Showing titles in Politics & Activism

David was the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School and practised as a barrister before entering politics. He has served as the Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000. Today, David is one of Parliament's most prominent and successful campaigners for social justice. He led the campaign for Windrush British citizens to be granted British citizenship and has been at the forefront of the fight for justice for the families affected by the Grenfell Tower fire.

After four unremarkable decades in politics, Jeremy Corbyn stands on the brink of power. Until his surprise election as leader of the Labour Party in 2015, this seemingly unelectable oddball had not been a major political player. Since then, Corbyn has survived coup attempts and accusations of incompetence that would have felled most politicians, including grave charges of anti-Semitism, bullying and not being the master of his brief. Despite these shortcomings, as the Conservatives rip themselves apart over Europe, he is likely soon to become Britain's Prime Minister.

In this illuminating memoir, McChrystal frankly explores the major episodes and controversies of his eventful career. He delves candidly into the intersection of history, leadership, and his own experience to produce a book of enduring value. Joining the troubled post-Vietnam army as a young officer, McChrystal witnessed and participated in some of our military’s most difficult struggles. He describes the many outstanding leaders he served with and the handful of bad leaders he learned not to emulate.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national best seller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member's rebellion changed America.

Cousin to Elizabeth I - and possibly Henry VIII's illegitimate granddaughter - Lettice Knollys had a life of dizzying highs and pitiful lows. Entangled in a love triangle with Robert Dudley and Elizabeth I, banished from court, plagued by scandals, embroiled in treason, Lettice would lose a husband and son to the executioner's ax. In the first ever biography of this remarkable woman, Nicola Tallis takes us through her dramatic life and the grand sweep of the Tudor Age and the events that define it.

The Ticket Collector from Belarus tells the remarkable story of two interwoven journeys. Ben-Zion Blustein and Andrei Sawoniuk were childhood companions in 1930s Domachevo, once a holiday and health resort in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then a struggling township in Belarus. During the events which followed its Nazi occupation in 1942, they became the bitterest of enemies. After the war, Ben-Zion made his way to Israel, and ‘Andrusha the bastard’ found work as a London Transport ticket collector.

Floella Benjamin was the little girl from the Caribbean who became a British household name, and along the way, received some of the highest accolades around—including a BAFTA Special Lifetime Achievement Award and a damehood—and became a peer in the House of Lords. A natural storyteller, What Are You Doing Here? is her incredibly moving and honest account of her remarkable life and her refusal to be defined by others.

Simon Woolley is a member of the House of Lords, the first Black man to head an Oxbridge college and a policy changemaker who has the ear of prime ministers and the future king. But this is a lord who wants to shake up the establishment, an outsider who knows how important it is to bring underrepresented voices to the table. Raised by loving white foster parents on the impoverished St Matthew's Estate in Leicester, young Simon soon learnt about politics while in line at the barber's and about racism as one of the few Black children in the neighbourhood.

Nigel Farage is arguably one of the most influential British politicians of the 21st century. His campaign to take the UK out of the EU began as a minority and extreme point of view, but in June 2016 it became the official policy of the nation after a divisive referendum. In Michael Crick's brilliant new biography, One Party After Another, we find out how he did it despite never once managing to get elected to Parliament.

As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents' marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to restore the good name of the monarchy.

Thanks to the invidious reputation of his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolo` Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? In Machiavelli: His Life and Times, Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his father's penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher's hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first president of democratic South Africa. Five years later, he stood down. In that time he and his government wrought the most extraordinary transformation, turning a nation riven by centuries of colonialism and apartheid into a fully functioning democracy in which all South Africa's citizens, black and white, were equal before the law.

"If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame." Forget Pinochet, Milosevic, Hussein, Kim Jong-il, or Gaddafi: America need look no further than its own lauded leaders for a war criminal whose offenses rival those of the most heinous dictators in recent history-Henry Kissinger.

She was peaches-and-cream innocence; he was a handsome war hero. Both had royal blood coursing through their veins. The marriage of Britain's Princess Elizabeth to Lt Philip Mountbatten in November 1947 is remembered as the beginning of an extraordinary lifelong union but success was not guaranteed. Elizabeth and Philip: A Story of Young Love, Marriage and Monarchy plunges us back into 1940s Britain where a teenage Princess fell in love with a foreign Prince.

Groundbreaking scientific analysis that breaks the JFK assassination wide open! Did a shot from the "grassy knoll" kill President Kennedy? If so, was Oswald part of a conspiracy or an innocent patsy? Why have scientific experts who examined the evidence failed to put such questions to rest? In 2001, scientist Dr. Donald Byron Thomas published a peer-reviewed article that revived the debate over the finding by the House Select Committee on Assassinations that there had indeed been a shot from the grassy knoll, caught on a police dictabelt recording.

Thrown Away Child is a memoir covering Louise Allen’s abusive childhood in a foster home, how she survived - using her love of art as a sanctuary - and how she hopes to right old wrongs now by fostering children herself and campaigning for the improvement of foster care services. It is a compelling and inspirational story. This book gives a voice to the many children who grew up unhappily in care.

In this engaging life of the 20th century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics.

When Nusrit Mehtab joined the Met Police in the late 80s the organisation was rife with racism and misogyny. Officers refused to patrol with her, or even call her by her name. Her attempts to get promoted were met with hostility and ridicule and she was subject to cruel pranks. As the years passed and her seniority grew, Nusrit was dismayed to find that these problems got worse, not better. After 30 years, she finally had enough and left the MET, initiating an employment tribunal against them in the process.

She came to the throne in 1952 when Britain had a far-flung empire, sweets were rationed, mums stayed home and kids played on bombsites. Seventy years on, everything has changed utterly—except the Queen herself, ageing far more gracefully than the fractious nation over which she so lightly presides. How did we get from there to here in a single reign? To cancel culture, anti-vaxxers and Twitter feeds? Matthew Engel tells the story—starting with the years from Churchill to Thatcher—with his own light touch and a wealth of fascinating, forgotten, often funny detail.

With decades of hindsight, the peaceful end of the Cold War seems a foregone conclusion. But in the early 1980s, most experts believed the Soviet Union was strong, stable, and would last into the next century. Ronald Reagan entered the White House with no certainty of what would happen next, only an overriding faith in democracy and an abiding belief that Soviet communism—and the threat of nuclear war—must end. The Peacemaker reveals how Reagan’s White House waged the Cold War while managing multiple crises around the globe.