5ive Guys FC

82ASK

A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Robert Harris

'Impossible to stop reading' OBSERVER 
'Thrilling, intricate and hilarious' DAILY MAIL 
 
APRIL 1945: From the ruins of Berlin, a Luftwaffe transport plane takes off carrying secret papers belonging to Adolf Hitler. Half an hour later, it crashes in flames. 
 
APRIL 1983: In a bank vault in Switzerland, a German magazine offers to sell more than 50 volumes of Hitler's secret diaries. The asking price is $4 million. 
 
40 years from the alleged discovery, Robert Harris chronicles the gripping tale of one of the biggest frauds in history. 
 
'Brilliantly chronicled' NEW STATESMAN 
'A masterly account' LITERARY REVIEW

Selling Hitler

40th Anniversary Special Edition

The Story of the Hitler Diaries

James Patterson

JAMES PATTERSON'S NON-FICTION MASTERPIECE 
________________________________ 
 
Kennedys were always taught to win at all costs. And they did - but the price they paid was unimaginable . . . 
 
Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel. Their name is synonymous with American royalty. Their commitment to public service is legendary. But, for all the successes, the family has been blighted by assassinations, fatal accidents, drug and alcohol abuse and sex scandals. 
 
To this day, the Kennedys occupy a unique, contradictory place in the world's imagination: at once familiar and unknowable; charmed and cursed. The Kennedy Curse is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most famous family, as told by the world's most trusted storyteller. 
________________________________ 
Also published as The House of Kennedy in the US. 
 
'When I wrote my first novel after several non-fiction works about politics, James Patterson lovingly lambasted me for infringing on his thriller territory. Now I know how he feels as he crosses into non-fiction politics with this juicy and entertaining look at a political family that continues to wield power and influence. He's too good - it isn't fair!' JAKE TAPPER, CNN anchor and author of The Hellfire Club

The Kennedy Curse

The shocking true story of America’s most famous family

Kim Philby

In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H. A. R. "Kim" Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. 
 
A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as M16's liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War. 
 
Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John Le Carre's Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history's most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.

My Silent War

The Autobiography of a Spy

Henry Hemming

*** The Sunday Times bestseller *** 
 
'Vividly imagined and prodigiously researched' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
 'Such a rewarding read' John Preston, Daily Mail, Books of the Year 
 
'This odd, secretive man is brought to life', Robbie Millen, The Times, Books of the Year 
 
Maxwell Knight was a paradox. A jazz obsessive and nature enthusiast (he is the author of the definitive work on how to look after a gorilla), he is seen today as one of MI5's greatest spymasters, a man who did more than any other to break up British fascism during the Second World War – in spite of having once belonged to the British Fascisti himself. He was known to his agents and colleagues simply as M, and was rumoured to be part of the inspiration for the character M in the James Bond series. 
 
Knight became a legendary spymaster despite an almost total lack of qualifications. What set him apart from his peers was a mercurial ability to transform almost anyone into a fearless secret agent. He was the first in MI5 to grasp the potential of training female agents. 
 
M is about more than just one man however. In its pages, Hemming reveals for the first time in print the names and stories of seven men and women recruited by Knight, on behalf of MI5, and then asked to infiltrate the most dangerous political organizations in Britain at that time. Until now, their identities have been kept secret outside MI5. Drawn from every walk of life, they led double lives—often at great personal cost—in order to protect the country they loved. With the publication of this book, it will be possible at last to celebrate the lives of these courageous, selfless individuals. 
 
Drawing on declassified documents, private family archives and interviews with retired MI5 officers as well as the families of MI5 agents, M reveals not just the shadowy world of espionage but a brilliant, enigmatic man at its centre.

Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster

Martin Dillon

The bestselling investigation of one of Northern Ireland's most brutal and infamous murder cases 
 
'Makes for gripping but altogether terrifying reading' Washington Times 
 
'Dillon is recommended reading for anyone wishing to understand the complexities of British-Irish politics. He stands alone as one of the most creative writers of our time' Irish Times 
________________________________ 
'This was the ultimate way to kill a man.' 
 
