But a breakdown of social boundaries saw nightclub hostesses mixing with aristocrats, and middle-class professionals dabbling in criminality. Meanwhile, Cold War paranoia gripped the public imagination.The Profumo Affair was a perfect storm, and when it broke it rocked the Establishment. In ‘An English Affair’, the author of the critically-acclaimed ‘Titanic Lives’ Richard Davenport-Hines brings Swinging London to life. The cast of players includes the familiar – louche doctor Stephen Ward, good-time girls Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, and Secretary for War John Profumo himself. But we also encounter the tabloid hacks, property developers and hangers-on whose roles have, until now, never been fully revealed.Sex, drugs, class, race, chequebook journalism and the criminal underworld – the Profumo Affair had it all. This is the story of how Sixties England cast off respectability and fell in love with scandal.

    It did not stop for ten weeks. The drifts in East Sussex reached twenty-three feet. In London, milkmen made deliveries on skis. On Dartmoor 2,000 ponies were buried in the snow, and starving foxes ate sheep alive.It wasn't just the weather that was bad. The threat of nuclear war had reached its terrifying height with the recent Cuban Missile Crisis. Unemployment was on the rise, de Gaulle was blocking Britain from joining the European Economic Community, Winston Churchill, still the symbol of Great Britishness, was fading. These shadows hung over a country paralysed by frozen heating oil, burst pipes and power cuts.And yet underneath the frozen surface, new life was beginning to stir. A new breed of satirists threatened the complacent decadence of the British establishment. A game-changing band from Liverpool topped the charts, becoming the ultimate symbol of an exuberant youthquake. Scandals such as the Profumo Affair exposed racial and sexual prejudice. When the thaw came, ten weeks of extraordinary weather had acted as a catalyst between two distinct eras.From poets to pop stars, shopkeepers to schoolchildren, and her own family's experiences, Juliet Nicolson traces the hardship of that frozen winter and the emancipation that followed. That spring, new life was unleashed, along with freedoms we take for granted today.

    I bought it from someone who got it from somebody. We never invented the stuff.’ – John Lennon Riding So High charts the Beatles’ extraordinary odyssey from teenage drinking and pill-popping, to cannabis, LSD, the psychedelic Summer of Love and the darkness beyond. Drugs were central to the Beatles’ story from the beginning. The acid, pills and powders helped form bonds, provided escape from the chaos of Beatlemania, and inspired colossal leaps in songwriting and recording. But they also led to break-ups, breakdowns, drug busts and prison. The only full-length study of the Beatles and drugs, Riding So High tells of getting stoned, kaleidoscope eyes, excess, loss and redemption, with a far-out cast including speeding Beatniks, a rogue dentist, a script-happy aristocratic doctor, corrupt police officers and Hollywood Vampires. ‘The deeper you go, the higher you fly…’ ‘An essential new work in Beatles historiography.’ – Erin Torkelson Weber, author of The Beatles and the Historians

    In the course of his quest, he spent days and nights at a time quizzing Savile at his homes in Leeds and Scarborough, lunched with him at venues ranging from humble transport cafes to the Athenaeum club in London and, most memorably, joined him for a short cruise aboard the QE2. Dan thought his quest had come to an end in October 2011 when Savile's golden coffin was lowered into a grave dug at a 45-degree angle in a Scarborough cemetery. He was wrong. In the last two and a half years, Dan has been interviewing scores of people, many of them unobtainable while Jimmy was alive. What he has discovered was that his instincts were right all along and behind the mask lay a hideous truth. Jimmy Savile was not only complex, damaged and controlling, but cynical, calculating and predatory. He revelled in his status as a Pied Piper of youth and used his power to abuse the vulnerable and underage, all the while covering his tracks by moving into the innermost circles of the establishment.

    The story that has been told repeatedly is this: The handsome, charismatic, and popular Prince Edward was expected to marry a well-bred virgin who would one day become Queen of England when he ascended the throne. But when the prince was nearly forty, he fell in love with a divorced American woman—Wallis Simpson. No one thought the relationship would last, and when the prince did become king, everyone assumed that was the end of the affair. But to the shock of the British establishment, the new king announced his intention to marry the American divorcée. Overnight, Wallis was accused of entrapping the prince in a seductive web in order to achieve her audacious ambition to be queen. After declaring that he could not rule without the woman he loved, the king abdicated, and his family banished him and his new wife from the country. The couple spent the rest of their days in exile, but happy in their devoted love for each other. Now, Anna Pasternak’s The Real Wallis Simpson tells a different story: that Wallis was the victim of the abdication, not the villain. Warm, well-mannered, and witty, Wallis was flattered by Prince Edward’s attention, but like everyone else, she never expected his infatuation to last. She never anticipated his jealous, possessive nature—and his absolute refusal to let her go. Edward’s true dark nature, however, was no secret to the royal family, the church, or the Parliament; everyone close to Edward knew that beyond his charming façade, he was utterly unfit to rule. Caught in Edward’s fierce obsession, she became the perfect scapegoat for those who wished to dethrone the troubled king. With profound insight and evenhanded research, Pasternak pulls back the curtain on one of the darkest fairy tales in recent memory and effortlessly reveals “a host of intriguing insights into a misunderstood woman” (Kirkus Reviews).

