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Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails: A Memoir
by Anthony SwoffordThe publication of Jarhead launched a new career for Anthony Swofford, earning him accolades for its gritty and unexpected portraits of the soldiers who fought in the Gulf War. It spawned a Hollywood movie. It made Swofford famous and wealthy. It also nearly killed him. Now with the same unremitting intensity he brought to his first memoir, Swofford describes his search for identity, meaning, and a reconciliation with his dying father in the years after he returned from serving as a sniper in the Marines. Adjusting to life after war, he watched his older brother succumb to cancer and his first marriage disintegrate, leading him to pursue a lifestyle in Manhattan that brought him to the brink of collapse. Consumed by drugs, drinking, expensive cars, and women, Swofford lost almost everything and everyone that mattered to him. When a son is in trouble he hopes to turn to his greatest source of wisdom and support: his father. But Swofford and his father didn't exactly have that kind of relationship. The key, he realized, was to confront the man-a philandering, once hard-drinking, now terminally ill Vietnam vet he had struggled hard to understand and even harder to love. The two stubborn, strong-willed war vets embarked on a series of RV trips that quickly became a kind of reckoning in which Swofford took his father to task for a lifetime of infidelities and abuse. For many years Swofford had considered combat the decisive test of a man's greatness. With the understanding that came from these trips and the fateful encounter that took him to a like-minded woman named Christa, Swofford began to understand that becoming a father himself might be the ultimate measure of his life. Elegantly weaving his family's past with his own present-nights of excess and sexual conquest, visits with injured war veterans, and a near-fatal car crash-Swofford casts a courageous, insistent eye on both his father and himself in order to make sense of what his military service meant, and to decide, after nearly ending it, what his life can and should become as a man, a veteran, and a father.
Hotspur: Henry Percy: Medieval Rebel
by Andrew Boardman‘This book should be in your hands!’ – Medieval History Magazine'A detailed and readable account of Hotspur’s life that conveys a sense of the endemic violence of the Border Marches.’ – Northern History‘Boardman has studied the battlefields of Otterburn, Homildon Hill and Shrewsbury and combines knowledge of terrain, weapons, and tactics with contemporary narratives to produce feasible reconstructions and explanations of what actually occurred.’ – Michael HicksImmortalised by Shakespeare in Henry IV, Part I, Henry Percy, nicknamed ‘Hotspur’, is among the best known of all his warlike characters.As the young, honourable but impatient rebel soldier whose chivalrous exploits on the battlefield end in disaster at Shrewsbury in 1403, Hotspur is the archetypal anti-hero: a character of such tragic and dramatic significance that even his well-known nickname has passed from history into legend. But who was the historical Henry Percy, and why did his rise to fame bring him into direct confrontation with his king?This fully updated book tells the story of the real Henry Percy and his overbearing family, and how the survival of a great northern dynasty led to open rebellion and ultimately military failure.
The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman: Born 1789 - Buried 2002
by Rachel HolmesIn 1810 Saartjie Baartman was London's most famous curiosity. Famed for her exquisite physique - in particular her shapely bottom - she was stared at, stripped, pinched, painted, worshipped and ridiculed. But this tragic young South African woman was also a symbol of the abolished slave trade, exploitation and colonialism. In this scintillating and vividly written book the full arc of Baartman's extraordinary life is traced for the first time.