In the 1970s, in some of the most violent days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a group of Protestant paramilitaries embarked on a spree of indiscriminate murder in the Shankill area of Belfast, leaving thirty Catholics dead. Their leader was Lenny Murphy: a fanatical Unionist whose childhood was marked by sectarian violence, Murphy swore revenge on all Catholics, and with his gang wreaked havoc onto an already fractured city. 
 
Not for the squeamish, The Shankill Butchers is a horrifying and detailed account of one of the most brutal series of murders in the history of Northern Ireland - a phenomenon whose real nature has been obscured by the troubled and violent context from which it sprang.

The Shankill Butchers

A Case Study of Mass Murder

Jeremy Greenstock

Tony Blair's decision to back George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq will go down as a defining moment for Britain. First as Ambassador to the UN, and then as Special Envoy for Iraq, the UK’s highest authority on the ground, Sir Jeremy Greenstock was centre stage in the tumultuous days leading up to the Iraq war and witnessed first-hand its tremendous impact. This extraordinary book is a record of what he saw. 
 
Greenstock writes openly about US—UK relations, taking his readers behind closed doors and revealing the actions of key players in New York, Washington, London, Paris and the Middle East. To what extent was the Bush administration determined to attack Iraq come what may? What promise did Blair extract in exchange for backing Bush? Was the war legal? What effect is it continuing to have on Britain’s long-term relations with America and Europe? 
 
Held back from publication when originally written in 2005, and now revised with a new foreword and epilogue following the publication of the Chilcot Report, Iraq: The Cost of War is a groundbreaking blow-by-blow account of one of the most pivotal and controversial conflicts in recent world history.

Iraq

The Cost of War

Charles Drazin

‘Patsy, what are you going to be when you grow up? Well?’ 
'A Royal Engineer, Daddy. A Royal Engineer!’ 
 
Charles Drazin knew little about his mother's father – only that he had been a military surveyor who mapped great swathes of the British Empire. But when his mother was told that she was dying, it prompted recollections of her early life that she had never confided before: of the village in the west of Ireland where she had grown up, and of her father, whose death changed the life of an eight-year-old girl for ever. 
 
Soon afterwards her own death left her son to go through alone the relics of her life. They included a box of old photographs, a battered suitcase stamped with the initials of the grandfather he had never known, and the service records of Patrick’s brothers, who, like him, had all enlisted in the Royal Engineers as the nineteenth century became the twentieth. So began an extraordinary journey of discovery that took him from the age of Queen Victoria to the battlefields of the Western Front. 
 
Mapping the Past is the story of five brothers who, mapping the world, lived up to the Royal Engineers’ motto of Everywhere. It is the story of Ireland, and of the Empire from which it broke away. It is the story of conflict, war and its aftermath. And, most of all, it is the story of memory, endlessly carrying the past, for better or worse, into our present and future. It is an imaginative, intimate and powerful work of history, by a writer of rare power.

Mapping the Past

A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

Ed Balls

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
A life in and out of politics – from the despatch box to the stage on Strictly – by one of Britain’s most influential and well-loved political figures. 
 
'Full of anecdote, insight and authenticity’ Evening Standard BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
'Witty, reflective and engaging' Nick Robinson 
 
'Honest and revealing' Michael Palin 
 
'Fascinating, heartfelt' Kay Burley 
 
'Insightful, funny, unexpectedly moving' Jonathan Freedland 
 
On the night of 7 May 2015, Ed Balls thought there was a chance he would wake up the next morning as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Instead, he woke up without a job. 
 
Twenty-one years earlier he had left a promising career in journalism to work for Labour in opposition. Moving through the ranks, from adviser to Cabinet minister and on to Shadow Chancellor, he occupied a central and influential position in and out of power during a pivotal period in British history. 
 
Speaking Out is a record of a life in politics, but also much more. It is about how power can be used for good, and the lessons to be learned when things go wrong. It is about the mechanics of Westminster, and of government. It is about facing up to your fears and misgivings, and tackling your limitations – on stages public and private. 
 
It is about the mistakes made, change delivered and personalities encountered over the course of two decades at the frontline of British politics. It is a unique window into a rarely seen world. Most importantly, it sets out what politics is about, and why it matters.

Speaking Out

Lessons in Life and Politics

Ben Mezrich

A gripping and shocking insight into Russia's most influential oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, from New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires. 
 
To understand the state of Russia today, one must understand the oligarchs who have shaped it. 
 
