A BBC Radio Four Book of the Week, part biography, part literary criticism, part exploration of Scottish identity, this is by far the best book on Sir Walter Scott. No writer has ever been as famous as Scott once was and none ever enjoyed such huge acclaim followed by such absolute neglect and outright hostility. But Scotland would not be Scotland except for Scott. All the icons of Scottishness have their roots in his novels, poems, public events and histories and it's a legacy both inspiring and constraining and just one of the ironies that fuse Scott and Scotland. Stuart Kelly reveals the paradox - the celebrity unknown, the nationalist unionist, the aristocrat loved by communists, the forward-looking reactionary. Part surreptitious autobiography, Stuart Kelly unveils a complex and contradictory man and the complex country he created in his witty and melancholy 'Voyage around my Fatherland' like no other. Sir Walter Scott was passionate, wholly European and the first truly global writer, heralded as inventing the historical novel. Chapters include The Royal Mile, Minstrelsy, Waverley, Ghosts, Ivanhoe, Captain Clutterbuck, Balmorality, Tartanry and Scotlandshire and The Last Works among them. 328pp, paperback.

A major biography of James McNeill Whistler, one of the most intriguing and complex and important of America's artists. The first biography in more than 20 years makes use of the artist's private correspondence to tell the story of his life and work. This engaging personal history dispels the popular notion of Whistler (1834-1903) as merely a combative, eccentric and unrelenting publicity seeker, a man as renowned for his public feuds with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin as for the iconic portrait of his mother. Revealed here is an intense, introspective and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing. 'The biography recounts Whistler's career in chronological order, is generous with detail and keeps psychological speculation to a minimum' - Michael Prodger. There are three thick wedges of plates so that the paintings are on hand to study. 107 illustrations in total, many in colour in this glamorous Yale University Press outsize softback, 440pp.

Painter, poet, immigrant, rebel and global citizen, born in Lebanon, Kahlil Gibran emigrated to America as a young man in the 1890s, where he became a successful artist and prose poet. His book The Prophet of 1923 became a worldwide bestseller, selling 40 million copies and being translated into more than 40 languages. It is a series of 26 philosophical essays written in poetic English prose, and as a writer, Gibran encouraged a renaissance in Arab literature. As an artist he painted hundreds of canvases including portraits of artistic celebrities. Raised a Maronite Catholic, his spirituality and thought embraces elements of other traditions including Sufi mysticism and the Baha'i faith. From his childhood and spiritual roots in Mount Lebanon, to the city wilderness of urban America, from his apprenticeships in the creative circles of Boston, Beirut, Paris and New York to his art and activism for Greater Syria, Gibran crafted a religiously inclusive art that embraced a universal message, informed by Christian, Islamic and Judaic elements. Exiled between the worlds of the Middle East and the West, he defied boundaries to assert a vision of an underlying humanity and faith that all people can share. This richly illustrated biography draws on a lifetime of dedicated research to tell his compelling story and how his determination and talent broke down barriers to forge a new and fruitful life and career in a new homeland. A splendid tome of 524pp with many illustrations plus eight pages of colour plates including his beautiful oil paintings Family Scene and Ages of Women. 24.8 x 18.7cm x 5cm deep, this really is a whopping heavyweight tome complete with elegant pagemarker.

For this unusual literary study, Sir Jonathan Bate, expert on Shakespeare and much else, takes the star-crossed figures of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, separated by a century, and gives them a double biography in the tradition of the classical biographer Plutarch, using each one's life story to draw out illuminating similarities and differences. Both writers cherished an unconsummated passion for an unattainable woman, in Keats's case for his neighbour Fanny Brawne, for whom he wrote the celebrated sonnet "Bright star!". Poems such as "St Agnes' Eve" describe lovers who are divided by circumstance, a theme Keats shares with Scott Fitzgerald. For Fitzgerald the unattainable woman was Ginevra King, whom he met when he was 18 and a student at Princeton. In spite of expressions of intense devotion, Ginevra belonged to a different class and six months after breaking with Fitzgerald she married a wealthy businessman. In an early short story the student Horace Tarbox is seduced from his studies by the ethereal chorus girl Marcia Meadows, and Ginevra was also immortalised as the unattainable Daisy in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald revered Keats and his novel Tender is the Night takes its title from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, while Keats's own inspiration was Shakespearean, as can be seen in early poems such as Endymion. When Keats left school he was apprenticed to a surgeon and in spite of enjoying some success never wavered in his vocation: "I think I shall be among the English poets after my death," as he memorably wrote. When Keats nursed his brother Tom who died of TB he had a suspicion that he might follow, and his journey to Rome with Joseph Severn was made in the knowledge that he was unlikely to return. Bate's analysis of both writers' work is challenging and perceptive, the biographical detail fully integrated. 415pp, illustrations.

