Showing results for "Correspondence" in Politics & Government

Arrested in 1962 as South Africa's apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, 44-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next 27 years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, a majority of which were previously unpublished, provide the most intimate portrait of Mandela since Long Walk to Freedom.

What is it like to be a wife of a politician in modern-day Britain? Sasha Swire finally lifts the lid. For more than two decades she has kept a secret diary detailing the trials and tribulations of being a political plus-one; the travel, the security, the challenges to family life and the unpredictable events. A professional partner as well as a life partner and one with strong political opinions herself, she detonates the image of the dutiful stereotype.

'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs....' So begins the first letter that nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding school headmaster. For most of his life, Roald Dahl would continue to write weekly letters to his mother, chronicling his adventures, frustrations and opinions, from the delights of childhood to the excitements of flying as a World War II fighter pilot....

In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis.

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

Stalin exchanged more than 600 messages with Allied leaders Churchill and Roosevelt during the Second World War. In this riveting volume - the fruit of a unique British-Russian scholarly collaboration - the messages are published and also analyzed within their historical context. Ranging from intimate personal greetings to weighty salvos about diplomacy and strategy, this book offers fascinating new revelations of the political machinations and human stories behind the Allied triumvirate.

In April 1915 Dorothea Crewdson, a newly trained Red Cross nurse, and her best friend, Christie, received instructions to leave for Le Treport in Northern France. Filled with excitement at the prospect of her first paid job, Dorothea began writing a diary. 'Who knows how long we shall really be out here? Seems a good chance from all reports of the campaigns being ended before winter, but all is uncertain.'

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled Black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

During his two terms as the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan kept a daily diary in which he recorded, by hand, his innermost thoughts and observations on the extraordinary, the historic, and the routine day-to-day occurrences of his presidency. Now, nearly two decades after he left office, this remarkable record, the only daily Presidential diary in American history, is available for the first time.

The official companion to ITV's hotly anticipated new drama, The Victoria Letters delves into the private writings of the young Queen Victoria, painting a vivid picture of the personal life of one of England's greatest monarchs. From the producers of Poldark and Endeavour, ITV's Victoria follows the early years of the young Queen's reign, based closely on Victoria's own letters and journals.

Succeeding William IV in 1837, Victoria reigned for nearly 64 years and was always a keen chronicler of life around her, through both her paintings and the detailed diary she kept from the age of 13. Queen Victoria’s Highland Journals cover the period from 1848 to 1882 and provide a fascinating insight into those long 'never-to-be-forgotten days' she spent with her family in her much beloved Scottish Highlands.

In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein was just scraping by in Washington, DC, when a posting on Craigslist landed her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama's stenographers. She joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travellers - young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president.

The terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records, let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary grippingly documents Britain's drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact....

Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting selection of weekly 'pen-pal' letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower, living on Long Island, New York. Frances Woodsford and Commodore Paul Bigelow never met, and there was no romance - she was in her forties when he died aged ninety-seven - yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline.

Though Moynihan never wrote an autobiography, he was a gifted author and voluminous correspondent, and in this selection from his letters Steven Weisman has compiled a vivid portrait of Moynihan’s life, in the senator’s own words. Before his four terms as Senator from New York, Moynihan served in key positions under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. His letters offer an extraordinary window into particular moments in history.

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill’s correspondence. Several of the letters included have never appeared in book form before.

How can we begin to talk about what is happening to the world? We are facing a global emergency. Temperatures are rising. Mass species extinction has begun. The time for denial is over. It is time to act. Letters to the Earth is the beginning of a new story. It is an invitation to act and an opportunity to extend the invitation. These letters are the result of a callout from Culture Declares Emergency to the public to write a response to climate and ecological emergency.

As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter to the Mother Goddess, whom he addressed as jagat janani, every night before going to bed. The topics were varied: there were seething sorrows, fleeting joys, lingering memories. In Modi's writings there was the enthusiasm of a youngster and the passion to usher in change. But every few months, Modi would tear up the pages and consign them to a bonfire. The pages of one diary, dating back to 1986, survived, however.

Every day, President Obama received 10,000 letters from ordinary American citizens. Every night, he read 10 of them before going to bed. This is the story of how they shaped his presidency. Together they reveal the diary of a nation. They wrote to Obama out of gratitude and desperation, in their darkest times of need, with anger, fear and respect. To Obama is an intimate look at one man's relationship with the American people, and at a time when empathy intersected with politics in the White House.

A wonderfully written account of a father's relationship with his troubled son, as told through his funny, tender letters. In 2007 Michael Maitland left home for university, and in the years that followed he developed depression, OCD and, almost fatally, anorexia. It was only when Michael was taken to hospital in 2012, his body shutting down and his organs failing, that the family realised exactly what was happening.