Once Upon a Time in Russia is the true and untold story of the larger-than-life oligarchs who reaped the riches of privatisation after the fall of the Soviet regime: "Godfather of the Kremlin" Boris Berezovsky, a mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protégé who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminium. Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, the two battled their way through the "Wild East" of Russia, with Berezovsky acting as the younger man's krysha - his roof, his protector. 
 
Written with the heart-stopping pace of a thriller, this true story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovsky's krysha, Abramovich built one of Russia's largest oil companies from the ground up in exchange for cash deliveries - including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media. As Berezovsky fled to the UK, Abramovich continued to prosper. 
 
Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky's footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then, Berezovsky himself was later dead, officially declared a suicide. 
 
Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter dubbed 'the story of our age'.

Once Upon a Time in Russia

The Rise of the Oligarchs and the Greatest Wealth in History

Gordon G. Chang

Nuclear Showdown published by Asia expert, Gordon Chang, was of the first books to exploire the full extent of the North Korean nuclear threat, its origins, international implications, and solutions. 
 
The United States is the mightiest nation in history, yet for six decades one of the world's weakest states has challenged the superpower and kept it at bay. Today, that country also threatens to change the course of human events with an act of unimaginable devastation. Nuclear Showdown analyses the failed society that has become the gravest threat to America and international order: North Korea. Chang's insightful book reveals the full horror of the crisis threatening to turn Asia into the world's next battleground. 
 
How can North Korea be stopped? No one seems to have an answer. For more than half a century, policymakers have failed when it comes to subjugating Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. Nuclear Showdown proposes a solution that can defuse the standoff once and for all.

Nuclear Showdown

North Korea Takes On the World

Tim Pat Coogan

The history of Ireland for much of the Twentieth century is the history of Eamon De Valera. 
 
From the 1916 Rising, the troubled Treaty negotiations and the Civil War, right through to his retirement after longer in power than any other twentieth century leader, de Valera has both defined and divided Ireland. He was directly responsible for the Irish Constitution, Fianna Fail (the largest Irish political party) and the Irish Press Group. 
 
He helped create a political church-state monolith with continuing implications for Northern Ireland, the social role of women, the Irish language and the hole concept of an Irish nation. Many of the challenges he confronted are still troubling the peace of Ireland and of Britain, and some of the problems are his legacy. 
 
For de Valera was a world figure who attempted to confine his nation of disciples to the narrowest of cultural and intellectual horizons.

De Valera

Long Fellow, Long Shadow

'The unofficial voice of modern Irish history' Economist 
 
When President of the Irish Republic Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he remarked to Lord Birkenhead, 'I may have signed my actual death warrant.' In August 1922 at the height of the Irish Civil War, that prophecy came true - Collins was shot and killed by a fellow Irishman in a shocking political assassination. 
 
So ended the life of the greatest of all Irish nationalists, but his visions and legacy lived on. 
 
This authorative and comprehensive biography presents the life of a man who became a legend in his own lifetime, whose idealistic vigour and determination were matched only by his political realism and supreme organisational abilities. Coogan's biography provides a fascinating insight into a great political leader, whilst vividly portraying the political unrest in a divided Ireland, that can help to shape our understanding of Ireland's past, present and future. 
 
'There have been several other lives of Collins, but none has assembled such wealth of detail' Independent on Sunday

Michael Collins

A Biography

Tony Benn

Tony Benn was one of the twentieth century's most charismatic politicians. The Best of Benn showcases his powers of original thinking and communication over seven decades. 
 
From 'the baby of the house' to a retired widower, he was a consistently radical campaigning voice on issues such as the death penalty, the case against the European Union, opposition to war and support of workers' rights. 
 
This volume brings together Tony Benn's electrifying speeches, thoughtful journalism and passionate advocacy of often unconventional causes. 
 
'Tony Benn belongs in the great tradition of English revolutionaries - a passionate radical destined to be loved in popular memory for his defence of democracy and freedom.' Guardian 
 
'He had the facility to reach across generations and re-energise the debate about what should and should not constitute the common good.' Observer

The Best of Benn

Aris Roussinos

A 21st century take on Dispatches, award-winning VICE News journalist Aris Roussinos tells the real stories behind life in a rebel army. 
 
