Biography & Autobiography

This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror. It was a battle that led...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2017 WINNER OF THE PRIX MEDITERRANEE 2018 From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780812988406Author Paul KalanithiFormat HardbackPage Count 256Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 306gDimensions(mm)...

'GORGEOUS, VIVIDLY ALIVE' NEW YORK TIMES'BOLD, HONEST AND SUPERBLY WELL-WRITTEN' ANDRE ACIMAN, AUTHOR OF CALL ME BY YOUR NAME'GRACEFUL AND SOUL-BARING' MELANIE REID, THE TIMES'WHAT A GIFT . . . HAS THE RIGOR AND PRECISION OF JOAN DIDION AND MAGGIE NELSON...

At 34 years of age, Gregory Howe quit teaching in London to chase his childhood dream of becoming a world-ranked tennis professional. He started his year-long journey in the minor leagues, playing across four continents, as far afield as Bangkok, Kampala...

An exhilarating insight into the life of a doctor at Heathrow Airport, where the truth is often stranger than fiction.For over a decade, Stephanie Green was a doctor on-call for one of the world's busiest airports, confronting dramatic, bizarre and...

This long-awaited and masterfully edited volume contains nearly all of the writings of Queen Elizabeth 1: the clumsy letters of childhood, the early speeches of a fledgling queen, and the prayers and poetry of the monarch's later years. The first...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY AWARDDavid Aaronovitch grew up in Communist Great Britain - a Britain hidden from view for most, but for those on the inside it was a life filled with picket lines, militant trade unions, solidarity...

It is the middle of the Swinging Sixties, and Clive James doesn't have much to show for it. May Week Was In June is the third hilarious, tender instalment of memoir from the iconic author, poet and broadcaster.'Nobody writes like Clive James' -...

In this heartfelt memoir, spanning the 1950s and '60s, Major Margaret Thomas ARRC rises through the ranks of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (the QAs), the nursing branch of the British Army, healing injured soldiers far from home as well...

If someone were to say 'it's not tennis', or 'not football' of shabby behaviour in any walk of life, he or she would not be understood. If they said 'it's not cricket', they probably would be (though less reliably than a century ago). Is there some...

Shaun Teale's football story is one of rejection, perseverance, belief and, ultimately, success, as he reached the very top of the game. He was 24 when he finally became a professional footballer. He never took it for granted and made the most of every...

'I wish to remain single, for I have made a vow of virginity.' This is the remarkable story of the twelfth-century recluse Christina, who became prioress of Markyate, near St Albans in Hertfordshire. Determined to devote her life to God and to remain a...

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Albert Camus declared that a writer's duty is twofold: "the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance against oppression." These twin obsessions help explain something of Camus' remarkable character,...

'That's what happened, I think, struggling to stay afloat as the ocean pummels me from all sides. I must have blacked out -- exhausted, dehydrated, even a little delirious -- and hit the water.And no one saw it happen.''When I heard Brett had fallen...

'Wonderfully evocative ... Not for a heartbeat is there a false or faltering note as various life stories unfurl and conflate, invariably amid hardship and leading to heartbreak' The Times The close-knit villages of the Dearne Valley in Yorkshire were...

**The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller** **Audiobook shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 2018** Gary Barlow is one of the most successful British musicians and songwriters of all time, but fifteen years ago, as he himself admits, he hit...

To have been alive during the last sixty years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months after Elvis Presley ignited the rock era. As the songwriting half of Simon & Garfunkel, his...

Nevil Shute was a writer whose books were frequently looked down on by literary critics and yet when he died in 1960 he was one of the best selling novelists of his day. Today, books such as A Town Like Alice and On the Beach continue to attract new...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780345523204Author Jim DavidsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 304Imprint Ballantine Books Inc.Publisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 255gDimensions(mm)...

'those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means' Mahatma Gandhi was a profound and original thinker as well as one of the most influential figures in the history of the twentieth century. A religious and...

First published in 1930 to an unprecedented storm of protest, Catherine Carswell's The Life of Robert Burns remains the standard work on its subject.Carswell deliberately shakes the image of Burns as a romantic hero - exposing the sexual...

They all excited and inspired me by how they fought their corners [...] So I want to place them all round a fantasy dinner-table, not just to dine, but to relive how I saw them in action and how much they had in common.Who would be on your dream dinner...

'A really important book' RAYNOR WINNFrom relics of Georgian empire-building and slave-trading, through Victorian London's barged-out refuse to 1980s fly-tipping and the pervasiveness of present-day plastics, Rag and Bone traces the story of our rubbish,...

'An extraordinary drama of exile and espionage' Boyd Tonkin, Independent'Compelling . . . as engaging a read as Stalingrad and Berlin' Guardian______________Olga Chekhova was the niece of playwright Anton Chekhov and a Russian beauty. She was also a...

The Cambridge Spies continue to fascinate - but one of them, John Cairncross, has always been more of an enigma than the others. He worked alone and was driven by his hostility to Fascism rather than to the promotion of Communism. During his war-time...

'I was amazed and intrigued by the way Leroy had stood his ground and progressed within the Metropolitan Police against so many obstacles: hostility, outright racism and being repeatedly overlooked for promotion.' Steve McQueen, from the Foreword ...

'One of the best books written on entrepreneurship in recent years' FINANCIAL TIMES In business, everyone can see the first bounce of the ball. It is the second bounce that is uncertain. Ronald Cohen, one of the world's leading private-equity...

OUTSIDERS tells the stories of five novelists - Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf - and their famous novels.We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders,...

The two-line ad in the Sunday Times advertising Villa Parginos in Corfu conjured an image of long afternoons drinking wine on a marble patio shaded by a grape arbour, looking out over an impossibly blue Greek sea. Instead James Chatto and his wife Wendy...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780307946393Author Paul GoldbergerFormat PaperbackPage Count 544Imprint Alfred A. KnopfPublisher Alfred A. KnopfWeight(grams) 618gDimensions(mm) 233mm *...

I still think about Peter, the man I loved most in the world, all the time. At two in the afternoon, when he would come and pick me up and take me for rides; at five, when I would read to him, head on his chest; in the despair at seven p.m., when he...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781784614041Author Alun GibbardFormat PaperbackPage Count 432Imprint Y LolfaPublisher Y Lolfa

Brought up as a Christian, Marina Nemat's peaceful childhood in Tehran was shattered when the Iranian Revolution of 1979 ushered in a new era of Islamic rule. After complaining to her teachers about her Maths lessons being replaced by Koran study, Marina...

Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy-Lee Israel's hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy...

In 1464, the most eligible bachelor in England, Edward IV, stunned the nation by revealing his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a beautiful, impoverished widow whose father and brother Edward himself had once ridiculed as upstarts. Edward's...

The last word on Sid Vicious - the world's most iconic punk figure.The old school register for Soho Parish Primary school has a note in the margin recording that five-year-old John Simon Ritchie turned up for his first day at school unaccompanied in...

In September 2012, a YOUGOV poll conducted in Britain found that the person British workers would most like as their manager was Sir Richard Branson.With over 40 years in business, Richard Branson is an inspiring pioneer of humanitarian projects and an...

Maitland was the most able politician and diplomat during the lifetime of Mary Queen of Scots. It was he who master-minded the Scottish Reformation by breaking the 'Auld Alliance' with France, which presaged Scotland's lasting union with England. ...

The meeting of Voltaire, successful financier, famous poet and troublemaker, and the enchanting amateur physicist and countess Emilie du Chatelet, was a meeting of both hearts and minds. In the Chateau de Cirey, the two brilliant intellects scandalised...