth many key themes including the slave trade, the Scots on the colonial frontier, Highland soldiers, the saga of the Ulster Scots, the effect of the Scottish Enlightenment and the connection between empire and the economic revolution in Scotland itself. ...Show more