The hidden truth about war is how much fun it is. 
 
However they begin, whatever their aims, wars are fought by young men. They fight in burned-out buildings and shelter under thorn trees. They eat their meagre rations, and starve for days cut off from supply lines. They smoke forty cigarettes a day and ride to war stoned, listening to Craig David. But the bombs and bullets are terrifyingly real, and the guys they’re killing aren’t always faceless enemies: sometimes they’re friends. 
 
For the last three years, award-winning journalist Aris Roussinos embedded himself with rebel groups across the world. Part travelogue from the world’s most dangerous hotspots, part eyewitness testimony to recent, bloody history, this is one man’s uncensored, unflinching account of living with the enemy.

Rebels

My Life Behind Enemy Lines with Warlords, Fanatics and Not-so-Friendly Fire

Allan Williams

The story of the photographic intelligence work undertaken from a country house at Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, is one of the great lost stories of the Second World War . 
 
At its peak in 1944, almost 2,000 British and American men and women worked at the top-secret Danesfield House, interpreting photographs - the majority stereoscopic so they could be viewed in 3D - to unlock secrets of German military activity and weapons development. Millions of aerial photographs were taken by Allied pilots, flying unarmed modified Spitfires and Mosquitos on missions over Nazi Europe. it was said that an aircraft could land, the photographs be developed and initial interpretation completed within two hours - marking the culmination of years of experiments in aerial intelligence techniques. 
 
Their finest hour began in 1943, during the planning stages of the Allied invasion of Europe, when Douglas Kendall, who masterminded the interpretation work at Medmenham, led the hunt for Hitler's secret weapons. Operation Crossbow would grow from a handful of photographic interpreters to the creation of a hand-picked team, and came to involve interpreters from across the Medmenham spectrum, including the team of aircraft specialists led by the redoubtable Constance Babington Smith. In November that year, whilst analysing photographs of Peenemunde in northern Germany, they spotted a small stunted aircraft on a ramp. This intelligence breakthrough linked the Nazi research station with a growing network of sites in northern France, where ramps were being constructed aligned not only with London, but targets throughout southern Britain. 
 
Through the combined skill and dedication of the Crossbow team and the heroism of the Allied pilots, throughout late 1943 and 1944 V-weapon launch sites were located and through countermeasures destroyed, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and changing the course of the war. 
 
Operation Crossbow is a wonderful story of human endeavour and derring-do, told for the first time.

Operation Crossbow

The Untold Story of the Search for Hitler’s Secret Weapons

In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. 
 
With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis. 
 
Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn’s highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood,and of moving out of the family home after sixty years. 
 
Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.

A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine

The Last Diaries

Mimi Alford

The sensational story of Mimi Alford and the secret she kept for 40 years - her teenage affair with President John F Kennedy during her time as a White House Intern. 
 
During the 18 months that Mimi Alford was President John F Kennedy’s lover, he never kissed her on the lips. 
 
For the naive All American girl, the JFK White House was a place for which she was not remotely prepared. Dominated by the charismatic and sexually magnetic figure of the president, it was as a 19-year-old intern in the White House press office that Mimi Alford became the object of Kennedy’s affections, and within days they had started a relationship. 
 
She lost her virginity to him on her fourth day at work. 
 
In Once Upon a Secret, for the first time, Alford has revealed every detail of her experiences as Kennedy’s mistress – an affair that was ended only by his assassination. 
 
Mimi has decided, after 40 years of silence and deep reflection, to tell her story.

Once upon a Secret

My hidden affair with JFK

Duff Hart-Davis

'A lot of people know me,' wrote Alan Hillgarth in a letter, 'but I'm very much an enigma to most of them and regarded with suspicion because I don't fit into any category . . . I'm a trouble-maker. I ride the storm.' 
 
Captain Alan Hillgarth was just 15 years old when he found himself aboard the HMS Bacchante as the First World War broke out. Within months he'd fought at Gallipoli, bayoneted an attacking Turkish soldier, and been shot in the head and leg. 
 
After the war, Hillgarth became an author of thrillers, a gold-hunter in South America, a diplomat and a spy-master. As British Consul in Majorca during the Spanish Civil War, from 1936 to 1939, he saved countless lives acting as mediator between the two sides. From 1940 to 1943 he was Britain's most important intelligence officer in Spain, a key player in the successful Allied subterfuge Operation Mincemeat. Later he became Chief of Intelligence for the Eastern Fleet, in Ceylon, and a key advisor to Churchill, during and after the war. 
 
With exclusive access to the family archive, Hart-Davis is uncovering the truth about an era previously shrouded in mystery and a man that wanted it that way.

Man of War

Richard Aldous

The uneasy alliance that lay at the heart of the relationship of two of the most powerful and controversial leaders of the late 20th century: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. 
 
For three decades, historians have cited the long-term alliance of Reagan and Thatcher as an example of the special bond between the US and Britain. 
 
But, as Richard Aldous argues, these political titans clashed repeatedly as they confronted the greatest threat of their time: the USSR. 
 
Brilliantly reconstructing some of their most dramatic encounters, Aldous draws on recently declassified documents and extensive oral history to dismantle the popular conception of the Reagan-Thatcher diplomacy.

Reagan and Thatcher

The Difficult Relationship

Alastair Campbell

The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers. 
 
It begins on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, and it ends on the day Campbell leaves Downing Street. In between there are two wars: first Afghanistan, and then, even more controversially, Iraq. It was the most difficult decision of Tony Blair's premiership, and almost certainly the most unpopular. Campbell describes in detail the discussions with President Bush and other world leaders as the steps to war are taken, and delivers a unique account of Blair as war leader. He records the enormous political difficulties at home, and the sense of crisis that engulfed the government after the suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly. 
 
And all the while, Blair continues to struggle with two issues that ran throughout his time in government - fighting for peace in Northern Ireland, and trying to make peace with Gordon Brown. And Campbell continues to struggle balancing the needs of his family with one of the most pressurised roles in politics. 
 
Riveting and revelatory, The Burden of Power is as raw and intimate a portrayal of political life as you are ever likely to read.

The Burden of Power

Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries

William C. Rempel

AN IMPOSSBLE CHOICE 
 
Jorge Salcedo was trapped. For years, he had climbed the ladder inside the Cali drug cartel, the world's most powerful crime syndicate, and risen to Head of Security. But he'd kept clean, avoided the dirty work, managed to sleep at night. Until now. He'd finally received the order he'd long dreaded, and it meant one thing: kill or be killed. 
 
THE HARD WAY 
 
Salcedo was a family man, a man with a conscience, a father - he was no cold-blooded murderer. He was left with the last resort. It meant risking his life, his family's life, and the lives of everyone he cared for. He would have to take the whole syndicate down. It was the price to pay for salvation. 
 
WOULD YOU RISK YOUR LIFE TO SAVE YOUR SOUL?

At The Devil's Table

The Man Who Took Down the World's Biggest Crime Syndicate

Inside the fall of the Cali cartel. The world's biggest crime syndicate

POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY is the third volume of Alastair Campbell's unique daily account of life at the centre of the Blair government. It begins amid conflict in Kosovo, and ends on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, changing the course of both the Bush presidency and the Blair premiership. 
 
In this volume, we see that New Labour's honeymoon is well and truly over. In addition to detailing the continuing tensions at the top, here we find graphic accounts of a variety of domestic crises: foot-and-mouth disease and protests over fuel prices which almost brought Britain to a halt. Volume Three includes Peter Mandelson's second resignation, the agonies of the Millennium Dome, and the most unexpected slow-handclapping in memory, when the Women's Institute turned against Tony Blair. Yet despite all the problems - not least the most accident-prone manifesto launch in history, complete with deputy prime minister John Prescott punching a voter - Labour won a second successive landslide election victory. That triumph is intimately recorded here, alongside the high points of this period, such as devolution to Northern Ireland and the fall of Milosevic.

Diaries Volume Three

Power and Responsibility

Power &amp; the People covers the first two years of the New Labour government, beginning with their landslide victory at the polls in 1997. 
 
This second voume of Campbell's unexpurgated diaries details the initial challenges faced by Labour as they come to power and settle into running the country. It covers an astonishing array of events and personalities, progress and setbacks, crises and scandals, as Blair and his party make the transition from opposition to office.

Diaries Volume Two

Power and the People

Tony Blair

In 1997, Tony Blair won the biggest Labour victory in history to sweep the party to power and end eighteen years of Conservative government. He remains the only living Labour leader to have won a general election. 
 
