Fifty Years at the Front Line of History

Magnum

'The best account of the reality of photo-journalism I have ever read. . An ultra-enjoyable book. . . sheer delight. ' John Simpson, Daily Telegraph.

The best account of the reality of photo-journalism I have ever read. His description of his characters has the sharpness and insight of a first-rate photograph...An ultra-enjoyable book...it is sheer delight

This fascinating book...reminds us that photography is still the dominant visual art of our time

A cleverly constructed book - a labour of love

This book is a biography of Magnum, told largely in the words of its photographers. It offers a unique perspective on half a century of world history from an extraordinary group of men and women who were front line witnesses at virtually every major event in the last fifty years. Wars, famines, natural disasters, social, political and environmental crises - Magnum photographers were there. They have been acute observers of the human condition, photographing the richest people in the world, the poorest, the least known and the most celebrated, from Marilyn Monroe to Che Guevara, JFK to Nelson Mandela, Picasso to Krushchev. This is a multi-layered story. At one level, it tells how a small group of photographrs - among them Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger - came together, established and nurtured a co-operative photographic agency that has survived against all the odds to become the most famous in the world. At a secondary level, it is the richly anecdotal story of the photographers themselves, their adventures around the world and their feelings about, and reactions to, their assignments.

The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle

The definitive biography of an enduringly fascinating figure, told with panache and full of new material unavailable to any previous biographers.

A useful general introduction to new readers of Conan Doyle

Miller has written a good, eminently fair and sensible biography

The most comprehensive Conan Doyle life to date... There is strong meat in this impressive biography

Russell Miller is a prize-winning journalist and the author of eight previous books. His history of the Magnum photo agency was described by John Simpson as 'the best book on photo-journalism I have ever read', and his oral histories of D-Day, Nothing Less Than Victory, and the Special Operations Executive, Behind The Lines, were widely acclaimed. His most recent book was Codename Tricycle: the true story of the Second World War's most extraordinary double agent.

As the creator of Sherlock Holmes, 'the world's most famous man who never was', Arthur Conan Doyle remains one of our favourite writers; his work is read with affection - and sometimes obsession - the world over. Writer, doctor, cricketer, public figure and family man, his life was no less fascinating than his fiction. 
 
 
Conan Doyle grew up in relative poverty in Edinburgh, with the mental illness of his artistically gifted but alcoholic father casting a shadow over his early life. He struggled both as a young doctor and in his early attempts to sell short stories, having only limited success until his Sherlock Holmes stories became a publishing phenomenon and propelled him to worldwide fame. Whilst he enjoyed the celebrity Holmes brought him, he also felt that the stories kept him from more serious work. 
 
Beyond his writing, Conan Doyle led a full life, participating in the Boer War, falling in love with another woman while his wife was dying of tuberculosis, campaigning against injustice, and converting to Spiritualism, a move that would ultimately damage his reputation. 
 
During his lifetime Conan Doyle wrote more than 1,500 letters to members of his family, most notably his mother, revealing his innermost thoughts, fears and hopes: Russell Miller is the first biographer to have been granted unlimited access to Conan Doyle's private correspondence. The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle also makes use of the writer's personal papers, unseen for many years, and is the first book to draw fully on the Richard Lancelyn Green archive, the world's most comprehensive collection of Conan Doyle material. 
 
Told with panache, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle is an unprecedentedly full portrait of an enduringly popular figure and an outstanding literary biograhy.

The true story of the Second World War's most extraordinary double agent

Codename Tricycle

A gripping and colourful portrait of a celebrated, glamorous, and daring double-agent - possibly the inspiration for James Bond - who epitomised everything we associate with the life of the spy.

For anybody interested in the spider's web of war-time deception, in which Popov lighted like an iridescent butterfly, this Tricycle is worth a ride

As intriguing and nerve-wracking as [the] subject's career

Russell Miller is a prize-winning journalist and the author of fifteen books. His book on the Magnum photo agency was described by John Simpson as 'the best book on photo-journalism I have ever read', and his oral histories of D-Day, Nothing Less Than Victory, and the SOE, Behind The Lines, were widely acclaimed, both in Britain and in the United States. He is also the author of Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard.

A wealthy lawyer, debonair ladies' man, consummate actor, and courageous gambler, Dusko Popov played the role of playboy amongst the top echelons of British society to become one of Germany's most trusted spies. In fact, he was one of Britain's most successful double agents, and, some say, the inspiration for James Bond. With full access to FBI and MI5 records, along with private family papers, his incredible adventures can now be told authoritatively for the first time. 
 
Recruited by the Abwehr in 1940, 27-year-old Popov immediately offered his services to the British. His code-name was Tricycle. Throughout the war he fed the Germans with a constant stream of military 'intelligence', all vetted by MI5, and came to be viewed as their most important and reliable agent in Britain. But when he was ordered by the Abwehr to the United States to report on the defences at Pearl Harbor, J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, failed to heed his warnings, distrusting all spies and detesting Popov in particular, whom he considered to be 'a moral degenerate'. 
 
Facing the danger of exposure, arrest and execution on a daily basis, Tricycle went on to build up a network known as the Yugoslav Ring, which not only delivered a stream of false information to Berlin but also supplied vital intelligence to the Allies on German rocketry, strategy and security. After the war Dusko Popov was granted British citizenship and awarded an OBE. The presentation was made, appropriately, in the cocktail bar at the Ritz.

Russell Miller

The Oral History of Special Operations in World War II

Compiled from interviews, diaries, letters and contemporaneous first-person accounts - many never before published - this oral history follows the adventures of the courageous men and women who volunteered for service with Britain's Special Operations Executives and the United States' Office of Strategic Services. They parachuted behind enemy lines, often alone, with orders to cause mayhem. Arrest almost always resulted in torture and emprisonment; sometimes in execution. In occupied France, equipped with false identities, they played a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Gestapo; in the Balkans they discovered that the fiery politics of the region were as dangerous as the enemy; in the Burmese jungle they led native marauders in surprise attacks against the Japanese. Supported by a team of back-room boffins who dreamed up ingenious devices like exploding rats and invisible ink, the special agents of World War Two really were a breed apart. This is their extraordinary story, in their own words.

Russell Miller

Books by Russell Miller

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