Houdini: The Elusive American (Jewish Lives)
by Adam BegleyFrom the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, an exuberant biography of the world’s greatest escape artist In 1916, the war in Europe having prevented a tour abroad, Harry Houdini wrote a film treatment for a rollicking motion picture. Though the movie was never made, its title, "The Marvelous Adventures of Houdini: The Justly Celebrated Elusive American," provides a succinct summary of the Master Mystifier’s life. Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini grew up an impoverished Jewish immigrant in the Midwest and became world-famous thanks to talent, industry, and ferocious determination. He concealed as a matter of temperament and professional ethics the secrets of his sensational success. Nobody knows how Houdini performed some of his dazzling, death-defying tricks, and nobody knows, finally, why he felt compelled to punish and imprison himself over and over again. Must a self-liberator also be a self-torturer? Tracking the restless Houdini’s wide-ranging exploits, acclaimed biographer Adam Begley asks the essential question: What kind of man was this?About Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.More praise for Jewish Lives: "Excellent." – New York times "Exemplary." – Wall St. Journal "Distinguished." – New Yorker "Superb." – The Guardian
Houdini's Box: The Art of Escape
by Adam PhillipsWhy are we all so spellbound by ideas of escape - and yet so dismissive of mere escapism? Houdini's Box explores four different escape artists. There is the case history of a little girl who is oddly committed to playing her own wayward version of hide and seek. There is Harry Houdini, the 'Greatest Magician the World has Ever Seen', who electrified the world through a series of death-defying escapes, compulsively re-inventing and re-enacting his own confinement. There is a man who, Jonah-like, is always arriving at the place he was escaping from, who thinks it is his destiny to be in flight, whether from women or from his analyst. And finally the poet Emily Dickinson, who for the last twenty years of her life finds freedom in self-imposed solitary confinement. In this, his most captivating book to date, Adam Phillips reminds us why people often feel most alive in the very moment of escape. But whether we are getting away from something, or getting away with something - as Icarus, or Oedipus, or Narcissus; as victims or tyrants - we cannot describe ourselves without also describing what we need to escape from, and what we want to escape to.
The Hounding of David Oluwale: The Hounding Of David Oluwale
by Kester AspdenIS A BLACK LIFE WORTH LESS THAN A WHITE ONE?When, in May 1969, the body of David Oluwale was fished out of the River Aire near Leeds, not too many questions were asked about the circumstances of his death. Oluwale was a tramp and a patient in a mental hospital, an immigrant from Nigeria who was trapped in a system that failed him miserably - a police charge sheet from just two weeks earlier had 'BRIT' scored out, his nationality replaced with 'WOG'. Eighteen months later a lengthy campaign of harassment by two Leeds policemen was uncovered - Oluwale became national news in Britain, and a symbol for its black community. This extraordinary book draws on original archival material only recently released to revisit one of the most chilling crimes in British history, and at the same time raises questions as relevant today as they were at the end of the sixties.Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2008
The Hour: Sporting immortality the hard way
by Michael HutchinsonThe Hour. It's the only cycling record that matters: one man and his bike against the clock in a quest for pure speed. No teammates, no rivals, no tactics, no gears, no brakes. Just one simple question - in sixty minutes, how far can you go?Michael Hutchinson had a plan. He was going to add his name to the list of record-holders, cycling's supermen. But how does a man who became a professional athlete by accident achieve sporting immortality? It didn't sound too hard. All he needed was a couple of hand-tooled bike frames, the most expensive wheels money could buy, a support team of crack professionals, a small pot of glue, and a credit card wired to someone else's bank account. Still, getting the glue wasn't a problem...Michael Hutchinson became a full-time cyclist in 2000 after becoming disillusioned with an academic career. Over the following six years he has won more than twenty national titles, and the gold medal in the Masters' Pursuit World Championships. He is now a writer and journalist (and cyclist) and lives in south London.
The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism
by Susan BerfieldA riveting narrative of Wall Street buccaneering, political intrigue, and two of American history's most colossal characters, struggling for mastery in an era of social upheaval and rampant inequality.It seemed like no force in the world could slow J. P. Morgan's drive to power. In the summer of 1901, the financier was assembling his next mega-deal: Northern Securities, an enterprise that would affirm his dominance in America's most important industry-the railroads.Then, a bullet from an anarchist's gun put an end to the business-friendly presidency of William McKinley. A new chief executive bounded into office: Theodore Roosevelt. He was convinced that as big business got bigger, the government had to check the influence of the wealthiest or the country would inch ever closer to collapse. By March 1902, battle lines were drawn: the government sued Northern Securities for antitrust violations. But as the case ramped up, the coal miners' union went on strike and the anthracite pits that fueled Morgan's trains and heated the homes of Roosevelt's citizens went silent. With millions of dollars on the line, winter bearing down, and revolution in the air, it was a crisis that neither man alone could solve.Richly detailed and propulsively told, The Hour of Fate is the gripping story of a banker and a president thrown together in the crucible of national emergency even as they fought in court. The outcome of the strike and the case would change the course of our history. Today, as the country again asks whether saving democracy means taming capital, the lessons of Roosevelt and Morgan's time are more urgent than ever.