'The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology' is the sub-title of this multiple biography of five women who arrived at the University of Oxford determined to study remote communities a world away from their own. Barbara Freire-Marreco travelled to New Mexico and Arizona in 1910 and 1913. Katherine Routledge voyaged to Easter Island in 1913-16 and to French Polynesia, south of Ecuador to Mangareva 1921-23. Maria Czaplicka journeyed from Paris through Moscow and Minusinsk to Golchikha in Siberia 1914-15. Winifred Blackman travelled from London to Cairo via Venice and Corfu in 1920-39. Beatrice Blackwood took a voyage from Port Said via Columbo, Sydney and through New Caledonia to Papua New Guinea to Melanesia in 1929 and also to the Solomon Islands 1929-30 and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea 1936-38. These are the voyages as mapped in colour on the endpapers and there are 28 further illustrations in the text showing the intrepid travellers taking tea with local officials or in a family group photograph on a rare visit home, travelling in a wicker carriage through Siberia or as students on an Archaeology summer camp. In the unchartered interiors of New Guinea amid uprisings along the Nile and on remote Easter Island, they found new freedoms and bore witness to now-vanished worlds. Through their work they overturned some of the most pernicious myths that dogged their gender, and proved that women could be explorers and scientists too. Yet when they returned to England they found only loss, madness and regret waiting for them. Following the lives of her subjects through women's suffrage, two world wars and into the second half of the 20th century, Larson's masterful biography is a revelatory portrait of a pioneering quintet who went on search of nomadic reindeer-herders who had never before seen a European woman or to work in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona or to live in the New Guinea interior with warriors who still made their weapons from wood and stone. Their travels were sensationalised in the press. These five women were not simply adventurers, they were intellectual pioneers, professional anthropologists who set out to study human cultural diversity as part of an academic community. On her return from Siberia, Maria Czaplicka was given a lectureship at Oxford, but she lost her job when the male lecturer she had replaced came home at the end of the war. Routledge married a man who shared her intellectual interests, but when their marriage fell apart, she had no recourse when he secured a High Court order to take control of her formidable assets. Anthropology offered all five women an escape and field work a temporary relief from the strictures of English society and in new cultures an opportunity to negotiate their own identity. 337pp, illus.

A seminal historical work, demonstrating the horror of slavery and the particular problems faced by female slaves, it is an autobiographical narrative of Harriet Ann Jacobs, a runaway slave who originally wrote under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Jacobs/Brent escaped slavery in the American South to become an abolitionist, writer and activist. It is difficult to read passages like the man procreating with his female slaves just to increase his stock and the casual cruelty of slave owners and traders, emotional and physical, and the absolute denial of humanity in slaves who were often told that they were not human, their families split up, selling children away from parents and siblings and raising slave children of the owner alongside his wife's children to be slaves to their siblings. There are however small acts of kindness shown by various people and Harriet gains freedom for herself and her children and act as beacons of hope in a dark place. First published in 1861. 255 page paperback reprint.

The American-British historian who specialises in the medieval world of the Mediterranean and the Middle East holds MA degrees from Oxford and University College London and here tells the untold story of the trailblazing dynasty of royal women who dared to rule the Middle East. In 1187, Saladin's armies besieged the Holy City of Jerusalem. He had previously annihilated Jerusalem's army at the Battle of Hattin, and behind the city's high walls, a last-ditch defence was being led by an unlikely trio including Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem. They could not resist Saladin, but if they were lucky they could negotiate terms that would save the lives of the city's inhabitants. Queen Sibylla was the last of a line of formidable female rulers in the Crusader States of Outremer. Yet for all the books written about the Crusades, one aspect is conspicuously absent - the stories of women. Queens and princesses tend to be presented as passive transmitters of land and royal blood but in reality women ruled, conducted diplomatic negotiations, made military decisions, forged allegiances, rebelled and undertook architectural projects. Sibylla's grandmother Queen Melisende was the first queen to seize upon real political agency in Jerusalem and rule in her own right. She outmanoeuvred both her husband and son to seize real power in her kingdom, and was a force to be reckoned with in the politics of the medieval Middle East. The lives of her Armenian mother, her three sisters and their daughters and granddaughters were no less intriguing. This is a rich and fresh history and an impressive feat of research into Crusader history. 250pp, maps and illus., chapters include Morphia and the Four Princesses, Alice, the Rebel Princess of Antioch, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Constance of Antioch and Agnes and Sibylla. 2022 publication.

'Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness' is the sub-title of this revelatory and revisionist biography of the renowned inventor of the telephone, and powerful enemy of the deaf community. 'Deaf people who couldn't speak were often referred to as monkeys, or prehuman. I didn't know that the chief person behind the campaign to keep deaf children from learning ASL (American Sign Language) was the man who most people thought of differently, pleasantly, as the inventor of the telephone. Or that the movement he led would change forever what was expected of the deaf.' When Alexander Graham Bell first unveiled his telephone to the world, it was considered miraculous, but few people know that it was inspired by another supposed miracle - his work teaching deaf people to speak. He was the son of one deaf woman and husband to another, motivated by a desire to empower deaf people by integrating them into the hearing world. But he ended up becoming their most powerful enemy, waging a war against sign language and deaf culture that still rages today. The book tells the dual stories of Bell's remarkable, world-changing invention and his dangerous ethnocide of deaf culture and language. It also charts the rise of deaf activism and tells the triumphant tale of a community reclaiming a once-forbidden language. In 1863 at the age of 16, Bell first started work on his speaking machine, with a mechanical body like an organ with keys to depress different portions and exhale full words. His father Alexander Melville Bell was an elocutionist who was designing a universal phonetic alphabet, one that would be able to document any sound in any language. Melville called his alphabet Visible Speech, because it acted as an instructional guide on how to shape the mouth into different sounds. Each symbol was part of a code of where to put the tongue in the mouth, how to breath, how open the lips should be. Well researched, it is a timely reminder of the flawed humanity that lies behind so much of our technological innovation. 402pp.

A two-generation saga of the Manners family, Resolution shares the history of John Masters, Marquis of Granby, who famously led a cavalry charge during the Seven Years' War and his two sons - Charles, who was involved in Whig politics and reconciling with American rebels during their War for Independence, and Robert, who embarked on a naval career and became the post-captain of the Resolution as he commanded a major line-of-battle ship in the largest British fleet ever to operate so far from home waters up to that date. Admire the achievements of the brothers, from Charles balancing the debates of the influence of British 'king and Parliament' in America, but also the seeming increase in 'Royal authority' in Britain at the expense of British people's own 'life, liberty and property', to Robert's improvement of the armed, 74-gun Resolution under his command which he wrote about, claiming it 'to be the fastest sailer of any line battle ship or frigate in the West Indies.' Discover how John Masters, Marquis of Granby, became a hero after the Seven Years War because he was, unusually for the time, generous and concerned for his men, giving him the titles of 'mob's hero' and 'father of the army' and inspiring works such as 'The British Hero', which was written by Richard Rolt and set to music by William Boyce. Learn how Granby was passionate about fox hunting at Belvoir Castle and breeding racehorses at the family sitting Chevely Park in Cambridgeshire, and find out how he struggled in the political sphere as he would 'tremble like a woman' whenever he was about to public speak - despite holding an elected seat in the House of Commons. The lives of the two brothers are eloquently interwoven, whether writing about Charles' hesitation at ending the war with American rebels so promptly as it would blight his younger brother's chances at a rapid promotion, discussing how Charles' inheritance of land and title meant he could help young Robert accrue funds to live ashore in London and allow the brothers to grow closer, or reflecting on Charles' decision to stay at Cheveley Park to canvass on behalf of Robert's electoral prospects while he was at sea after 1780. Vivid images range from landscapes of an English man-of-war entering Portsmouth Harbour by Dominic Serres, 'A view of Belvoir Castle from the South West with Belvoir Hunt in Full Cry' by Thomas Badeslade in 1730, and 'The Battle of the Saintes', 12 April 1782 by Lieutenant William Elliott RN, to portraits including John Manners in the uniform of the Royal Horse Guards (the blues) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, a pastel commissioned by Granby of Charles aged eighteen by Hugh Douglas Hamilton in 1771, and Robert aged fourteen in midshipman's uniform by Hamilton completed in 1772 when Robert decided to join the Royal Navy. Family tree and glossary, maps, black and white and colour images, pagemarker, 482pp.

Immortalised as the dashing Patrice de Sauveterre in Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love, Gaston Palewski was Nancy's lover in the war years when her marriage was disintegrating. Nancy's husband, the good-looking Honourable Peter Rodd ("Prod"), was universally regarded as unbelievably boring, a view Nancy shared. This lively and readable double biography recounts the intertwined lives of Nancy and Gaston. The six Mitford sisters are the stuff of legend and in her teenage years Nancy shared the Fascist sympathies of her sisters Diana and Unity, but at some point Nancy saw the light and during the war was requested by a friend at the War Office to infiltrate the Free French Officers' Club. De Gaulle had set up the Free French headquarters in London at 4 Carlton Gardens, and Gaston was de Gaulle's right hand man, escaping to England from Tangiers at the start of the French occupation. While De Gaulle would dine at the Ritz, the Connaught or the Savoy, Gaston preferred the Dorchester or the Travellers' club, though he wearied of London life and briefly returned to command the Free French forces in North Africa. Nancy met Gaston in 1942, both of them habitues of London's upper class bomb shelter, "the Dorch". He was everything a classic French lover should be, sensitive, someone who actually liked women, a good lover. After the war Nancy went to live in Paris, where she wrote prolifically, while her romance with Gaston gradually subsided into friendship. The affair provided Nancy with many memorable scenes in her novels, for instance the corridor-creeping at country house parties, and Nancy also drew on the experiences of her friends Diana Cooper and Diana Mosley, neither of whose marriages were monogamous. A fascinating portrait of an era. 290pp. Remainder mark, US import.