After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien even though he had been a respected crusader against fascism. Only luck and his passionate energy allowed him to escape the fate of many of the innocent refugees, who were handed over to the Nazis for torture and often execution.Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler's survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of the French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.--From the 2006 paperback edition.

    His remarkable epistles to contemporaries such as Lady Astor, Noel Coward, Robert Graves, Mrs. Thomas Hardy, and Mrs. George Bernard Shaw disclose both the inner man and the political and military visionary often obscured behind the mystery and myth of "Lawrence of Arabia.” Among the letters is a wealth of intriguing correspondence that divulges the true nature of Lawrence’s role in the Arab Revolt, his anxieties about his illegitimacy, and his secret feelings on women and sexuality. In their entirety, these letters describe a remarkable but tragic life and provide ample proof of a gifted literary mind.

    Her account, taken from her war diaries, conveys the tension, frustration and bewilderment of the progression of the war, and the terror of knowing that the worst is to come, but not yet knowing what the worst will be.English bravery, confusion, stubbornness and dark humour (‘Nanny says that an Abbess is threatening to swallow the whole of Europe’) provide the positive, more hopeful side of Kennedy’s experiences, in which she and her children move from Surrey to Cornwall, to sit out the war amidst a quietly efficient Home Guard and the most scandalous rumours. Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry (the title comes from a 17th-century poem by Henry Vaughan) was only published in the USA, and has never been published in the UK before.The Introduction will be by Faye Hammill, Professor of English at the University of Glasgow.