In the evening of 4th April 1793, preparations were being made for a clandestine ceremony in Rome. The wedding of the son of the King of England to the daughter of the Governor of the Bahamas would not only be concealed, it would also be illegal. That night His Royal Highness Prince Augustus Frederick was married to Lady Augusta Murray without witnesses. The couple had known each other for only three months and shared a birthday. They were deeply in love, but the consequences of their rash union would be terrible. 'Death is certainly better than this' - the couple had considered suicide the evening before. The sixth son of King George III was forbidden under the Royal Marriages Act to marry without the King's permission. The daughter of the Earl of Dunmore would turn from an 18th century socialite into a 19th century social pariah, her children declared illegitimate, and her family scorned. It was the worst miscalculation of the Prince's life, but while he eventually found redemption, Augusta's destiny changed beyond anything she could imagine. Julia Abel Smith uses material from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle and the Dunmore family papers to create a dramatic biography set in the reigns of King George III and IV against the background of the American and French Revolutions. With family trees and 16 pages of b/w illus.

A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance bringing to life the vices and virtues of the feuding ruling families of Italy and the most important and influential patrons. From the glittering to the at times rather gory, we are transported to the life and times of the elite whose power and patronage created the art and architecture of the Renaissance. Hollingsworth sets their aesthetic achievements in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of a tumultuous period of history. From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of 15th and 16th century Italy immerse themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches, inspired by the architecture of Ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together, but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart. Their lives were defined as much by the waging of war as the nurturing of artistic talent. Hollingsworth charts these developments in a sequence of chronological chapters, each centred on two or three main characters from Ludovico Sforza of Milan to Isabella d'Este of Mantua, from Pope Paul III to Emperor Charles V, from painters Mantegna and Titian to the architect Sansovino and the polymath Leonardo da Vinci. Other names include Sigismondo Malatesta, Barbara of Brandenburg, the doge Andrea Gritti and his cronies and Cosimo d'Medici. With useful genealogical trees, tables and maps, a super heavyweight beautifully designed 512 page hardback with full page colour plates throughout of paintings, sculpture and architecture.

'The Belle Epoque is brought to life through three colourful lives in this sparkling account stuffed with top fin-de-siècle tittle-tattle.' - The Times, The Best Books of 2019. Handsomely published with colour plates and in heavyweight hardback, we have the US edition of this fine history. In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping - a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. Our guide through the backdrop of Belle Epoque Paris is Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, free thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life and who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In this vivid tapestry of people - Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust and James Whistler among others - place and time, we are not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure, but also one of violence, prejudice and nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side - hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and a time of rampant prejudice and bloodshed. Bourbons and Orleanists, wicked paper editors, salonnieres and famous whores seen through the eyes of the humane gynaecologist and general surgeon Pozzi. Illustrated endpapers, colour and other plates. 270pp, remainder mark.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the life of a petty tyrant in an obscure corner of the Ottoman Empire became the stuff of legend. What propelled this cold-blooded archetype of Oriental despotism, grandly known as the Lion of Ioannina and the Balkan Napoleon, into the consciousness of Western rulers and the general public? This book charts the rise of Ali Pasha from Albanian brigand leader to a player in world affairs and, ultimately, to a gruesome end. Ali exploited the internal weakness of the Ottoman Empire to carve out his own de facto state in Albania and Western Greece. Although a ruthless tyrant guilty of cruel atrocities, his lavish court in Yanina (Ioannina) became an attraction to Western travellers, most famously Lord Byron, and his military prowess led Britain, Russia and France to seek his alliance during the Napoleonic Wars. His activities undermined the Sultan's authority and helped bring about the Greek War of Independence. Quentin and Eugenia Russell describe his remarkable life and military career as well as the enigmatic legacy he bequeathed in his homeland both as a nationalist hero and a tyrant, and further afield as inspiration for writers and artists of the Romantic movement. 18 x 24.89cm. 206 pages.

