Her childhood was loving and secure, his turbulent: the Duke's grandfather was assassinated, his father arrested, his family exiled, his parents separated by the time he was ten. For almost sixty years theirs have been among the most famous faces in the world—yet the personalities behind the image remain elusive, and the nature of their marriage is an enigma.Gyles Brandreth has met all the principal players in the story. He quotes no anonymous sources; he has known the Duke of Edinburgh for twenty-five years and has interviewed him. This is a unique and revealing portrait of a remarkable partnership.

    Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; JFK made it clear that platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was his favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived with a secret that needed to stay hidden from NASA. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, providing one another with support and friendship, coffee and cocktails.As their celebrity rose-and as divorce and tragedy began to touch their lives-the wives continued to rally together, forming bonds that would withstand the test of time, and they have stayed friends for over half a century. THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB tells the story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history.

    The whole of its previous history - two decades of educating, entertaining and supporting women and campaigning on women's issues - culminated in the enormous collective responsibility felt by the members to 'do their bit' for Britain. With all the vigour, energy and enthusiasm at their disposal, a third of a million country women set out to make their lives and the lives of those around them more bearable in what they described as 'a period of insanity'. Jambusters tells the story of the minute and idiosyncratic details of everyday life during the Second World War for the 5,546 Women's Institutes and how they helped to improve the lot of millions of their fellow Britons. Big pictures and bravery are fashionable and exciting but it was the behind-the-scenes, nitty-gritty approach to the daily problems presented by the war that were at the heart of what the WI did to make a difference. Making jam, making do and mending, gathering rosehips, keeping pigs and rabbits, housing evacuees, setting up canteens for the troops, knitting, singing and campaigning for a better Britain after the war: all these activities played a crucial role in war time.

    Throughout the war, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE's French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France, at least one hundred of whom never returned and were reported MPD (missing presumed dead) after the war. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins' most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their horrific final journeys. But as the woman who carried out this astonishing search appeared quintessentially English, Atkins was nothing of the sort. As we follow her through the devastation of postwar Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past.In A Life in Secrets Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera Atkins' many veils. Drawing on recently released sixty-year-old government files and her unprecedented access to the private papers of the Atkins family, Helm vividly reconstructs a complex and extraordinary life.

    Like Edward and Wallis Simpson, the catalyst for the scandal here is also an ambitious, controversial American woman.Dylan Howard, bestselling author of Diana: Case Solved and Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, charts how Meghan’s relationship with Harry was viewed as controversial from the start—and how her brief honeymoon with the British public began to sour shortly after she and Harry announced in November 2018 that they would be leaving Kensington Palace to move to Frogmore Cottage, an hour outside London. As senior royals expressed disapproval, the public at first seemed to enjoy the royal spat, with many still supporting Team Meghan—until it emerged that the bill to renovate Frogmore Cottage to Meghan’s lavish expectations would be $3 million . . . and be picked up by British taxpayers.Finally, in a move nobody saw coming, Harry announced he was turning his back on the role he had been groomed for since birth, giving up his HRH title, repaying the renovation costs of Frogmore Cottage, abandoning his royal duties, and leaving Britain for good. Buckingham Palace reeled.Howard’s unique access and insight into this constitutional crisis will not only address the tensions and tantrums behind closed palace doors but seek to answer the questions many are still asking:***Has Prince Harry ever really recovered from the death of his mother Diana—and the resentment he feels against the institution that tried to destroy her?***Why did Meghan, once hailed as a breath of fresh air, rile up the monarchy?***Why did she refuse to conform to royal conventions in the way that Catherine did before her?Did the public and media criticism of Meghan go too far? And just how valid are the accusations of racism?How did these modern royals treat the tabloids differently to tradition? And did it backfire?What next for Harry and Meghan? And how will they—and the institution they’ve turned their back on—react to their new lives outside the confines of the Palace and free from the strict codes and conventions that bind all members of the Royal Family?Caught in a trap by virtue of a life entombed in a gilded cage, Royals at War answers these questions and more . . . and reveals how Harry’s infatuation with Meghan and desire to modernize the monarchy could yet end in disaster for the House of Windsor. Played out against the cataclysm of the British tabloid's laser focus on the duchess’ every movement—for good or ill—this is the true story of Harry and Meghan’s split from the Establishment . . . and perhaps just the beginning of a whole new Monarchy redefined for the modern age.

    Shedding new light on the scandals that peppered his life, Hibbert reveals Edward's dismal early years under Victoria's iron rule, his terror of boredom that led to a lively social life at home and abroad, and his eventual ascent to the throne at age 59. Edward is best remembered as the last Victorian king, the monarch who installed the office of Prime Minister.

    What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumor and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view.Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother's controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers-especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the "masculine" art of sculpture and go to art college-and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school.The rumors of Louise's colorful love life persist even today, with hints of love affairs dating as far back as her teenage years, and notable scandals included entanglements with her sculpting tutor Joseph Edgar Boehm and possibly even her sister Princess Beatrice's handsome husband, Liko. True to rebellious form, she refused all royal suitors and became the first member of the royal family, since the sixteenth century, to marry a commoner. She moved with him to Canada when he was appointed Governor-General.Spirited and lively, Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter is richly packed with arguments, intrigues, scandals, and secrets, and is a vivid portrait of a princess desperate to escape her inheritance.

