'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.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the life of a petty tyrant in an obscure corner of the Ottoman Empire became the stuff of legend. What propelled this cold-blooded archetype of Oriental despotism, grandly known as the Lion of Ioannina and the Balkan Napoleon, into the consciousness of Western rulers and the general public? This book charts the rise of Ali Pasha from Albanian brigand leader to a player in world affairs and, ultimately, to a gruesome end. Ali exploited the internal weakness of the Ottoman Empire to carve out his own de facto state in Albania and Western Greece. Although a ruthless tyrant guilty of cruel atrocities, his lavish court in Yanina (Ioannina) became an attraction to Western travellers, most famously Lord Byron, and his military prowess led Britain, Russia and France to seek his alliance during the Napoleonic Wars. His activities undermined the Sultan's authority and helped bring about the Greek War of Independence. Quentin and Eugenia Russell describe his remarkable life and military career as well as the enigmatic legacy he bequeathed in his homeland both as a nationalist hero and a tyrant, and further afield as inspiration for writers and artists of the Romantic movement. 18 x 24.89cm. 206 pages.

Aristotle towers over Western philosophy and science and as they have come down to us, his works comprise a veritable encyclopaedia of philosophy and invented the field of formal logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics. He created a basis for a great deal of today's scientific knowledge, such as the classification of organisms and objects. Although he has been studied continuously for more than 2000 years, his individual works were dispersed, lost, recovered, and very gradually reunited. The physical transmission of the Aristotelian corpus was a long, complicated, uncoordinated process. From the Roman Empire, through the mediation of Arab and Jewish scholars, to the western Middle Ages and scholasticism and up to the cusp of modernity in the late 15th century, Aristotle's works were copied and recopied by scribes in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin before finally becoming available again in their original Greek. The volume focuses on one crucial, extended moment when, thanks to the invention of printing, Aristotle's works became widely available in Latin, Greek, and even in vernacular languages in the late 15th and 16th centuries. At that moment, Aristotle's authority comes under increasing scrutiny as the new science and philosophy of early modern Europe chart different courses for the future. The extraordinary books and manuscripts in this volume, selected from the collection of the Martin J. Gross Foundation, demonstrate just how intellectuals have received and wrestled with Aristotle. Through commentaries, treatises, lecture courses in schools, and above all in the written marginalia of books, the volume reveals the extent of the age's engagement with Aristotle. Many of these books and manuscripts have never before been studied and many colour images show them in their magnificence. Colour plates, 20.96 x 28.58cm, 128 pages.