Aristotle towers over Western philosophy and science and as they have come down to us, his works comprise a veritable encyclopaedia of philosophy and invented the field of formal logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics. He created a basis for a great deal of today's scientific knowledge, such as the classification of organisms and objects. Although he has been studied continuously for more than 2000 years, his individual works were dispersed, lost, recovered, and very gradually reunited. The physical transmission of the Aristotelian corpus was a long, complicated, uncoordinated process. From the Roman Empire, through the mediation of Arab and Jewish scholars, to the western Middle Ages and scholasticism and up to the cusp of modernity in the late 15th century, Aristotle's works were copied and recopied by scribes in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin before finally becoming available again in their original Greek. The volume focuses on one crucial, extended moment when, thanks to the invention of printing, Aristotle's works became widely available in Latin, Greek, and even in vernacular languages in the late 15th and 16th centuries. At that moment, Aristotle's authority comes under increasing scrutiny as the new science and philosophy of early modern Europe chart different courses for the future. The extraordinary books and manuscripts in this volume, selected from the collection of the Martin J. Gross Foundation, demonstrate just how intellectuals have received and wrestled with Aristotle. Through commentaries, treatises, lecture courses in schools, and above all in the written marginalia of books, the volume reveals the extent of the age's engagement with Aristotle. Many of these books and manuscripts have never before been studied and many colour images show them in their magnificence. Colour plates, 20.96 x 28.58cm, 128 pages.

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule. Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet - in 6th century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport - these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths - one gentle, the other horrific - their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend. Shelley Puhak resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture's stubbornest myths about female power. Chapters include A Missive to Byzantium, the Loss of Sanctuary, the Regency, the Vexations of King Guntram, and The Defiant Nuns. Incorporated are primary sources and accounts of men like the Bishop Gregory of Tours, the poet Fortunatus, the Pope Gregory the Great and assorted emperors and kings. Remainder mark, illus including colour, 384 pages.

For the nobility and gentry in later medieval England, land was a source of wealth and status. Their marriages were arranged with this in mind, and it is not surprising that so many of them had mistresses and illegitimate children. John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, married at the age of 20 to a ten-year-old granddaughter of Edward I, had at least eight bastards and a complicated love life. In theory, bastards were at a considerable disadvantage - whether they be children of unmarried parents, married parents or of members of the clergy dictated their prospects in life and career opportunities. Regarded as filius nullius' or the son of no one, they were unable to inherit real property and barred from the priesthood. In practice, illegitimacy could be less of a stigma in late medieval England than it became between the 16th and late 20th centuries. There were ways of making provision for illegitimate offspring and some bastards did extremely well: in the church; through marriage; as soldiers; a few even succeeding to the family estates. For example in 1413 Thomas Lincoln, a London draper, left the residue of his goods to be divided equally between his bastard daughters Juliana and Beatrice. There is also a bequest to Juliana Pleydon and who might perhaps be their mother. In 1428 John Pigot made a bequest of ten pounds to Matilda 'filiae meae bastard'. The Derbyshire knight Sir John Leek referred in his Will in 1522 to his daughter Anne 'got by Jane my wife' and to three further daughters plus a further child as yet unborn got by Anne Menwaryng. In this case it was fairly self-evident from the context that the latter three were illegitimate. Matthews presents the experiences of John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey, as a case study of the practicalities of illegitimacy. This helps the reader to understand the life and limitations of a child born outside of marriage, as well as the extraordinary lengths that parents were willing to go in order to advance the prospects of their children. This is the first book to consider the individuals who had illegitimate children, the ways in which they provided for them and attitudes towards both the parents and the bastard children. It also highlights important differences between the views of illegitimacy taken by the Church and by the English law. 216 page large well illustrated with colour plates paperback. Cross-referenced Dramatis Personae.

