Books : History : Countries & Regions : Europe : Britain & Ireland

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Books : History : Countries & Regions : Europe : Britain & Ireland

• Henry: Virtuous Prince

  David Starkey

  
  
   

• A History of Modern Britain

  Andrew Marr

  
  
   

• The Duchess

  Amanda Foreman

  
  
   

• An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge)

  John O'Farrell

  
  
   

• The Six Wives of Henry VIII

  Alison Weir

  
  
   

• The Boleyn Inheritance

  Philippa Gregory

  
  
   

• Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

  Amanda Foreman

  
  Georgiana Spencer was, in a sense, an 18th-century "It Girl". She came from one of England's richest and most landed families, and married into another. She was, beautiful, sensitive and extravagant. Acquainted fairly young with Charles James Fox, her move from parties to Parties led her to become the intimate of ministers and princes, and she canvassed assiduously for the Whig cause, most famously in the Westminster election of 1784. By turns she was caricatured and fawned on by the press, and she provided the inspiration for Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School For Scandal. But, luckily for her biographer, she also had weaknesses that were to taint her life. As gin gripped the masses, so gambling enthralled the aristocracy. By 1784 Georgiana owed "many, many, many thousands", and the creditors she acquired dogged her until her death, but the sterility of her marriage meant that she never came close to disclosing the magnitude of her debts. Amanda Foreman describes astutely the mess that was personal relationships for the aristocratic subculture (Georgiana and the Duke engaged for many years in a ménage à trois with Lady Elizabeth Fraser, who inveigled her way into his bed and her heart). She is, by her own admission, a little in love with her subject, which can lead to occasional lapses of perspective, but generally it adds zest to a narrative built on, rather than burdened by, scholarship, that is at once accessible and learned. An impressive debut, in every sense. --David Vincent
  
   

• Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History

  Adam Nicolson

  
  
   

• Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Tales of a New Jerusalem)

  David Kynaston

  
  
   

• Tommy's War: A First World War Diary 1913-1918

  Thomas Cairns Livingstone

  
  
   

• Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception, 1914-1945

  Nicholas Rankin

  
  
   

• Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49'

  
  
   

• Our Times

  A.N. Wilson

  
  
   

• Soldier's War: The Great War Through Veterans' Eyes

  Richard Van Emden

  
  
   

• Stranger in the House: Women's Stories of Men Returning from the Second World War

  Julie Summers

  
  
   

• On The Edge: My Story

  Richard Hammond

  
  
   

• I Never Knew That About London

  Christopher Winn

  
  
   

• Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess

  Alison Weir

  
  
   

• The Decline and Fall of the British Empire

  Piers Brendon

  
  
   

• I Never Knew That About England

  Christopher Winn