The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian's Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker
by Sami al Jundi Jen MarloweAs a teenager in Palestine, Sami al Jundi had one ambition: overthrowing Israeli occupation. With two friends, he began to build a bomb to use against the police. But when it exploded prematurely, killing one of his friends, al Jundi was caught and sentenced to ten years in prison. It was in an Israeli jail that his unlikely transformation began. Al Jundi was welcomed into a highly organized, democratic community of political prisoners who required that members of their cell read, engage in political discourse on topics ranging from global revolutions to the precepts of nonviolent protest and revolution.Al Jundi left prison still determined to fight for his people's rights-but with a very different notion of how to undertake that struggle. He cofounded the Middle East program of Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence, which brings together Palestinian and Israeli youth.Marked by honesty and compassion for Palestinians and Israelis alike, The Hour of Sunlight illuminates the Palestinian experience through the story of one man's struggle for peace.
The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian's Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker
by Sami al Jundi Jen MarloweAs a teenager in Palestine, Sami al Jundi had one ambition: overthrowing Israeli occupation. With two friends, he began to build a bomb to use against the police. But when it exploded prematurely, killing one of his friends, al Jundi was caught and sentenced to ten years in prison. It was in an Israeli jail that his unlikely transformation began. Al Jundi was welcomed into a highly organized, democratic community of political prisoners who required that members of their cell read, engage in political discourse on topics ranging from global revolutions to the precepts of nonviolent protest and revolution. Al Jundi left prison still determined to fight for his people's rights -- but with a very different notion of how to undertake that struggle. He cofounded the Middle East program of Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence, which brings together Palestinian and Israeli youth. Marked by honesty and compassion for Palestinians and Israelis alike, The Hour of Sunlight illuminates the Palestinian experience through the story of one man's struggle for peace.
House at Royal Oak: Starting Over & Rebuilding a Life One Room at a Time
by Carol Eron RizzoliAn unforgettable story about a couple who follow their dream of converting a run-down country house into a working bed and breakfast, and what they learn along the way from an old home, a close-knit community, and a parade of extraordinary guests.One spring, Carol Eron Rizzoli and her husband Hugo bought a dilapidated farmhouse in the tiny village of Royal Oak, Maryland, on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. They spent two years transforming it into a bed and breakfast, which took them twice as long and cost three times as much as they had originally estimated (on the back of a napkin). As they struggled to restore the house and open the B&B, Carol and Hugo were also slowly acquainting themselves with the rural community of Royal Oak, rich in custom and culinary traditions, and populated by neighbors with particular views on politics, hunting, wildlife, and of course, newcomers from the big city. Written with honesty and humor, The House at Royal Oak is a journey to the heart of what it means to start over and chase a dream. Part inspirational account of reinventing yourself at mid-life, part love story about learning what matters most in a relationship, it is above all a book about home: what it means, and the unexpected places we find it.
The House by the Dvina: A Russian Childhood
by Eugenie FraserThe House by the Dvina is the riveting story of two families separated in culture and geography but bound together by a Russian-Scottish marriage. It includes episodes as romantic and dramatic as any in fiction: the purchase by the author's great-grandfather of a peasant girl with whom he had fallen in love; the desperate sledge journey in the depths of winter made by her grandmother to intercede with Tsar Aleksandr II for her husband; the extraordinary courtship of her parents; and her Scottish granny being caught up in the abortive revolution of 1905.Eugenie Fraser herself was brought up in Russia but was taken on visits to Scotland. She marvellously evokes a child's reactions to two totally different environments, sets of customs and family backgrounds, while the characters are beautifully drawn and splendidly memorable.With the events of 1914 to 1920 - the war with Germany, the Revolution, the murder of the Tsar and the withdrawal of the Allied Intervention in the north - came the disintegration of Russia and of family life. The stark realities of hunger, deprivation and fear are sharply contrasted with the adventures of childhood. The reader shares the family's suspense and concern about the fates of its members and relives with Eugenie her final escape to Scotland.In The House by the Dvina, Eugenie Fraser has vividly and poignantly portrayed a way of life that finally disappeared in violence and tragedy.
