Vital prequel to the internationally best-selling biography STALIN: COURT OF THE RED TSAR

The speeches and sayings of Winston Churchill have often passed in history, This collection brings together a collection of his most famous sayinghs with less well-known witticisms. It presents hundreds of Churchill's wittiest and wickedest quips.

Edward I is familiar to millions as 'Longshanks', conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace ('Braveheart'). Edward was born to rule England, but believed that it was his right to rule all of Britain. His reign was one of the most dramatic of the entire Middle Ages. This title presents the biography of this truly formidable king.

Rudolph Hoess was Commandant of Auschwitz during the war. He was taken prisoner by the British. Between his trial and his execution he was ordered to write his autobiography. This is it.

A long awaited and deserved new edition of this enduring and moving classic.

Claire Tomalin was born to write a biography of Samuel Pepys . Her previously acclaimed biographies of Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft have defined her as a scrupulous biographer who establishes a unique empathy with her subjects. In Pepys Tomalin has found her perfect subject, a man who is"both the most ordinary and the most extraordinary writer you will ever meet".

Pepys wrote his diary throughout the 1660s,"a period as intellectually thrilling as it was dangerous and bloody", and Tomalin's book vividly brings to life the tumultuous world of 17-century London, where Pepys grew up. Pepys' life spanned the execution of one king and the restoration of another, and Tomalin elegantly recreates both Pepys' public and private lives. From his early days in London and then Cambridge, Tomalin pieces together the crucial years when"the private Samuel Pepys began to develop and yearn". She chronicles his rise through the bureaucracy of the restored king, Charles II, to his position as energetic reformer of the navy and successful husband to his vivacious, mercurial wife Elizabeth. But the book also deals with Pepy's personal tragedies, his struggle to secure patronage as a commoner, his frank and hilarious extra-marital exploits, and the cataclysmic Fire of London in 1666.

This is a fine biography of an extraordinary man who"found the energy and commitment to create a new literary form" while also coming across as a generous, likeable, flawed human being. Tomalin's admiration for her subject is infectious, and will ensure that her biography becomes the standard reference for anyone interested in both Pepys's life and his art.-- Jerry Brotton

Now available in a fresh, new format, this is the story of the remarkable Tom Crean who ran away to sea aged fifteen and played a memorable role in Antarctic exploration. An unforgettable story of triumph over unparalleled hardship and deprivation does justice to this enigmatic figure.

The author and her husband came to Iran from the USA to meet her husband's family. With them was their four-year-old daughter, Mahtob. Betty soon became desperate to return to the States but her husband and his family had other plans. This is the true story of one woman's struggle to keep her child and win freedom for them both.

Based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before - and everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this book is the story of the life of Mao. It is full of revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing completely unknown Mao.

A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma.

A fascinating, colourful account of the Thatcher decade from the acclaimed modern historian, Richard Vinen.

Written between 1919 and 1926, this text tells of the campaign aganist the Turks in the Middle East, encompassing gross acts of cruelty and revenge, ending in a welter of stink and corpses in a Damascus hospital.

The author has been a Labour MP for 20 years, and despite his refusal to toe the party line, he has held several prominent posts. This book offers humorous and incisive takes on various aspects of political life: from the build-up to Iraq, to the scandalous sums of tax-payers' money spent on ministerial cars he didn't want to use.

The tenth anniversary edition of the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius. With a new Foreword by the celebrated astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Che Guevara's dream was an epic one - to unite Latin America and the rest of the developing world through armed revolution, and to end once and for all the poverty, injustice and petty nationalisms that had bled it for centuries. This work tells the tale of revolution, international intrigue and covert operations.

Written from the perspective of an ordinary 'Tommy', this book is a testament to the human spirit, for out of the mud that threatened to suck out a man's soul rises a compelling story of humanity and friendship.