      The Rattenbury case of 1935 was one of the great tabloid sensations of the interwar period. The glamorous femme fatale at the heart of the story dominated the front pages for months, somewhere between the rise of Hitler and the launch of the Queen Mary.   With painstaking research and access to brand new evidence, Sean O’Connor vividly brings this epic story to life, from its beginnings in the South London slums of the 1880s and the open vistas of the British Columbian coast, to its bloody climax in a respectable English seaside resort.The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a gripping murder story and a heartbreaking romance as well as the biography of a vital, modern woman trapped between the freedoms of two world wars and suffocated by the conformity of peacetime. A startlingly prescient parable for our times, it is the story of a woman who dared to challenge the status quo only to be crucified by public opinion, pilloried by the press and punished by the relentless machinery of the British legal system.   With a wealth of fascinating period detail, from its breathtaking opening to its shocking conclusion, The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a true story as enthralling, as provocative and as moving as any work of fiction.

    With his new book he turns his eye to how Great Britain has been transformed by its free press down the years. He shows how, while the press likes to pretend it's independent, they have enjoyed the power they have over the events they report and have at times exercised it irresponsibly. He examines how it changed the world and changed itself over the course of the last hundred years, from the creation of the Daily Mail and the first stokings of anti-German sentiment in the years leading up to the First World War, to the Sun's propping up of the Thatcher government, and beyond. In this self-analysis from one of the pillars of modern journalism some searching questions are asked, including whether the press can ever be truly free and whether we would desire it to be so.Always incisive, brilliantly readable and never shy of controversy, "Lies Like Truth "sees John Simpson at the height of his game as one of Britain's foremost commentators.

    He was a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence, joining Britain's secret service, MI6, during the war, rising to become head of the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies and then head of liaison with the CIA. Philby betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.Protected by friends within MI6 who could not believe the service's rising star was a traitor, he was eventually dismissed in 1951, but continued to work for the service surreptitiously until his defection in 1963. His admission of guilt caused profound embarrassment to the British government of the day and its intelligence service, from which neither fully recovered.Tim Milne, Philby's close friend since childhood and recruited by him into MI6 to be his deputy, has left us a memoir that provides the final and most authoritative word on the enduring and fascinating story of Kim Philby the legendary Soviet master spy. It is a riveting read, with new detail on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, and on Konstantin Volkov, the would-be KGB defector who was betrayed by Philby, one of several hundred people who died as a direct result of Philby's treachery.Tim Milne retired from SIS in October 1968 and never spoke publicly of his friendship with Kim Philby.

    London has long been a magnet for aspiring artists and writers, musicians and fashion designers seeking inspiration and success in this great city. In London Calling, Barry Miles explores the counter culture that sprang up in the decades following the Second World War, focusing on the West End and Soho, where the presence of so many artists has established a unique atmosphere; creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - the throbbing heart of London. Here are the heady days of post-war Soho when suddenly everything seemed possible, the jazzbars and clubs of the fifties, the teddy boys and the Angry Young Men, Francis Bacon and the legendary Colony Club, the 1960s and the Summer of Love, the rise of punk and the early days of the YBAs.

    Containing verdicts on many of the leading figures of this era, from Tony Blair to David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson, Bercow explores and explains the ways in which he has sought to democratise the business of Parliament, using the Speakership to champion the rights of backbench MPs and hold the government to account.In his own words, "I made friends and enemies alike, but from start to finish I sought to do the right, rather than the convenient, thing and to be a decent public servant." From the start, Bercow tackles head-on his regretted fascination with definably right-wing attitudes and describes his inexorable march to more progressive thinking since his election as Member of Parliament for Buckingham in 1997. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the business of politics and how our democracy is - or should be - run, with fascinating insights into Bercow's family background and early interest in politics.When Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31st October, he had become one of the most recognisable and iconoclastic figures in British politics, and had created a vacancy of huge importance. As Speaker since 2009 he had a ringside seat during one of the most febrile periods in modern British history, presiding over the Commons while it had to contend with key issues such as austerity in the light of the financial crisis; the coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats; and of course the most intractable problem of all - how to deliver on the 2016 referendum decision that Britain should leave the EU.