    Calling herself after the mouse in a Beatrix Potter story, she was already a figure of mystery during the childhood of her nephew Ferdinand Mount. Half a century later, a series of startling revelations sets him off on a tortuous quest to find out who this extraordinary millionairess really was. What he discovers is shocking and irretrievably sad, involving multiple deceptions, false identities and abandonments. The story leads us from the back streets of Sheffield at the end of the Victorian age to the highest echelons of English society between the wars.Kiss Myself Goodbye is both an enchanting personal memoir like the author's bestselling Cold Cream, and a voyage into a vanished moral world. An unconventional tale of British social history told backwards, its cryptic and unforgettable protagonist Munca joins the ranks of memorable aunts in literature, from Dickens' Betsy Trotwood to Graham Greene's Aunt Augusta.

    Life among the warring factions in Scotland was dangerous for the infant Queen, however, and at age five Mary was sent to France to be raised alongside her betrothed, the Dauphin Francois. Surrounded by all the sensual comforts of the French court, Mary's youth was peaceful, charmed, and when she became Queen of France at the age of sixteen, she seemed to have all she could wish for. But by her eighteenth birthday, Mary was a widow who had lost one throne and had been named by the Pope for another. And her extraordinary adventure had only begun. Defying her powerful cousin Elizabeth I, Mary set sail in 1561 to take her place as the Catholic Queen of a newly Protestant Scotland. A virtual stranger in her volatile native land, Mary would be hailed as a saint, denounced as a whore, and ultimately accused of murdering her second husband, Lord Darnley, in order to marry her lover, the Earl of Bothwell. She was but twenty-five years old when she fled Scotland for the imagined sanctuary of Elizabeth's England, where she would be embroiled in intrigue until she was beheaded "like a criminal" in 1587. In her stunning first novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Margaret George established herself as one of the finest historical novelists of our time. Now she brings us a new, mesmerizing blend of history and storytelling as she turns the astonishing facts of the life of Mary Queen of Scots into magnificent fiction that sweeps us from the glittering French court where Mary spent her youth, to the bloodstained Scotland where she reigned as Queen, to the cold English castles where she ended her days. Never before have we been offered such arich and moving portrayal of the Scots Queen, whose beauty inspired poetry, whose spirit brought forth both devotion and hatred, and whose birthright generated glorious dreams, hideous treachery, and murdered men at her feet.

    Though she kept her private life a mystery, for some years Agatha had secretly written her autobiography, and when it was published after her death, millions of her fans agreed - this was her best story!From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, this book reveals the true genius of her legendary success with real passion and openness.

    As an agent for Britain’s MI-6 and then America’s OSS during World War II, these qualities proved crucial to her success. This is the remarkable story of this “Mata Hari from Minnesota” (Time) and the passions that ruled her tempestuous life—a life filled with dangerous liaisons and death-defying missions vital to the Allied victory.For decades, much of Betty’s career working for MI-6 and the OSS remained classified. Through access to recently unclassified files, Howard Blum discovers the truth about the attractive blond, codenamed “Cynthia,” who seduced diplomats and military attachés across the globe in exchange for ciphers and secrets; cracked embassy safes to steal codes; and obtained the Polish notebooks that proved key to Alan Turing’s success with Operation Ultra.Beneath Betty’s cool, professional determination, Blum reveals a troubled woman conflicted by the very traits that made her successful: her lack of deep emotional connections and her readiness to risk everything. The Last Goodnight is a mesmerizing, provocative, and moving portrait of an exceptional heroine whose undaunted courage helped to save the world.

    She has traveled farther than all her predecessors put together and lived longer than any of them. She has known more historic figures than anyone alive—from Churchill to Mandela, de Gaulle to Obama.Now, the distinguished royal writer Robert Hardman has been granted special access to the world of Queen Elizabeth II to produce this enthralling new portrait of one of the most popular pubic figures on earth.Not only has Elizabeth II reigned through Britain’s transformation from an imperial power to a multi-cultural nation, but she has also steered the monarchy through more reforms in the last twenty-five years than in the previous century.Queen Elizabeth II sits at the head of an ancient institution that remains simultaneously popular, regal, inclusive, and relevant in a twenty-first-century world. It is down to neither luck nor longevity: it is down to the shrewd judgment of a thoroughly modern monarchy—with no small assistance from the longest-serving consort in history. Here is the inside story.

    Margaret Humphreys soon discovered that as many as 150,000 children had in fact been deported from children's homes in Britian and shipped off to a "new life" in distant parts of the Empire—the last as recently as 1967. For numerous children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse in institutions in Western Australia and elsewhere. Margaret Humphreys reveals how she gradually unravelled this shocking secret, how she became drawn into the lives of some of these innocent and unwilling exiles, and how it became her mission to reunite them with their families.

    It replaced reverence with skepticism and Strachey's wit, iconoclasm, and narrative skill liberated the biographical enterprise. His portraits of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon changed perceptions of the Victorians for a generation. Lytton Strachey's biographical essays on four "eminent Victorians" dropped an explosive charge on Victorian England when the book was published in 1918. This edition is unique in being fully annotated and in drawing on the full range of Strachey's manuscript materials and literary remains.

    The couples are John Ruskin and Effie Gray; Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh; John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; George Eliot and G. H. Lewes; Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth.