Showing titles in Politicians

The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career - 1958 to 1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin’s bullet to reach its mark.

To many Queen Victoria was a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, portrayed as an aging, stiff widow. But in truth Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional. A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources, showing us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before.

In this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth, with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved Naval officer father; to his life in Washington DC, the base from which from he would launch fierce attacks on tyranny of all kinds. Along the way, he recalls the girls, boys and booze; the friendships and the feuds; the grand struggles and lost causes; and the mistakes and misgivings that have characterised his life.

Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.

Over the course of five years, Simon Hart had a front-row seat to the most turbulent times in recent British political history. From negotiations around Brexit to the impact of Liz Truss’s extraordinary forty-nine-day premiership and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he’s seen and heard it all. And starting in 2022, under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, he witnessed successive dramas unfold, all while holding down the (often misunderstood) position of chief whip.

In his best-selling autobiography, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and chief architect of Nazi Germany, repeatedly insisted he knew nothing of the genocidal crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. In this revealing new biography, author Martin Kitchen disputes Speer's lifelong assertions of ignorance and innocence, portraying a far darker figure who was deeply implicated in the appalling crimes committed by the regime he served so well. Kitchen reconstructs Speer's life with what we now know, including information from valuable new sources that have come to light only in recent years.

In the high-stakes world of politics, there are superb highs and terrible lows – and never more so than in the period since 2010. Few are better placed to give an insider's view of the turmoil than the Rt Hon. Dame Andrea Leadsom MP. From taking to the stage at Wembley as a key figure in the campaign to leave the European Union, through two leadership bids, Cabinet intrigue and squaring off against an increasingly erratic Speaker, Andrea's very personal account tracks the ups and downs of a life in politics and particularly the challenges for female MPs.

On Thursday 19 July 2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first 22 days and 14 hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some of Britain's most violent criminals. This is the author's daily record of the time he spent there.

With a novelist’s touch, Lucy Hughes-Hallett transports us into a courtly world of masques and dancing, exquisite clothes, the art of Rubens and Van Dyck, gender-fluidity, sex and appallingly rudimentary medicine. These were dangerous and complicated times, an era where witch hunts coexisted with Descartian rationality, and Buckingham stood at its centre until his spectacular fall from grace.

When Boris Johnson came to power in 2019, he did so with the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher. Rewriting the political map, he united a party and shattered Labour’s fabled red wall. And yet, just three years later, he was ousted by the same members who had once greeted his leadership so rapturously. What had gone so wrong?

Henry VIII ruled England from 1509 to 1547. As a young man, he was fond of sports and hunting and was said to be uncommonly handsome. Standing more than six feet tall, he loomed large in the lives and minds of his subjects as he navigated his country through the tricky diplomatic and military hazards of the 16th century.

As divisive as he is beguiling, as misunderstood as he is scrutinised, Boris Johnson is a singular figure. Many of us think we know his story well. His ruthless ambition was evident from his insistence, as a three-year-old, that he would one day be 'world king'. Eton and Oxford prepared him well for a frantic career straddling the dog-eat-dog worlds of journalism and politics. His transformation from bumbling stooge on Have I Got News for You to a triumphant mayor of London was overshadowed only by his colourful personal life, brimming with affairs, scandals and transgressions.

For all of the West's failings—terrible food, cold weather and questionable politicians with funny hair to name a few—it has its upsides. Konstantin would know. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he experienced first-hand the horrors of a socialist paradise gone wrong, having lived in extreme poverty with little access to even the most basic of necessities. It wasn't until he moved to the UK that Kisin found himself thriving in an open and tolerant society, receiving countless opportunities he would never have had otherwise.

From the humiliation of Liz Truss’s 49-day premiership to the shameful, self-serving drift of Rishi Sunak’s time in office, Downfall is the story of a political party on the verge of extinction. Picking up on the events that followed The Plot, Nadine Dorries draws on interviews with those in the room to expose what really went on behind the scenes. From group sex sessions organised via WhatsApp and held between late night votes in a certain office in Portcullis House to the King being stood up at the Privy Council, the accounts are raw, unvarnished and brutal.

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother has been called the 'most successful queen since Cleopatra'. Her personality was so captivating that even her arch-enemy, Wallis Simpson, wrote about 'her legendary charm'. Portrayed as a selfless partner to the king in the Oscar-winning movie The King's Speech, The Queen Mother is most often remembered from her later years as the smiling granny with the pastel hats. When she died in 2002, just short of her 102nd birthday, she was praised for a long life well lived. But there was another side to her story.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Cromwell by Diarmid MacCulloch, read by David Rintoul. Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King.

From the author of the New York Times best sellers First Women and The Residence, an intimate, news-making look at the men who are next in line to the most powerful office in the world - the vice presidents of the modern era - from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden to Mike Pence. In interviews with more than 200 people, Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain and reveals the sometimes cold, sometimes close, and always complicated relationship between our modern presidents and their vice presidents.

Brought up in rural North Wales, David Lloyd George attended neither a grand school nor ancient university. He was very much an outsider. And yet he rose through the ranks with charisma, fierce intelligence and fighting spirit to become, as Churchill put it in his tribute, a man who ‘stood, when at his zenith, without a rival’. But his rise was not without its hardships.

A newly edited, single-volume commemorative edition of The Path to Power and The Downing Street Years; this is Margaret Thatcher in her own words. Combining her memoirs The Path to Power and The Downing Street Years, this definitive account of Margaret Thatcher’s life is published as a one-volume commemorative edition for the first time. Margaret Thatcher was the towering figure of late-20th-century British politics. Now, following her death, in 2013, this is the story of her remarkable life, in her own words.

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation. The life and times of the 33rd president of the United States, Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American.