He has been one of the most dynamic leaders of modern times; few British prime ministers have shaped the nation's course as profoundly as Blair during his ten years in power, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. 
 
His memoirs reveal in intimate detail this unique political and personal journey, providing an insight into the man, the politician and the statesman, and charting successes, controversies and disappointments with an extraordinary candour. 
 
A Journey will prove essential and compulsive reading for anyone who wants to understand the complexities of our global world. As an account of the nature and uses of power, it will also have a readership that extends well beyond politics, to all those who want to understand the challenges of leadership today.

A Journey

As Alastair Campbell said in the introduction to The Blair Years, it was always his intention to publish the full version, covering his time as spokesman and chief strategist to Tony Blair. Prelude to Power is the first of four volumes, and covers the early days of New Labour, culminating in their victory at the polls in 1997. 
 
Volume 1 details the extraordinary tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they resolved the question as to which one should stand to become Labour leader. It shows that right from the start, relations at the top were prone to enormous strain, suspicions and accusations of betrayal. Yet it also shows the political and personal bonds that tied them together, and which made them one of the most feared and respected electoral machines anywhere in the world. 
 
A story of politics in the raw, Prelude to Power is above all an intimate, detailed portrait of the people who have done so much to shape modern history.

Diaries Volume One

Prelude to Power

Richard Littlejohn

The Daily Mail's most succesful columnist delivers the coup de grace to New Labour, as the nation voted them out of office. He is not only tough on Brown and the causes of Brown, but devastatingly funny about 'Elf and Safety', 'Yuman Rights', the Surveillance Society and all the bureacratic absurdities that make modern life worse than anything George Orwell ever imagined. 
 
But, as the new introductory material reveals, the coalition of Lib Dem and Conservative also means same meat, different gravy. And already we have the first casualty of the cabinet in David Laws, another rich MP exploiting his position to claim expenses paid to his secret lover. 
 
'Littlejohn has been ... a vivid exponent of a great British columnar style that stretches back five centuries or more. He's a distant, bastard cousin of Thomas Nash, Daniel Defoe and Alexander Pope. Cassandra and Bernard Levin might justly buy him a pint in the Chesire Cheese. Like or loathe him, he's the real, talented deal.' Observer

Littlejohn's House of Fun

Thirteen Years of (Labour) Madness

Timothy Knatchbull

Winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Award, and nominated for the PEN/JR Ackerley prize. 
 
The powerful memoir of a Mullaghmore bombing survivor 
___________________________________ 
On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland, with many members of his family. 
 
By noon, an IRA bomb had destroyed the boat, leaving four dead. 
 
The author survived, but his grandparents, a family friend, and his 14-year-old twin brother did not. Lord Mountbatten, his grandfather - and uncle to the Duke of Edinburgh - was the target, and became one of the IRA's most high-profile assassinations. 
 
In telling this story for the first time, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy. It is a story of recovery, not just from physical wounds but deep emotional trauma. Knatchbull and his parents were too badly injured to attend the funerals of those killed, a sadness that intensified their profound sense of loss. 
 
Taking place in Ireland at the height of the Troubles, it gives a compelling insight into that period of Irish history. But more importantly it brings home that although tragedy can strike at any moment, the human spirit is able to forgive, to heal and to move on. It will resonate with readers the world over. 
___________________________________ 
'One of the most intensely moving stories I have ever read, and I was gripped from the first page.' Barbara Taylor Bradford, bestselling author 
 
'From a Clear Blue Sky is a minute by minute story of what happened that day, and what happened afterwards. It is a proper four-hanky bawler, and the exactitude of the story is what makes it so moving ... He provides a convincing account of the extent to which he has been able to accept, forgive and move on. His narrative power is such that the reader can't always share his equanimity. It is a book that is as saddening as it is sad - but much more angering than it is angry' Daily Mail 
 
'This is an extremely moving book. Beyond providing a phenomenally detailed evocation of his own family's trauma, Knatchbull has lots of wise things to say about how we survive horrors - of all kinds - in our lives. He writes with great tenderness and an admirable lack of sentimentality' Zoe Heller 
 
'Affecting and intimate' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Testament to a remarkable, benevolent soul ... With this public love letter he has found a way to say goodbye' The Sunday Times

From A Clear Blue Sky

Surviving the Mountbatten bomb

Robert Lacey

Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: it sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world, and yet the country's roiling disaffection produced sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, driven by contemporary technology, and yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back to match those of the Prophet Muhammed over a thousand years ago. In a world where events in the Middle East continue to have geopolitical consequences far beyond the region's boundaries, an understanding of this complex nation is essential. 
 
