Biographies & True Stories

First full biography of James Sowerby using some new, as well as extensive scholarly resources Provides authoritative and enlightening accounts of how some of the most important botanical works were produced and used. Covers the importance of botany at...

The legendary music impresario (and producer of bands likeThe Yardbirds and Wham!)tells his life story in a series of mesmerisingly candid vignettes.Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom: Lessons from a Dissolute Lifeis the book Simon Napier-Bell's fans have always...

"One of the best accounts ever written of deep-water diving and its staggering, haunting dangers." Robert Kurson, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow Divers Deep underwater lurks a mysterious man-made illness. It has gone by many names over the...

Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious . . . like eavesdropping on a wake, as the mourners get gradually more drunk and tell ever more outrageous stories' Sunday Times This is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the...

'He has a view of me no one else has.' - David HockneyThe Hockneys is a never before seen insight into the lives of one of the world's most famous artists and his family by youngest brother John, from growing up in the Second World War in Bradford...

This is the first comprehensive study in English of surrealist leader Andre Breton's life-long commitment to the visual arts. As an essayist, art critic, collector, gallery director and artist, he actively promoted many painters, from Gustave...

One of the most brilliant and original authors and architects of the entire Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti's output encompassed engineering, surveying, cryptography, poetry, humour, political commentary and more. He employed irony, satire...

In 1912 the young Frdric-Louis Sauser arrived in France, carrying an experimental poem and a new identity. Blaise Cendrars was born. Over the next half-century, Cendrars wrote innovative poems, novels, essays, film scripts, and autobiographical prose...

The daughter of a court intellectual, Christine de Pizan dwelled within the heart of late-medieval Paris. In the face of personal tragedy, she learned the tools of the booktrade, writing more than 40 works including poetry, historical and political...

Anton Chekhov's stories and plays endure as outstanding modern literary works, and his life was no less dramatic, rising from poor beginnings to become a writer, physician and philanthropist.In this new biography Michael C. Finke analyses Chekhov's major...

Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century's most prescient thinkers. This new biography is a rich and lucid account that charts the different phases of Huxley's career: from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar...

One should either wear a work or art, or be a work of art', Wilde once declared. In The Invention of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel explores Wilde's self-creation as a 'work of art' and a carefully constructed cultural...

A new, critical biography of the innovative and influential French artist Henri Matisse.Henri Matisse's experiments with form and colour revolutionised the twentieth-century art world. In this concise critical biography, Kathryn Brown explores Matisse's...

The first historical account of the development of prison gangs world-widePower on the Inside is the first book to examine the historical development of prison gangs worldwide, from those that emerged inside mid-nineteenth-century Neapolitan prisons to...

The compelling story of one of America's most adventurous jazz musicians.Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the...

This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The book offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all the major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young...

The fifteenth anniversary of the hit science fiction podcast Escape Pod,featuring new and exclusive stories from today's bestselling writers.Celebrate the fifteenth anniversary ofcutting-edge science fiction from the hit podcast, Escape Pod. Escape Pod...

Kathryn Janeway reveals her career in Starfleet, from her first command to her epic journey through the Delta Quadrant leading to her rise to the top as vice-admiral in Starfleet Command. Discover the story of the woman who travelled...

Named as one of '50 Writers You Should Read Now' by The Guardian.A mind-bending short-story collection from award-winning science fiction author Nina Allan.A collection of short stories from the award-winning author of The Rift and The Dollmaker, Nina...

Award-winning writer JD Morvan and renowned photographer Abbas' stunning graphic novel masterpiece which uses iconic photos to uniquely illustrate the historical 'Rumble in the Jungle' boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. On the...

The award winning graphic novel autobiography of a father, and the challenges he faces raising his autistic son.A beautifulvisual exploration of the highs and lows experienced by a parent learning howto adapt to his son's autism. Faced with a challenging...

In the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites travelled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return. Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated...

Why was Jesus, who said 'I judge no one', put to death for a political crime? Of course, this is a historical question - but it is not only historical. Jesus's life became a philosophical theme in the first centuries of our era, when 'pagan' and...

The epic story of a man born into Caribbean slavery, who defeated Napoleon's armies and crowned himself a free black king.How did a Caribbean child, born into plantation slavery, come to defeat Napoleon's armies in battle and crown himself king of the...

Winner of The High Plains Book Award for Non-FictionA vivid biography of an African Edwardian chronicler of London, in a time of social upheaval.In a world dominated by the British Empire, and at a time when many Europeans considered black people...

Karoline Kan was born in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre: her generation has always been caught between China's authoritarian politics and its hyper-modern technology and economic boom. In her quest to understand the shifting sands of...

This is a dark, raw and uncompromising tale of the human condition in extremis, drawing on the many lives of Ben Timberlake: as an archaeologist, Special Forces soldier, combat medic and drug addict.Starting with Ben's first near-death...

The emotion and trauma of the Partition are buried deep, but Aanchal Malhotra has found a way to recover them. Through the possessions saved by her own great-grandparents as they fled their homes, she discovers the unique power of such objects: to unlock...

Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon's political partnership changed the face of Scotland, bringing the country to within 200,000 votes of independence in 2014 and holding sway at Holyrood for more than a decade. Since the referendum, Scottish nationalism...

Book of the year, The Spectator Political book of the year, The TimesAs a statesman, Ernest Bevin is second only to Churchill in impact and legacy. Born in abject poverty to a single mother, and with virtually no formal education, Bevin went on to...

The Intelligence Corps is one of the smallest and most secretive elements of the British Army. It has existed in various guises since the early twentieth century, but it was only formally constituted in July 1940. In this book, Michael Ashcroft tells the...

Four years after the crowning glory of 1966 and a decade after the abolition of the maximum wage, a brash new era dawned in English football. As the 1970s took hold, a new generation of larger-than-life footballers and managers came to dominate the...

Elisabeth Spencer's daughter Milly came out as trans at the age of twenty-one. Just a few days later, in one of life's perfect storms, Spencer's husband was diagnosed with an advanced terminal illness and so she was set on course to confront rebirth in...

Fully updated with new material on Prince Andrew, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the paperback edition of the acclaimed polemic.The royal family is the original Coronation Street a long running soap opera with the occasional real coronation thrown in...

Katharine Campbell's father Sholto Douglas was the hero of her childhood, an unconventional senior commander in the Royal Air Force described as 'a gloriously contentious character'. Following childhood abandonment and poverty, Sholto rose through the...

In 2020, the Queen finally appeared to be at ease in the modern world, helped by the new generation of Windsors. But then Harry and Meghan announced that they were leaving 'The Firm', and Prince Andrew was relieved of his duties...

Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, his critics have turned up dead on a regular basis. According to Amy Knight, this is no coincidence. In Putin's Killers, the KGB scholar ties dozens of victims together to expose a campaign of political...

For more than 200 years the younger members of the British royal family - including future monarchs - have lived at Kensington Palace, alongside royal aunts and uncles, distant cousins and assorted aristocratic eccentrics. Kensington Palace has...

Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, his critics have turned up dead on a regular basis. According to Amy Knight, this is no coincidence. In Orders to Kill, the KGB scholar ties dozens of victims together to expose a campaign of...

When her beloved small dog died, Bel Mooney wasastonished at the depth of her ongoing sorrow. Sharing her loss online and in anewspaper article brought a deluge of responses, spurring Bel to explore thesefeelings further. Why do humans mourn pets? Can...

The best jobs in Britain today are overwhelmingly done by the offspring of privileged parents. Meanwhile, it is increasingly difficult for bright but poor children to transcend their circumstances. This state of affairs should not only worry the poor. It...

Before The Sandman, there was Violent Cases, the first teaming of multi award-winning writer Neil Gaiman and innovative artist Dave McKean.Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this seminal work, Violent Cases is being re-issued in a hardcover...

An electrifying anthology of new horror stories by award-winning masters of the genre.The horror genre's greatest living practitioners drag our darkest fears kicking and screaming into the light in this second collection of brand-new tales of terror...

The first scholarly edition of Sara Coleridge's religious writings.Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement reveals a significant body of virtually unknown religious works by a woman writer. The first scholarly edition of Sara Coleridge's religious...

An examination of Thomas Keneally's work and receptionBooker Prize winner and Living National Treasure, Thomas Keneally still divides critical opinion: he is both a morally challenging stylist and a commercial hack, a wise commentator on society and a...

Sure, sex is great, but have you ever cracked open a new notebook and written something on the first page with a really nice pen? The story behind Notebook starts with a minor crime: the theft of Tom Cox's rucksack from a Bristol pub in 2018. In that...