For some, royal employment was the defining experience of their lives; for others it came as an unwelcome duty, or a prelude to greater things. Serving Victoria follows the lives of six members of her household, from the governess to the royal children, and her maid-of-honor to her chaplain and personal physician.Drawing on their letters and diaries - many hitherto unpublished - Serving Victoria offers a unique insight into the Victorian court, with all its frustrations and absurdities, as well as the Queen herself, sitting squarely at its center. Seen through the eyes of her household as she traveled between Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, and to the French and Belgian courts, Victoria emerges as more vulnerable, more emotional, more selfish, more comical than the austere figure depicted in her famous portraits. We see a woman who was prone to fits of giggles, who wept easily and often, who gobbled her food and shrank from confrontation but insisted on controlling the lives of those around her. We witness her extraordinary and debilitating grief at the death of her husband Albert, and her sympathy towards the tragedies that afflicted her household.Witty, astute and moving, Serving Victoria is a perfect foil to the pomp and circumstance - and prudery and conservatism - associated with Victoria's reign, and gives an unforgettable glimpse of what it meant to serve the Queen.

    Edgar Hoover by a member of his personal staff—his former assistant, Paul Letersky—offers unprecedented, “clear-eyed and compelling” (Mark Olshaker, coauthor of Mindhunter) insight into an American legend.The 1960s and 1970s were arguably among America’s most turbulent post-Civil War decades. While the Vietnam War continued seemingly without end, protests and riots ravaged most cities, the Kennedys and MLK were assassinated, and corruption found its way to the highest levels of politics, culminating in Watergate. In 1965, at the beginning of the chaos, twenty-two-year-old Paul Letersky was assigned to assist the legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who’d just turned seventy and had, by then, led the Bureau for an incredible forty-one years. Hoover was a rare and complex man who walked confidently among the most powerful. His personal privacy was more tightly guarded than the secret “files” he carefully collected—and that were so feared by politicians and celebrities. Through Letersky’s close working relationship with Hoover, and the trust and confidence he gained from Hoover’s most loyal senior assistant, Helen Gandy, Paul became one of the few able to enter the Director’s secretive—and sometimes perilous—world. Since Hoover’s death half a century ago, millions of words have been written about the man and hundreds of hours of TV dramas and A-list Hollywood films produced. But until now, there has been virtually no account from someone who, for a period of years, spent hours with the Director on a daily basis. Balanced, honest, and keenly observed, this “vivid, foibles-and-all portrait of the fabled scourge of gangsters, Klansmen, and communists” (The Wall Street Journal) sheds new light on one of the most powerful law enforcement figures in American history.

    An exquisite strand of pale pink pearls, worth more than the Hope Diamond, has been bought by a Hatton Garden broker. Word of the “Mona Lisa of Pearls” spreads around the world, captivating jewelers as well as thieves. In transit to London from Paris, the necklace vanishes without a trace. Joseph Grizzard, “the King of Fences,” is the charming leader of a vast gang of thieves in London’s East End. Grizzard grew up on the streets of Whitechapel during the terror of Jack the Ripper to rise to the top of the criminal world. Wealthy, married, a father, Grizzard still cannot resist the sport of crime, and the pearl necklace proves an irresistible challenge. Inspector Alfred Ward patrols the city’s dark, befogged streets before joining the brand-new division of the Metropolitan Police known as “detectives.” Ward earns his stripes catching some of the great murderers of Victorian London and, at the height of his career, is asked to turn his forensic talents to finding the missing pearls and the thief who stole them. In the spirit of The Great Train Robbery and the tales of Sherlock Holmes, this is the true story of a psychological cat-and-mouse game set against the backdrop of London’s golden Edwardian era. Thoroughly researched, compellingly colorful, The Great Pearl Heist is a gripping narrative account of this little-known, yet extraordinary crime.  INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

    There were no screams when she was taken, suggesting the culprit was someone familiar to her, and when she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was found in perfect health and happiness. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed it. To the contrary, they deliberately hid it from her, and she did not learn of it for half a century. This was not the only secret her parents kept from her. For many years, while raising her in draconian isolation and protectiveness, they also hid the fact that she’d been adopted, and that shortly after the kidnapping, her name was changed from Grace to Betty. In Five Days Gone, Laura Cumming brilliantly unspools the tale of her mother’s life and unravels the multiple mysteries at its core. Using photographs from the time, historical documents, and works of art, Cumming investigates this case of stolen identity with the toolset of a detective and the unique intimacy of a daughter trying to understand her family’s past and its legacies. Compulsive, vivid, and profoundly touching, Five Days Gone is a masterful blend of memoir and history, an extraordinary personal narrative unlike any other.

    In the wonderful world of Monopoly it still only cost £50 to buy a house in Islington, you can move around London with the shake of a dice and even park your car for free. The author visits all these places and charts his erratic progress around those streets, stations and utilities, in a well-researched history of London's wayward progress in the 66 years since the launch of the world's most popular board game

    The crown of England changed hands violently seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. Dan Jones completes his epic history of medieval England with a new book about the the Wars of the Roses - and describes how the Plantagenets, tore themselves apart and were finally replaced by the Tudors.With vivid descriptions of the battle of Towton, where 28,000 men died in a single morning, to Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare's famous history plays.

    Suzannah Lipscomb visits over fifty Tudor places, from the famous palace at Hampton Court where dangerous court intrigue was rife, to less well-known houses, such as Anne Boleyn's childhood home at Hever Castle or Tutbury Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned. In the corridors of power and the courtyards of country houses we meet the passionate but tragic Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII's last wife, Lady Jane Grey the nine-day queen, and hear how Sir Walter Raleigh planned his trip to the New World. Through the places that defined them, this lively and engaging book reveals the rich history of the Tudors and paints a vivid and captivating picture of what it would have been like to live in Tudor England.

    Over its thousand-year history the Tower stood as a symbol of the English monarchy and served as both a palace and a prison. It is a place where court intrigues, clandestine liaisons, unimaginable tortures and grisly executions took place with frightening regularity. Tales from the Tower is the factual history of the great building itself told through the true stories of the people, royal and common, good and bad, heroes and villains, who lived and died there. Including characters such as William the Conqueror, the Princes in the Tower, Jane Grey, Guy Fawkes, Colonel Blood and Rudolf Hess, the broad range of stories encompassed in Tales from the Tower present a microcosm of all human experience, from love and death to greed and betrayal, all played out against romantic period settings ranging from medieval knights in shining armour to the darkest days of World War II. Anyone who loves history and adventure will find Tales from the Tower a classic page turner.

    Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life is the laugh-out-loud story of the trials and tribulations of a very particular family.

    Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, has teamed up with Peter Névraumont to tell this anti-history of the world, in which Michelangelo fakes a masterpiece; Arctic explorers seek an entrance into a hollow Earth; a Shakespeare tragedy is "rediscovered"; a financial scheme inspires Charles Ponzi among other stories told chronologically. It covers the worlds of art, science, literature, journalism and finance.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    It is not a comprehensive study; but I have revisited an archive of ten years' reading and research — nineteenth century diaries, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, guidebooks — in an attempt to include as many diverse aspects of Victorian life as possible. There is, I must admit, a certain bias in my choice of material: I concentrate on the poor and middle-class. Queen Victoria is glimpsed at a distance, in Hyde Park; MPs and members of the aristocracy appear as the patrons of charities; but this is a book about the everyday. It may seem presumptuous to call this an extraordinary anthology; yet it is the extraordinary details of daily life in the 'Great Metropolis' that continue to fascinate me. My only wish is that the reader may share my enthusiasm.Lee Jackson2011

    In one of the first recognized mass murderers, he terrorized some of London’s poorest and most vulnerable residents and brutally killed a series of women before seeming to disappear. Police investigative practices were in their infancy at the time, and without sophisticated tools, London’s forces of order were unable to catch the criminal. More than 100 years later, his true identity is still unknown, and the hunt for Jack the Ripper has consumed many an armchair sleuth. By reading this book, you, too, will be able to take part in a now-historic search for a murderer who has never been brought to justice. Step back in time to 1888 and try to discover, if you can, the man who was Jack the Ripper. Scroll to the top of the page and click Add To Cart to read more about this extraordinary chapter of history

    Their relationship continued until 1601, when the Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason. And, in a succession of brilliant scenes, Strachey portrays the Queen's and the Earl's compelling attraction for on another, their impassioned disagreements, and their mutual contest for power, which led to a final, tragic confrontation. Here we also have superb portraits of influential people of the time: Francis Bacon, Robert Cecil, Walter Raleigh, and other figures of the court who struggled to assert themselves in a kingdom that was primarily defined by her sovereign, and so now seen through history's lens as Elizabethan England.

    Covering all aspects of the English inheritance, and informed by a unique philosophical vision, England: An Elegy shows that there is such a country as England, that it has a distinct personality and endows its residents with a distinct moral ideal.