With Inside the Kingdom, British journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey has given us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. More than twenty years after he first moved to the country to write about the Saudis at the end of the oil boom, Lacey has returned to find out how the consequences of the boom produced a society at war with itself. 
 
Filled with stories told by a broad range of Saudis, from high princes and ambassadors to men and women on the street, Inside the Kingdom is in many ways the story of the Saudis in their own words.

Inside the Kingdom

Ray Jenkins

One of the last major untold stories of the war, this is the first-hand account of a conscientious objector born into a famous artistic family who, after the death of his brother on active service, decides to fight the Nazis and joins SOE. Barely 28 years of age he ends up as a leader of French resistance, set up by Jean Moulin, whose horrific death features in the story, and heads a massive underground movement of some 20,000 men. 
 
The book has been compiled by Ray Jenkins, a distinguished TV, film and radio dramatist from first-hand interviews, with the drama of raids, torture and sudden death ever present - at one point Francis Cammaerts is captured by the Gestapo. There is also an emotional theme as Francis's relationship with his wife, whom he has been able to tell nothing, suffers and he lives closely with the beautiful and legendary agent, Countess Krystina Skarbeck. 
 
A genuinely original contribution to the history of the resistance, Ray Jenkins's beautifully told story has been praised by the official historian of wartime intelligence, MRD Foot. 
 
Francis Cammaerts died in 2006 at the age of 90 after a distinguished career in education.

A Pacifist At War

The Silence of Francis Cammaerts

Bertie Ahern

Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. The man of faith who ushered in progressive, cosmopolitan secular Ireland. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. 'I know 25 per cent of Bertie Ahern', said his finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, 'and that's 24 per cent more than anyone else.' 
 
Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it. He shows the cost to his family of a life played out in the public eye and, for the first time, discloses what really happened in his final weeks in power. 
 
Here for the first time is the truth behind the man who is Bertie. 
 
Ahern has been at the cutting edge of Irish politics for over three decades. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the Fianna Fáil landslide victory in 1977 that saw Jack Lynch returned as Taoiseach. In 1982, Charles Haughey appointed him Government Chief Whip. In volatile political times, he strongly supported Haughey during three challenges to his leadership of Fianna Fáil. 
 
In 1987, Bertie Ahern received his first cabinet portfolio as Minister for Labour. It was a time when the Irish economy was in crisis. Ireland had a higher debt per head than Ethiopia or Sudan. Unemployment stood at 16%. Ahern negotiated Ireland's first social partnership agreement, which underpinned economic recovery and put in place the foundations for a period of sustained growth. In 1991, he was appointed Minister for Finance. International commentators first began to refer to 'Ireland's Tiger economy' in this period. When Bertie Ahern left the Department of Finance in late 1994, for the first time in almost 30 years, Ireland had a budget surplus. 
 
Bertie Ahern succeeded Albert Reynolds as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994. Following the General Election in 1997, he became Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach. The Ahern Era was a time of unprecedented progress in Irish society. Over the course of his tenure in office, Ireland's economy out-performed that of every other European country. For the first time ever, the number of people in employment in the State reached 2 million. 
 
Working closely with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, Ahern won widespread acclaim for his perseverance and skill in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, which has provided the political framework for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. 
 
On the international stage, he was a respected figure who enjoyed an acclaimed Presidency of the European Council in 2004. He presided over the completion of the largest ever expansion of the EU and concluded negotiations on a European constitution. He is one of only five visiting statesmen to have addressed both the United States Congress and the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. 
 
At home, Ahern enjoyed phenomenal electoral support. He was the first Taoiseach since 1944 to win three successive General Elections. 
 
Bertie Ahern resigned on 6th May, 2008. He had served for ten years, ten months and ten days as Taoiseach.

Bertie Ahern Autobiography

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter