There are many women shaping the stories of the North of England right now like the screenwriter Sally Wainwright whose dramas Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley are redefining the type of roles available to northern female actors. Then of course there has been a female Dr Who and the brilliant Maxine Peake from Bolton. Cartimandua was a Northern queen, more powerful and cannier than Boadicea - what made one stay in the memory and the other disappear? Proud Northern lasses are celebrated in this comic writer's celebration of the queens of the north - warrior women, leaders, fighters, diplomats and rulers. Kate Fox takes us on a sharp and funny journey from rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts like Helen Sharman from Sheffield, the Woodbine-smoking football player Lily Parr and those who laid the ground for modern stars from Victoria Wood to Little Mix, Nicola Adams to Lubaina Himid. There is plenty of muck and bras here, Elisabeth Gaskell's North and South to Billy Elliot, the Full Monty via Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Kes, Coronation St., the working class politician Ellen Wilkinson who was instrumental in the Jarrow March, aristocrat Gertrude Bell who was the architect of modern Iraq, Sheila Fell, the Van Gogh of Cumbria and the outspoken Sunderland singer Nadine Shah. All of them hammering out their words, ideas and creations from the Northern cities, far from the centre of power. From the queen of the desert to Barbara Hepworth and plenty on the comedian's greatest heroine, the late great Victoria Wood. 291pp, paperback.

Written by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire's great-great granddaughter Iris, her great grandparents were the 1st Earl of Granville (1773-1846) and Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish. Iris died in 1944, and although her writing is a little flowery, it was her ability to open doors through her family connections which makes this biography so fascinating. Georgiana's story is surely one of the most compelling and dramatic in late Georgian society, the subject of many books and a successful film, The Duchess. Love affairs, tragedy, high society, gambling and a host of illegitimate children are shared between herself, her best friend, her lover and her husband. Married to an elderly reserved duke, she was a young and emotionally demonstrative girl, unprepared for her duties as duchess. She discovered that her husband already had a mistress with whom he had a daughter and all the duke requires of Georgiana is to provide him with an heir which she seems at first unable to do. Starved of affection, she throws herself into the fashionable world and becomes the darling of society where she leads others and sets the fashions, whether for three foot high ostrich feathers or tall towers of hair with elaborate decorations. In 1782, the Duke and Duchess meet the fascinating Lady Elizabeth Foster, recently separated from her husband and living in restricted circumstances. Elizabeth attaches herself to Georgiana and is invited to return home with them. She becomes not only a close friend to Georgiana, but a mistress to the Duke and bears him two illegitimate children. Surprisingly Georgiana supports this strange ménage à trois, but nevertheless continues her bedroom duties to the Duke, eventually bearing him two daughters and finally in 1790, the much sought-after son. The true love of Georgiana's life is the handsome young Whig politician Charles Grey with whom she embarked on an affair in 1791. She faced the worse crisis of her life when she discovered that she was carrying his child. The Duke gave an ultimatum - give up Grey and the child, or never see her three children again. She chooses her children. 224 pages, paperback, very well illustrated with both colour images and black and white archive material plus chronological chart.

'This light-hearted survey of the historiography of Henry VIII was originally penned in 2010 as the introductory section of a never completed biography of the second Tudor king.' Thankfully the wonderful publisher Alan Sutton picked it up, and this 96 page softback with 111 colour illustrations is the result. Henry VIII is remembered in particular as the formidable and arrogant regal figure portrayed by Hans Holbein the Younger, the early Tudor stud who clocked up np fewer than six wives, and the proto-nationalist/imperialist ruler who sent the Pope packing and inaugurated the English Reformation. Nor is it easy to avoid contrasting the handsome, athletic and affable teenage prince who ascended the throne in 1509 with the bloated, physically decrepit and irritable elderly king he had become by the time of his death in 1547. The humanist Erasmus first met Henry VIII in 1499 when as a nine year old child he detected in him 'A certain royal demeaner, a dignity of mind combined with a remarkable courtesy.' Of the 111 magnificent portraits they include Thomas Cromwell, John Fisher, Elizabeth Woodville and illustrations such as George Cavendish's manuscript of the biography of Wolsey and images of famous historians like A. P. Pollard and even television's Blackadder. 96pp, colour, paperback.

By the author of around 100 books including historical and royal biography comes an account of Queen Victoria's personal and political relationships with the empires, kings and queens, emperors, empresses and their families of France, Germany, Austria and Russia. Victoria had close familial ties with the royal houses of Germany long before the King of Prussia became German Emperor in 1871, as well as strong personal bonds with the exiled French Emperor and Empress and their son the Prince Imperial, after the fall of the French Empire in 1870. In addition, the volume explores Victoria's often strained relations with her grandson William II, and her tumultuous interactions with the Russian emperors. We are transported back to a glamorous and powerful time when there were four Imperial Heads of State in Europe, Queen (and Empress) Victoria, the German Emperor William, Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, and Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Beautifully written by John Van der Kiste who weaves together the many strands to provide a fascinating picture of European royalty from the 1830s to the early 1900s. Many contemporary portraits, 176pp, paperback.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Eliabeth, Duchess of Devonshire wrote to their family, the Earl of Bristol (Bishop of Derry), the Countess of Bristol, Lord Byron, the Earl of Aberdeen, Sir Augustus Foster and others between the years 1777 to 1859. The affairs focused on the period from America's independence to the fall of Napoleon. Single letters are also included from Gibbon, Sheridan, Fox, the Prince Regent, General Moreau and Alexander, Emperor of Russia. The Devonshires were one of the first families of the land that were highly connected with George, Prince of Wales being a regular visitor to Devonshire House along with James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and other politicians and celebrities of the day. They were at the centre of society and their interest is heightened by the celebrated ménage à trois and other affairs which led to both duchesses at separate times to seek a quiet period abroad to bear illegitimate children. Georgiana's daughter Eliza Courtney was sired by Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, who later became Prime Minister. Elizabeth's children, Caroline St Joles and Augustus Clifford were sired by William, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, whom she later married. Elizabeth's grandson Vere had unique access to the papers and has produced accurate transcriptions (often working from abominable scrawl!) to provide a fascinating window into the pinnacle of society of the period. Vere Foster (1819-1900) was himself a philanthropist and educationist whose father Augustus first arrived in Washington in 1804 as an assistant to the British Minister Anthony Merry and who was expelled from Sweden by order of Napoleon four years later. He was not able to placate the war hawks and the United States declared war on Great Britain on 18th June 1812 when Foster returned to England. Vere is particularly careful with the lesbian material of his subjects. Nicely laid out letters, colour photos. 310 page large softback.

In the evening of 4th April 1793, preparations were being made for a clandestine ceremony in Rome. The wedding of the son of the King of England to the daughter of the Governor of the Bahamas would not only be concealed, it would also be illegal. That night His Royal Highness Prince Augustus Frederick was married to Lady Augusta Murray without witnesses. The couple had known each other for only three months and shared a birthday. They were deeply in love, but the consequences of their rash union would be terrible. 'Death is certainly better than this' - the couple had considered suicide the evening before. The sixth son of King George III was forbidden under the Royal Marriages Act to marry without the King's permission. The daughter of the Earl of Dunmore would turn from an 18th century socialite into a 19th century social pariah, her children declared illegitimate, and her family scorned. It was the worst miscalculation of the Prince's life, but while he eventually found redemption, Augusta's destiny changed beyond anything she could imagine. Julia Abel Smith uses material from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle and the Dunmore family papers to create a dramatic biography set in the reigns of King George III and IV against the background of the American and French Revolutions. With family trees and 16 pages of b/w illus.

A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance bringing to life the vices and virtues of the feuding ruling families of Italy and the most important and influential patrons. From the glittering to the at times rather gory, we are transported to the life and times of the elite whose power and patronage created the art and architecture of the Renaissance. Hollingsworth sets their aesthetic achievements in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of a tumultuous period of history. From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of 15th and 16th century Italy immerse themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches, inspired by the architecture of Ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together, but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart. Their lives were defined as much by the waging of war as the nurturing of artistic talent. Hollingsworth charts these developments in a sequence of chronological chapters, each centred on two or three main characters from Ludovico Sforza of Milan to Isabella d'Este of Mantua, from Pope Paul III to Emperor Charles V, from painters Mantegna and Titian to the architect Sansovino and the polymath Leonardo da Vinci. Other names include Sigismondo Malatesta, Barbara of Brandenburg, the doge Andrea Gritti and his cronies and Cosimo d'Medici. With useful genealogical trees, tables and maps, a super heavyweight beautifully designed 512 page hardback with full page colour plates throughout of paintings, sculpture and architecture.

Historian Lucy Worsley visits Jane Austen's childhood home, her schools, holiday destinations and houses both grand and small of the relations upon which she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister toward the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House, and a small, rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a 'life without incident'. In this new biography, it is the story of Jane's life which shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the rooms, spaces and possessions that mattered to her, and the way in which the home is used in her novels to mean a place of both pleasure and a prison. It gives a flavour of the accepted rules and customs of the period and familiar locations such as Bath. There are fascinating snippets of detail like how Jane and her sister wore pattens to protect their shoes from the mud, how Jane received £10 (the equivalent of £900 today) for her first published novel and how her father actively encouraged her writing, bought her a writing desk, created a room in which she could write and approached publishers on her behalf. With all of the television historian's enthusiastic interjections, and two sections of colour plates. 387pp, paperback.

A deep and reverential biography which glides through the quiet life of one of the great writers of the 20th century by the New York Times bestselling author. Nancy Mitford was, in the words of her sister Lady Diana Mosley, 'very complex.' Her highly autobiographical early work, the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism, and the vast body of letters to her family, to friends such as Evelyn Waugh, and to the great love of her life Gaston Palewski, all tell an intriguing story of this enigmatic woman. Not only drawing from these but also conversations with Nancy Mitford's two surviving sisters, acquaintances and colleagues, biographer Thompson has fashioned a portrait of a contradictory and courageous woman and tells the often paradoxical and complex story beneath the smiling and ever-elegant façade. Drawing on Mitford's own poignant childhood memories from her exuberant novel 'The Pursuit of Love', Thompson vividly evokes the swarm of brilliant and beautiful sisters, and their lone brother, growing up carefree in a succession of country houses in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. There is clearly a deep understanding about the Mitford family dynamics whether it is the estrangement from her parents, conflicts with her sisters, or damaging romantic relationships and the themes Mitford wrote about - fascism, the Nazis, sexual orientation, adulthood and beliefs. 417pp, the index reads like a who's who of major literary and political figures. 16 photos, family tree.

'The Belle Epoque is brought to life through three colourful lives in this sparkling account stuffed with top fin-de-siècle tittle-tattle.' - The Times, The Best Books of 2019. Handsomely published with colour plates and in heavyweight hardback, we have the US edition of this fine history. In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping - a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. Our guide through the backdrop of Belle Epoque Paris is Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, free thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life and who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In this vivid tapestry of people - Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust and James Whistler among others - place and time, we are not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure, but also one of violence, prejudice and nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side - hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and a time of rampant prejudice and bloodshed. Bourbons and Orleanists, wicked paper editors, salonnieres and famous whores seen through the eyes of the humane gynaecologist and general surgeon Pozzi. Illustrated endpapers, colour and other plates. 270pp, remainder mark.