A House for Two Pounds
by K. IgguldenA richly recounted memoir of growing up in an Irish farming community in the 1940sA love of Ireland and the Irish is what shines through this little memoir. Growing up amongst the fields, woods and characters of a farming community near Cork, Kathleen Iggulden depicts a world that is both immediate and real, yet belongs to a now-distant past. Here is a pony and trap to church every Sunday, evenings full of fiddle, flute and song, and new shoes and clothes twice a year. Kathleen's childhood in the 1930s involved two or three generations - her parents, her brother and sisters, as well as the daily lives of farmworkers and craftsmen, friends and relations. She beautifully chronicles rural celebrations and forgotten practicalities of country life - all painted with a sensitive touch and a freshness of observation. She saw her people as intensely polite, decent and innocent, with humour and music always ready. She saw them as poets, and poetry as the highest art.Recounted with immense charm and wit,A House for Two Pounds is a wonderful, vivid account of a childhood on an Irish farm - and an enduring people, just on the cusp of change.
A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir Of Seven Generations
by Juliet NicolsonAll families have their myths and Juliet Nicolson’s was no different: her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita, her mother’s Tory-conventional background. A House Full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-siècle Washington DC, an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from.
A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco
by Suzanna ClarkeWhen Suzanna Clarke and her husband bought a dilapidated house in the Moroccan town of Fez, their friends thought they were mad. Located in a maze of donkey-trod alleyways, the house - a traditional riad - was beautiful but in desperate need of repair. Walls were in danger of collapse, the plumbing non-existent. While neither Suzanna nor her husband spoke Arabic, and had only a smattering of French, they were determined to restore the building to its original splendour, using only traditional craftsmen and handmade materials. But they soon found that trying to do business in Fez was like being transported back several centuries in time and so began the remarkable experience that veered between frustration, hilarity and moments of pure exhilaration. But restoring the riad was only part of their immersion in the rich and colourful life of this ancient city. A House in Fez is a journey into Moroccan culture, revealing its day-to-day rhythms, its customs and festivals; its history, Islam, and Sufi rituals; the lore of djinns and spirits; the vibrant life-filled market places and the irresistible Moroccan cuisine. And above all, into the lives of the people - warm, friendly, and hospitable.Beautifully descriptive and infused with an extraordinary sense of place, this is a compelling account of one couple's adventures in ancient Morocco.
The House in France: A Memoir
by Gully WellsIn 2009, six years after her mother's death, Gully Wells returns to La Migoua, the house in Provence which belonged to her mother - the glamorous, funny, unpredictable and furiously rude American journalist, Dee Wells. Surrounded by the clutter of decades, Gully is taken back to her childhood, to her mother, her adored stepfather - the celebrated, brilliant, womanising Oxford philosopher, A. J. Ayer - and to the rich, sensual memories that the house evokes.Gully's beautiful, rebellious mother Dee fled Boston when she was seventeen to join the Canadian Army, where she became a Sergeant Major. She married, had Gully, divorced and moved to London where she would meet, and fall madly in love with, the icon of logical positivism, Ayer, who she would later persuade to marry her. There they lived in an extraordinary, liberated and intellectual world, with friends and acquaintances including Bobby Kennedy, Mary Quant, Iris Murdoch, Jonathan Miller, George Melly and Bertrand Russell.In the turbulent and vibrant milieu of sixties London, Gully develops from a cautious only child to a studious teenager. She has a childhood infatuation with the aristocratic homosexual Michael Pitt-Rivers, loses her virginity to a Provençal hairdresser and wins a scholarship to St Hilda's at Oxford, where she blossoms, studies French history under Theodore Zeldin, and falls in love with fellow student, Martin Amis. But as the affair ends, Gully moves on, explores love and travel, eventually settling down in New York. La Migoua, perched on a hill above Bandol, halfway between Toulon and Marseilles, is inextricably woven into Gully's existence. Unsentimental and gloriously witty, The House in France is a vivid and moving love letter to a beloved mother, and a celebration of family, of growing up and of the spirit of a cherished house.
A House in St John’s Wood: In Search Of My Parents
by Matthew SpenderAn intimate portrait of Stephen Spender’s extraordinary life written by Matthew Spender, shifting between memoir and biography, with new insights drawn from personal recollections and his father’s copious unpublished archives.
A House in the High Hills: Dreams and Disasters of Life in a Spanish Farmhouse
by Selina Scott'I was warned by all those who knew me that to take on a project like this was madness.'At the peak of her fast-paced career, presenter and interviewer Selina Scott bought a house in the Tramuntana hills of Mallorca. It was a dilapidated old farmhouse without even mains electricity or water, but she had fallen in love with the beauty and peace of the surroundings, and the promise of an escape from her high-pressured job and unwelcome tabloid attention.Selina begins to settle into Mediterranean life and spends time renovating the house. However, she soon realises that making the old house her home is going to be more difficult than she thought. From the unwelcome wildlife that insists on sharing her house, to dubious building work, locals both friendly and hostile, and a forest fire that threatens the whole valley, Selina's new life is full of unexpected challenges. In this funny, elegantly written account of her Spanish years Selina tells us about the house that captured her heart, the neighbours that became friends, and those that didn't, the hills and wildlife that enchanted her, the building work that nearly broke her and, crucially, the dog that found her, and changed every single one of her best laid plans!An uplifting story of escape, change and friendship.'A terrific read, beautifully written' Richard Madeley
A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism (The\resistance Quartet Ser. #4)
by Caroline Moorehead'Moorehead paints a wonderfully vivid and moving portrait of the women of the Italian Resistance…an excellent book… She depicts a tragic fate that is timeless, of dreams forged in adversity, shattered by collisions with practical politics' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMESThe extraordinary story of the courageous women who spearheaded the Italian Resistance during the Second World WarIn the late summer of 1943, when Italy changed sides in the War and the Germans – now their enemies – occupied the north of the country, an Italian Resistance was born. Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca were four young Piedmontese women who joined the Resistance, living clandestinely in the mountains surrounding Turin. They were not alone. Between 1943 and 1945, as the Allies battled their way north, thousands of men and women throughout occupied Italy rose up and fought to liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. The bloody civil war that ensued across the country pitted neighbour against neighbour, and brought out the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together as a coherent fighting force. The women’s contribution was invaluable – they fought, carried messages and weapons, provided safe houses, laid mines and took prisoners. Ada’s house deep in the mountains became a meeting place and refuge for many of them.The death rattle of Mussolini’s two decades of Fascist rule – with its corruption, greed and anti-Semitism was unrelentingly violent, but for the partisan women it was also a time of camaraderie and equality, pride and optimism. They had proved, to themselves and to the world, what resolve, tenacity and, above all, exceptional courage could achieve.
A House in the Sky: A Memoir of a Kidnapping That Changed Everything
by Amanda Lindhout Sara CorbettThe spectacularly dramatic memoir of a woman whose curiosity about the world led her from rural Canada to imperiled and dangerous countries on every continent, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity in Somalia-a story of courage, resilience, and extraordinary grace.
The House is Full of Yogis: The Story Of A Childhood Turned Upside Down
by Will HodgkinsonA witty memoir about the trials of adolescence, the tribulations of family life and the embarrassment that ensues from having larger-than-life parents
House Music: The Oona King Diaries
by Oona KingHow does it feel to lose your job in front of ten million people? To ask a Government Whip for time to see your husband? To represent the Secretary of State for Health at a family planning clinic on the day you fail your fifth IVF cycle? To be loved and hated by people who don't even know you? To be the second black woman elected to Parliament? To be a Jewish woman representing a largely Muslim constituency? To be the only MP who likes house music?A decade is a long time in politics, and in these candid diaries Oona King shows how she has changed since becoming an MP in 1997. From the intense strain on her marriage, to her desperate struggle to have a baby, Oona reveals how she chose to abandon her political ambition in favour of another: to have a life.
The House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power
by null Tom BowerThe explosive new book from Britain’s leading investigative biographer, Tom Bower As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For decades, adoring fans have been captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while their unrivalled fusion of showbiz, fashion, football and celebrity has been cultivated alongside the image of a strong marriage. When the much-trailed Netflix documentary Beckham aired in 2023, viewers were offered an even more intimate insight into their private lives. Produced by the Beckhams themselves, the series raised many questions, not only about their success and personal relationship, but also about the ruthlessly successful management of their image in the media. Are their lives really as perfect as the Beckhams would like the world to believe? Through extensive research, expert sourcing and interviews with insiders, Britain’s most celebrated investigative biographer, Tom Bower, has unearthed a succession of revelations that give surprising insight into the reality of ‘Brand Beckham’. Exploring the couple’s relationship, and the truth about their football and fashion careers, their finances and their new life in Miami, The House of Beckham unravels the extraordinary reality of the business-savvy cultural icons to tell an engrossing, often astonishing story of money, sex and power.
The House of Being (Why I Write)
by Natasha TretheweyAn exquisite meditation on the geographies we inherit and the metaphors we inhabit, from Pulitzer Prize winner and nineteenth U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey “Searching and intimate, this impresses.”—Publishers Weekly In a shotgun house in Gulfport, Mississippi, at the crossroads of Highway 49, the legendary highway of the Blues, and Jefferson Street, Natasha Trethewey learned to read and write. Before the land was a crossroads, however, it was a pasture: a farming settlement where, after the Civil War, a group of formerly enslaved women, men, and children made a new home. In this intimate and searching meditation, Trethewey revisits the geography of her childhood to trace the origins of her writing life, born of the need to create new metaphors to inhabit “so that my story would not be determined for me.” She recalls the markers of history and culture that dotted the horizons of her youth: the Confederate flags proudly flown throughout Mississippi; her gradual understanding of her own identity as the child of a Black mother and a white father; and her grandmother’s collages lining the hallway, offering glimpses of the world as it could be. With the clarity of a prophet and the grace of a poet, Trethewey offers up a vision of writing as reclamation: of our own lives and the stories of the vanished, forgotten, and erased.
The House of Dudley: A New History of Tudor England
by Dr Joanne PaulTold for the very first time, this is the shocking and extraordinary story of the most-conniving and manipulative Tudor family you've never heard of - the dashing and daring Dudleys . . .'Exciting and immersive. An immensely entertaining history, capturing in full Tudor brilliance the cut-throat glamour of the English throne and the most audacious family to play its game' SUNDAY TIMES'Breathes new life into an old and familiar Tudor story . . . It's delightful, a joy to read' THE TIMES, 'BOOK OF THE WEEK''This is riveting stuff: death, desire, power and scandal. Game of Thrones looks tame compared with the real-life machinations of the Dudleys' SPECTATORA TIMES 'BOOK OF 2022' AND BOOK OF THE WEEK________Each Tudor monarch made their name with a Dudley by their side - or by crushing one beneath their feet . . .The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII, but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I.That was until the reign of Elizabeth I, when the family were once again at the centre of power, and would do anything to remain there . . .With three generations of felled favourites, what was it that caused this family to keep rising so high and falling so low?Here, for the first time, is the story of England's Borgias, a noble house competing in the murderous game of musical chairs around the English throne. Witness cunning, adultery and sheer audacity from history's most brilliant, bold and skulduggerous family.Welcome to the House of Dudley.________'Rich and compelling. Conjures up the look and feel of Tudor life . . . You will find yourself drawn in, fascinated, and richly informed' TELEGRAPH'A full-blooded affair, as good on the horrors of war as it is on the soft power of the Dudley women, and written in a lively, episodic style that presents each Dudley as a foil to the monarch they served' JESSIE CHILDS