The bestselling biographer packs her magnificent history with incredible true stories and legendary medieval intrigue. This epic narrative history chronicles the first five queens from the powerful royal family that ruled England and France for over 300 years. The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, seductive queens, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill. This second volume of Alison Weir's critically acclaimed history of the queens of medieval England now moves into a period of even higher drama, from 1154 to 1291: years of chivalry and courtly love, dynastic ambition, conflict between church and throne, baronial wars, and the ruthless interplay between the rival monarchs of Britain and France. We see events such as the murder of Becket, Magna Carta, and the birth of parliaments from a new perspective. Weir's narrative begins with the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage to Henry II established a dynasty that ruled for over 300 years and created the most powerful empire in western Christendom - but also sowed the seeds for some of the most destructive family conflicts in history and for the collapse, under her son King John, of England's power in Europe. The lives of Eleanor's four successors were just as remarkable: Berengaria of Navarre, queen of Richard the Lionheart; Isabella of Angoulême, queen of John; Alienor of Provence, queen of Henry III; and finally Eleanor of Castile, the grasping but beloved wife of Edward I. Through the story of these first five Plantagenet queens, Alison Weir provides a fresh, enthralling narrative focusing on these fascinating female monarchs during this dramatic period of high romance and sometimes low politics. Remainder mark, maps, colour plates. 533 pages.

Castaways have a big hold on our imaginations, as we can see from the first novel in English, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, together with modern developments of the same theme, from The Martian to I'm A Celebrity - get me out of here and Pirates of the Caribbean. Defoe started life as plain Daniel Foe, marrying young and engaging in a series of failed business ventures. In 1685 he headed west in support of the Monmouth rebellion and was lucky to escape execution. Then he wrote political pamphlets, which soon got him back in gaol. Finally he became a spy for the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Harley, and started writing books. Robinson Crusoe in 1719 was a surprise hit with the public, with its winning formula of the slave-trader shipwrecked with his dog and cat, armed only with a Bible, who is assisted in his survival by the unexpected appearance of Man Friday, heralded by an enormous footprint. He is not alone! Crusoe has never been out of print and has been filmed several times. Alexander Selkirk was a famous real-life castaway whose story Defoe is likely to have known through Selkirk's rescuer, Captain Woodes Rogers. Selkirk ran away to sea to escape retribution for a series of misdemeanours and became a privateer, choosing to be set ashore from a ship he considered in danger of breaking up, and after four years was picked up by Woodes Rogers who was circumnavigating the world, the first captain to return with crew and vessel intact. Other possible influences were Robert Knox, who adopted native customs when shipwrecked on Sri Lanka, the explorer of Ascension Island, William Dampier, Captain Bligh, and the 60 slaves who were marooned for 15 years on Tromelin near Madagascar. The book looks at astonishing tales of survival in the face of adversity, down in Falklands, in the Caribbean and off the coast of Australia and how being a castaway brings out the best in some and in others the very worst, with stories of murder rape and betrayal. 151 pages, maps, photos in black and white and colour.

Sir Horace Wilson was chief adviser to the PM Neville Chamberlain at the time of the Munich crisis, and the policy of appeasing Hitler is always associated with the names of the two men. Wilson was a civil servant with no official cabinet role, reflecting Chamberlain's preference for seeking the advice of those outside official government decision-making. The chief enemy of appeasement was Winston Churchill, an unpopular figure in the Conservative party. Chamberlain's policy of averting war at all costs is often ascribed to the fact that he was buying time to allow Britain to rearm sufficiently to present a credible military challenge to the might of Germany, but the author's examination of the papers of the period reveals that Chamberlain and Wilson were together seeking to avert war entirely. When Wilson was sent to deliver a personal letter and encountered a shrieking rant from Hitler, he refused to be intimidated and Hitler told Wilson, "England could wish for no better friend than the Führer". At the time of Hitler's Nuremberg rally, as Wilson and Chamberlain agreed to try to avert the coming war by sacrificing the claim of Czechoslovakia to its provinces in the Sudetenland, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, began to realise that appeasement was futile. The abandonment of the Czechs under the Munich agreement created a conflict in the Conservative party which was finally resolved by the invasion of Poland and subsequent war. Wilson lost his job with Chamberlain's demotion and was subsequently unemployable. 448pp, photos.