Ten years since the death of the world renowned and controversial intellectual, this stylish edition is one of 12 commemorating Christopher Hitchens' most wry and provocative works. Thomas Paine was one of the greatest advocates of freedom in history, and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defence of man's inalienable rights. It has been celebrated, criticised, maligned, suppressed and co-opted, and forms the philosophical cornerstone of the first democratic republic whose revolution is the only example that still speaks to us - the United States of America. Hitchens marvels at the book's forethought and revels in its contentiousness and this brilliant portrait is an attractive introduction to Paine's life and work as a whole. 158pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'The Story of a Tangled Inheritance', what would you do if you found out that your ancestors were slave owners? Richard Atkinson was in his late 30s and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded, the age at which his father died, when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard. This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estate in Jamaica. His search has led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage. Described as 'a real page-turner, the subject matter is Georgian-era merchants, early merchant banks, the American War of Independence, slavery, trade, war with France, sugar and abolition', and defying classification, this is part political thriller and definitely a history of what could be described as a British Alexander Hamilton figure. 502pp including historical line art and colour photos and other images.

A Roaring Girl was loud when she should be quiet, disruptive when she should be submissive, sexual when she should be pure, 'masculine' when she should be 'feminine'. Meet the unsung heroines of British history who refused to play by the rules. Bold and inspiring, Holly Kyte has selected the game changing life stories of eight formidable women whose grit, determination whose grit, determination and radical unconventionality saw them defy the odds to forge their own paths. From the notorious cross-dressing thief Mary Frith in the 17th century, rebel slave Mary Prince, Caroline Norton who fought her repulsive husband, adventurer, industrialist and LGBT trailblazer Anne Lister aka Gentleman Jack in the 19th century, Mad Madge Margaret Cavendish, old maid Mary Astell, cavalier Charlotte Charke, the Amazon Hannah Snell. 462pp, well illustrated paperback.

One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled and puzzled the glittering social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881, she emerged from a traumatic childhood - her father having shot her mother's lover dead when Gladys was only 11 - to captivate and inspire some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Epoque. Marcel Proust wrote of her, 'I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.' Berenson considered marrying her, Rodin and Monet befriended her, Boldini painted her, and Epstein sculpted her. She inspired love from diverse dukes and princes and the interest of women such as Gertrude Stein. In 1921 when Gladys was 40, she achieved the wish she had held since the age of 14 to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, then freshly divorced from his fellow American Consuelo Vanderbilt. Gladys's circle now included Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill who described her as 'a strange, glittering being'. But life at Blenheim was not a success. When the Duke evicted her in 1933, the only remaining signs of Gladys were two sphinxes bearing her features on the west terraces and mysterious blue eyes in the grand portico. She became a recluse, and the wax injection she had to straighten her nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. Gladys was to spend her last years in the psych-geriatric ward of a mental hospital, where she was discovered by a young Hugo Vickers. Intrigued and compelled to unmask the truth of her mysterious life, he visited her over the course of two years and eventually published this marvellous biography, his first book, in 1979, two years after Gladys's death. 40 years on, he has now completely rewritten and revised his original biography, updating it with previously unavailable material. We enter the heady world of the upper classes at a time of great social, artistic and political change. 388pp, paperback with photos.

Blending biography and history this is a highly readable account of Winston Churchill's adventures as a young war correspondent from the jungles of Cuba and the mountains of the North-West Frontier to the banks of the Nile and the plains of South Africa. Enthralled by combat, cigars and whisky, young Winston showed extraordinary courage and tenacity under fire. He was the brazen foreign correspondent covering wars of empire in Cuba, India, the Sudan, and South Africa and in those far-flung corners of the world he reported from the front lines between 1895 and 1900. He mastered his celebrated command of language and formed strong opinions about war. He thought little of his own personal safety, so convinced was he of his destiny, jumping at any chance to be where bullets flew and canons roared. Based on his private letters and war reportage, the book intertwines young Winston's daring exploits in combat, adventures, and rise as a major literary talent, experiences that shaped the world leader he was to become. The huge public interest generated by his South African activities, his capture and subsequent escape provided the final boost Churchill needed to edge his way as a Conservative into the formerly Liberal parliamentary seat of Oldham. 309 exciting pages, photos.

Most of us learned in schooldays that Romulus was the son of a god; he was left for dead until a she-wolf rescued him; sometime later, he murdered his brother Remus and ultimately established Rome. Few people know much more about Rome's purported founding father than this because historians have in large part disregarded him and there are at least 60 different extant histories of Rome's founding. The book is presented not as history but as the myth that later Romans knew well and the kernel of truth within the Romulus legend. Born to a Vestal Virgin and left for dead as an infant near the Tiber River, his early life nearly ended as quickly as it began. A humble shepherd rescued the child and helped raise him into manhood. As Romulus grew older, he fearlessly engaged in a series of perilous adventures that ultimately culminated in Rome's founding, and he became its fabled first king. Establishing a new city had its price, and Romulus was forced to defend the nascent community. He tirelessly safeguarded Rome and proved that he was a competent leader and talented general, yet he also harboured a dark side which tainted his legacy. But despite all his misdeeds, redemption and subsequent triumphs were usually within his grasp. 'A delicious book that will satisfy any Roman/Latin language lover.' 284pp, maps.

Sejanus was feared, loathed, despised and loved, but he was above all a consummate and immensely gifted politician. He became a master of all through his control of imperial gifts and honours due to the increasing reluctance of Tiberius to fulfil his role as Emperor. Tiberius had become increasingly frustrated by the futility of encouraging the Senate to take responsibility for the governance of the Empire. In Ancient Rome, power lay in the ability to distribute resources, wealth, offices and honours, and Sejanus filled the space once occupied by his master. He is presented in our overwhelmingly hostile sources as a sinister figure, consumed by ambition who used proxies to eliminate his rivals. L Aelius Sejanus was born around 20BC into a world of intense political, social and economic change while the fabric of the old traditional Roman order and Republican aristocracy was decimated by years of civil war. The infamous Praetorian Prefect Sejanus is now synonymous with over-reaching ambition, murder, conspiracy and betrayal. The traditional storyline is that he craved the imperial throne for himself and isolated the naïve Emperor in his island pleasure palace on Capri while using his control over the Praetorian Guard, coupled with his immense power and influence in Rome to purge the capital of potential opponents. His victims supposedly included the emperor's son Drusus, poisoned by his own wife who had been seduced by Sejanus. The Emperor, warned of Sejanus' ambition, struck first, and the Prefect was arrested in the Senate, strangled, and his corpse cast down the Gemonian Stairs. A fresh reappraisal, 312pp, colour photos and timeline.

From one of the most beloved and distinguished historians of the British monarchy, here is a lively, intimately detailed biography of a long-overlooked king who reimagined the Crown in the aftermath of World War I and whose marriage to the regal Queen Mary was an epic partnership. The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, King George V reigned over the British Empire from 1910 to 1936, a period of unprecedented international turbulence. Yet no one could deny that as a young man, George seemed uninspired. As his biographer Harold Nicolson famously put it, "he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps." The contrast between him and his flamboyant, hedonistic, playboy father Edward VII could hardly have been greater. However, though it lasted only a quarter-century, George's reign was immensely consequential. He faced a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the fall of 13 European monarchies and the rise of Bolshevism. The suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under his horse at the Derby, he refused asylum to his cousin the Tsar Nicholas II during the Russian Revolution, and he facilitated the first Labour government. And, as Jane Ridley shows, the modern British monarchy would not exist without George; he reinvented the institution, allowing it to survive and thrive when its very existence seemed doomed. The status of the British monarchy today, she argues, is due in large part to him. How this supposedly limited man managed to steer the crown through so many perils and adapt an essentially Victorian institution to the 20th century is a great story in itself. But this book is also a riveting portrait of a royal marriage and family life. Queen Mary played a pivotal role in the reign as well as being an important figure in her own right. Under the couple's stewardship, the crown emerged stronger than ever. George V founded the modern monarchy, and yet his disastrous quarrel with his eldest son, the Duke of Windsor, culminated in the existential crisis of the Abdication only months after his death. Jane Ridley has had unprecedented access to the archives, and for the first time is able to reassess in full the many myths associated with this crucial and dramatic time. She brings us a royal family and world not long vanished, and not so far from our own. Photos, remainder mark, 15.24 x 22.86cm. 560 pages.

Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson was a legend and a cult figure in his lifetime, an inspirational commander whose "band of brothers" knew that he would not ask them to do anything he would not undertake himself. Going to sea as a 12-year-old midshipman, he worked his way up and was enjoying semi-retirement with his wife Fanny when recalled to fight the French in the wake of the Revolution, culminating in the triumphant Battle of the Nile where not a single British ship was lost. His subsequent brutal persecution of revolutionaries in Naples was a low point, and by this time Nelson had embarked on his scandalous affair with Lady Emma Hamilton. Finally at Trafalgar in 1805 he defeated Napoleon decisively. This fascinating book examines Nelson's strengths and weaknesses as a commander and strategist. His patriotism was not of a jingoistic sort, but rather in line with Kennedy's famous words "ask what you can do for your country". He had a constant concern for the impact of war on his crews and on ordinary civilians. Nelson was not an effective commander in land or land-sea engagements, but he was a fast learner and rarely made the same mistake twice. He had initiative and moral courage, although the author wryly remarks that someone like Nelson with supreme self-confidence, upright (and sometimes uptight) ethics, insubordinate habits, a scandalous lifestyle, plus severe injuries and acute hypochondria, would never rise in the services to take senior command today. The author examines his strategic decisions in the context of the modern warfighting theory called Manoeuvre Warfare, where results are achieved by constant movement, as in the Battle of the Nile, rather than head-on confrontation. The Admiral's spiritual beliefs played an important role in his morale, and he often dismissed his enemies as atheistic mobs, particularly the French Revolutionaries. 250pp, paperback, glossary, orders of battle, illus.

Maria Theresa was the first Holy Roman Empress to rule in her own right. Her father, Charles VI, changed the law so that she could do so, and in 1740 at the age of 23, pregnant with her fourth child, Maria Theresa became Empress of the vast Habsburg empire, with lands covering the modern Germany, Syria, former Czechoslovakia and part of the Netherlands. She immediately had to face an alliance between her neighbours Protestant Prussia and Catholic France as the War of the Austrian Succession got under way, and faced by a coalition against her, Maria Theresa played them off against each other, offering territory in her efforts to persuade one of them to break the alliance. Frederick of Prussia was willing to do so in return for Silesia, but wanted it kept secret. By 1757 she felt she was winning. Meanwhile her daughters Maria Christina ("Mimi"), Maria Carolina ("Charlotte") and Marie Antoinette had made dazzling marriages to European royalty, though the latter ended very badly. This book examines in depth the extent to which the fate of each of the daughters was influenced by the battles and family relationships between each other and with their mother. After attracting the lesbian attentions of her sister-in-law Isabella of Parma, Mimi fell in love with her cousin Albert of Saxony. At first she was thwarted by dynastic considerations, but the sudden death of her father paved the way. She became governor-general of the Austrian Netherlands. Maria Carolina, "Charlotte", was married by proxy to the King of Naples following the death of one sister and disfiguration from smallpox of another, and found the intimacy of marriage an unhappy experience, but she gained Ferdinand's confidence by pretending to love him, and quickly became the effective ruler of Naples. Marie Antoinette was also married by proxy, at the age of 14, to the King of France and her marriage, like her sister's, was made problematic by the unreliable character of her husband, who was to become Louis XVI. Glamorous and ambitious, she became the most famous princess in history. As the country's financial crisis cemented hostility to the ruling family, the French Revolution got under way. Marie Antoinette's sister Mimi had to flee Brussels, but Marie Antoinette's husband left it too late and the royal family was captured as they headed for rural France. The backdrops are the brilliant courts of Vienna to Versailles, the exotic lure of Naples and Sicily. 616pp, colour photos, maps.