    Presenting startling, never-before-seen revelations about such famous members as Jules Stein, Joe Glaser, Ronald Reagan, Lew Wasserman, David Bazelon & John Jacob Factor--as well as infamous, scrupulously low-profile members--Russo pulls the lid off of a half-century of criminal infiltration into American business, politics & society. At the heart of it is Sidney "The Fixer" Korshak, who from the 1940's until his death in the '90s, wasn't only the most powerful lawyer in the world, according to the FBI, but the enigmatic player behind countless 20th century power mergers, political deals & organized crime chicaneries. As the underworld's primary link to the corporate upperworld, his backroom dominance & talent for anonymity will likely never be equaled. As Supermob proves, neither will his story.Cast of charactersPrefaceThe lawyer from LawndaleFrom Lawndale to the Seneca to the underworldBirds of a feather Kaddish for CaliforniaThe future is in real estate"Hell, that's what you had to do in those days to get by"Scenes from Hollywood, part 1Jimmy, Bobby & SidneyForty years in the desert The kingmakers: Paul, Lew & Ronnie in CaliforniaThe new frontier Bistro days "He could never walk away from those people"Scenes from Hollywood, part 2"A sunny place for shady people"Coming under attack From Hoffa to HollywoodFrom Dutch sandwiches to Dutch ReaganAiring dirty laundry & laundering dirty money Pursued by the Fourth Estate The true untouchablesLegacies Appendices: A-Supermob investments/B-Pritzker holdings/C-Ziffren-Greenberg-Genis documentsNotesBibliographyIndex

    They thought they were untouchable. They were wrong. This is the book that exposed the shadow state at the heart of Britain. Now fully updated with the very latest in the News Corp scandal, it tells the story of how a criminal conspiracy involving politicians, the police and the press was revealed; the smears and threats they used to cover it up; the brave whistleblowers who cracked open the case - and what it now means for all of us.

    Traitor King, by Sunday Times bestselling author Andrew Lownie, looks at the years following the abdication of Edward VIII when the former king was kept in exile, feuding with his family over status for his wife, Wallis Simpson, and denied any real job.Drawing on extensive research into hitherto unused archives and Freedom of Information requests, it makes the case that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were not the naïve dupes of the Germans but actively intrigued against Britain in both war and peace.It reveals:- the story behind the German attempts to recruit the Duke as a British Pétain in the summer of 1940.- the efforts, by Churchill in particular, to prevent post-war publication of the captured German documents which detailed the Duke's Nazi intrigues.- the reasons why the Duke, as Governor of the Bahamas, tried to shut down the investigation into the 1943 murder of his close friend Harry Oakes.- the full extent of the feud with the British Royal Family, based on his betrayals going back to his dishonesty about his true financial position at the time of the abdication.- that far from a love story, Wallis felt trapped in a marriage she had never wanted with a pathetic and suffocating husband, one of the reasons she took several lovers, including the gay playboy Jimmy Donahue.Traitor King tells the story of a royal exiled with his wife, turning his back on duty, his family and using his position for financial gain.

    And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world.But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow—and not just Elliott’s words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott’s unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost every important Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him—until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake.Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre’s best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling.

    Alexander Litvinenko is brazenly poisoned in central London. Twenty two days later he dies, killed from the inside. The poison? Polonium; a rare, lethal and highly radioactive substance. His crime? He had made some powerful enemies in Russia.Based on the best part of a decade's reporting, as well as extensive interviews with those closest to the events (including the murder suspects), and access to trial evidence, Luke Harding's A Very Expensive Poison is the definitive inside story of the life and death of Alexander Litvinenko. Harding traces the journey of the nuclear poison across London, from hotel room to nightclub, assassin to victim; it is a deadly trail that seemingly leads back to the Russian state itself.Harding argues that Litvinenko's assassination marked the beginning of the deterioration of Moscow's relations with the west and a decade of geo-political disruptions--from the war in Ukraine, a civilian plane shot down, at least 7,000 dead, two million people displaced and a Russian president's defiant rejection of a law-based international order. With Russia's covert war in Ukraine and annexation of the Crimea, Europe and the US face a new Cold War, but with fewer certainties.This is a shocking real-life revenge tragedy with corruption and subterfuge at every turn, and walk-on parts from Russian mafia, the KGB, MI6 agents, dedicated British coppers, Russian dissidents. At the heart of this all is an individual and his family torn apart by a ruthless crime.