The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule. Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet - in 6th century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport - these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths - one gentle, the other horrific - their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend. Shelley Puhak resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture's stubbornest myths about female power. Chapters include A Missive to Byzantium, the Loss of Sanctuary, the Regency, the Vexations of King Guntram, and The Defiant Nuns. Incorporated are primary sources and accounts of men like the Bishop Gregory of Tours, the poet Fortunatus, the Pope Gregory the Great and assorted emperors and kings. Remainder mark, illus including colour, 384 pages.

For the nobility and gentry in later medieval England, land was a source of wealth and status. Their marriages were arranged with this in mind, and it is not surprising that so many of them had mistresses and illegitimate children. John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, married at the age of 20 to a ten-year-old granddaughter of Edward I, had at least eight bastards and a complicated love life. In theory, bastards were at a considerable disadvantage - whether they be children of unmarried parents, married parents or of members of the clergy dictated their prospects in life and career opportunities. Regarded as filius nullius' or the son of no one, they were unable to inherit real property and barred from the priesthood. In practice, illegitimacy could be less of a stigma in late medieval England than it became between the 16th and late 20th centuries. There were ways of making provision for illegitimate offspring and some bastards did extremely well: in the church; through marriage; as soldiers; a few even succeeding to the family estates. For example in 1413 Thomas Lincoln, a London draper, left the residue of his goods to be divided equally between his bastard daughters Juliana and Beatrice. There is also a bequest to Juliana Pleydon and who might perhaps be their mother. In 1428 John Pigot made a bequest of ten pounds to Matilda 'filiae meae bastard'. The Derbyshire knight Sir John Leek referred in his Will in 1522 to his daughter Anne 'got by Jane my wife' and to three further daughters plus a further child as yet unborn got by Anne Menwaryng. In this case it was fairly self-evident from the context that the latter three were illegitimate. Matthews presents the experiences of John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey, as a case study of the practicalities of illegitimacy. This helps the reader to understand the life and limitations of a child born outside of marriage, as well as the extraordinary lengths that parents were willing to go in order to advance the prospects of their children. This is the first book to consider the individuals who had illegitimate children, the ways in which they provided for them and attitudes towards both the parents and the bastard children. It also highlights important differences between the views of illegitimacy taken by the Church and by the English law. 216 page large well illustrated with colour plates paperback. Cross-referenced Dramatis Personae.

The bestselling biographer packs her magnificent history with incredible true stories and legendary medieval intrigue. This epic narrative history chronicles the first five queens from the powerful royal family that ruled England and France for over 300 years. The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, seductive queens, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill. This second volume of Alison Weir's critically acclaimed history of the queens of medieval England now moves into a period of even higher drama, from 1154 to 1291: years of chivalry and courtly love, dynastic ambition, conflict between church and throne, baronial wars, and the ruthless interplay between the rival monarchs of Britain and France. We see events such as the murder of Becket, Magna Carta, and the birth of parliaments from a new perspective. Weir's narrative begins with the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage to Henry II established a dynasty that ruled for over 300 years and created the most powerful empire in western Christendom - but also sowed the seeds for some of the most destructive family conflicts in history and for the collapse, under her son King John, of England's power in Europe. The lives of Eleanor's four successors were just as remarkable: Berengaria of Navarre, queen of Richard the Lionheart; Isabella of Angoulême, queen of John; Alienor of Provence, queen of Henry III; and finally Eleanor of Castile, the grasping but beloved wife of Edward I. Through the story of these first five Plantagenet queens, Alison Weir provides a fresh, enthralling narrative focusing on these fascinating female monarchs during this dramatic period of high romance and sometimes low politics. Remainder mark, maps, colour plates. 533 pages.

Sub-titled The Lost Lives of The Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra. On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down 23 steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was 22, the youngest only 17. Together with their parents and their 13 year old brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias. This sensitive and moving biography probes their stories for the richness and fun that they enjoyed during their short lives, and against all the odds it is an inspiring and enjoyable read. The chapter headings tell their own story, from 'What a disappointment! Fourth girl!' to 'Terrible things are going on in St Petersburg'. In 1914 Olga and Tatiana Romanova were among the most wealthy and marriageable princesses in royal circles, with glamorous Tatiana being paired off in the press with the future Edward VIII. On the outbreak of war the two girls trained as nurses, but the revolution sent them into exile, and Christmas 1917 was particularly poignant, spent under house arrest in Siberia. Deprived of The Times, they heard little news, though the October revolution in Petrograd had reached them. Meanwhile the temperature plummeted to -23 C. On Christmas Day they walked through the snow to church, where the priest caused controversy by using their imperial titles. The girls decorated a tree with a wonderful resinous scent, and they presented each of the twenty guards with a gospel and bookmark at their own private vespers. The end was not far away. 512 page paperback, archive photos.

Castaways have a big hold on our imaginations, as we can see from the first novel in English, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, together with modern developments of the same theme, from The Martian to I'm A Celebrity - get me out of here and Pirates of the Caribbean. Defoe started life as plain Daniel Foe, marrying young and engaging in a series of failed business ventures. In 1685 he headed west in support of the Monmouth rebellion and was lucky to escape execution. Then he wrote political pamphlets, which soon got him back in gaol. Finally he became a spy for the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Harley, and started writing books. Robinson Crusoe in 1719 was a surprise hit with the public, with its winning formula of the slave-trader shipwrecked with his dog and cat, armed only with a Bible, who is assisted in his survival by the unexpected appearance of Man Friday, heralded by an enormous footprint. He is not alone! Crusoe has never been out of print and has been filmed several times. Alexander Selkirk was a famous real-life castaway whose story Defoe is likely to have known through Selkirk's rescuer, Captain Woodes Rogers. Selkirk ran away to sea to escape retribution for a series of misdemeanours and became a privateer, choosing to be set ashore from a ship he considered in danger of breaking up, and after four years was picked up by Woodes Rogers who was circumnavigating the world, the first captain to return with crew and vessel intact. Other possible influences were Robert Knox, who adopted native customs when shipwrecked on Sri Lanka, the explorer of Ascension Island, William Dampier, Captain Bligh, and the 60 slaves who were marooned for 15 years on Tromelin near Madagascar. The book looks at astonishing tales of survival in the face of adversity, down in Falklands, in the Caribbean and off the coast of Australia and how being a castaway brings out the best in some and in others the very worst, with stories of murder rape and betrayal. 151 pages, maps, photos in black and white and colour.

Sir Horace Wilson was chief adviser to the PM Neville Chamberlain at the time of the Munich crisis, and the policy of appeasing Hitler is always associated with the names of the two men. Wilson was a civil servant with no official cabinet role, reflecting Chamberlain's preference for seeking the advice of those outside official government decision-making. The chief enemy of appeasement was Winston Churchill, an unpopular figure in the Conservative party. Chamberlain's policy of averting war at all costs is often ascribed to the fact that he was buying time to allow Britain to rearm sufficiently to present a credible military challenge to the might of Germany, but the author's examination of the papers of the period reveals that Chamberlain and Wilson were together seeking to avert war entirely. When Wilson was sent to deliver a personal letter and encountered a shrieking rant from Hitler, he refused to be intimidated and Hitler told Wilson, "England could wish for no better friend than the Führer". At the time of Hitler's Nuremberg rally, as Wilson and Chamberlain agreed to try to avert the coming war by sacrificing the claim of Czechoslovakia to its provinces in the Sudetenland, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, began to realise that appeasement was futile. The abandonment of the Czechs under the Munich agreement created a conflict in the Conservative party which was finally resolved by the invasion of Poland and subsequent war. Wilson lost his job with Chamberlain's demotion and was subsequently unemployable. 448pp, photos.

Dedicated to 'that great family of merry, mean yet magnificent mercenaries, the men of the French Foreign Legion', Edmund Murray was chosen in 1950 to protect Sir Winston Churchill MP, then Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. 'I was to remain with Sir Winston as his constant companion for the next 15 years, accompanying him wherever he went on land, on sea and in the air... I was just outside his bedroom when he died on 24th January 1965, leaving behind an emptiness that will never be filled.' Having written his autobiography in 1987, he decided to give much more detail about his life in the French Foreign Legion to which he signed up at aged just 19 in 1937 armed with little more than schoolboy French and a desire for a life of adventure. Murray travelled through France and on to the Legion's headquarters in Algeria where he completed a gruelling three month basic training programme. He went on to serve in Morocco and Indochina (now Vietnam) where, towards the end of the War, his regiment were forced to retreat from invading Japanese forces into China where his service ended after eight years as a Legionnaire. Throughout WW2, Murray's overwhelming sense of duty compelled him to try to leave the Legion and join the Allied forces, but he was thwarted at every attempt. He was an Englishman in a French organisation, by definition a home for 'the men with no names', where battle lines and countries' boundaries changed almost daily. He was a diplomatic puzzle, but as such his was an extraordinary wartime experience, and this book which borrows from his earlier autobiography and includes rare insights into Legion life from drills and manoeuvres to feast-days and festivals as well as accounts of friendships forged in exceptional circumstances which would last a lifetime. 151pp, colour photos, badges and decorations.

Henry Marten, soldier, member of Parliament, organiser of the trial of Charles I and signatory of the King's Death Warrant, is today a neglected figure of the 17th century. Yet his life was both extraordinary and emblematic. He was at the fulcrum of English history during the turbulent years of the Civil War, the Protectorate and the Restoration. Imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried at the Old Bailey, Marten was found guilty of High Treason, only to be held captive for years on the equivalent of death row. It was while he was in prison that his letters to his mistress Mary Ward were stolen and published in an attempt to destroy his reputation. Witty, clever, loving, sardonic and never despairing, the letters offer a rare and extraordinary insight into the everyday life of a man in the Tower of London awaiting a sentence of death. The attempt to expose him as immoral revealed him instead as a tender and brave man. In this revelatory biography, he emerges as a clever, lively-minded man, free of the fundamentalist zeal so common in many of his republican contemporaries. Marten never abandoned his beliefs in equality, in a representative Parliament under a Constitution (which he had helped to write) without a monarch or a House of Lords, and in that way can be seen as a very modern man. 'A deeply researched and convincing portrait of the later years of one of the most remarkable radical politicians in British history.' - Ronald Hutton. It also reminds us that not all regicides were soldier puritans, and that some men believed in a republic before the Civil War started. Illustrated, 214pp.

A beautifully told award winning biography, the first full study for over 30 years which incorporates recent archival discoveries to reveal more about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She famously wrote 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways', shortly before defying her family by running away to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure. Born in 1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote, Elizabeth achieved lasting literary fame and remains Britain's greatest woman poet whose work has inspired writers from Emily Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Here is the woman as a literary giant and high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who believed herself to be of mixed heritage, and a writer who defied chronic illness and long term disability to change the course of cultural history. The book holds up a mirror to the woman, her work and the art of biography in itself and a life that remains an electrifying study in self invention. Sampson makes a convincing claim that EBB was the first female lyric poet and her point is that Aurora Leigh provides us with a model for understanding how EBB forged a new relationship between female subjectivity and public utterance. 322pp, paperback, colour illus.

Brilliantly contrasting the Old World of wartime France with the hopeful New World epitomised by Christian Dior's New Look, the book revolves around his younger sister Catherine Dior, a Resistance heroine. Picardie explores the relationship between the visionary designer and his beloved sister who inspired his most famous perfume and shaped his vision of femininity. Picardie's journey takes her to wartime Paris, where Christian honed his couture skills while Catherine dedicated herself to the French Resistance and the battle against the Nazis, until she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the German concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Catherine's story shines - the quiet Dior who preferred flowers to fashion, the unsung heroine who survived the abuse of the Third Reich to help liberate France. The final section of the book covers in depth the British royal family including a wonderful full page colour photograph of Princess Margaret wearing her Dior gown for her 21st birthday portrait in 1951, photographed by Cecil Beaton. Packed with archive and colour photographs, fashion shoots, illustrations, dress designs, the salon of the Worth Couture House Paris 1910 and even a doll with a shaved head made by a prisoner at Ravensbrück, contrasting the exhaustion, starvation and torment by thirst and abusive guards and snarling dogs with fashion and wealth. 438pp in large softback 17.4 x 23.5cm beautifully designed and extremely well illustrated throughout in both colour and black and white.