Nancy Mitford was witty, intelligent, often acerbic, a great tease & an acute observer of upper-class English idiosyncrasies. With the publication of her novels, above all The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate & The Blessing, she became a huge bestseller & a household name. An inveterate writer of letters, she wrote almost daily to, among others, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Action, John Betjeman, Lord Berners, Lady Seafield, &, of course, her sisters
- a correspondence that lies at the base of this biography, written with the fullest cooperation of Nancy Mitford's family & friends. Selina Hastings captures equally the gaiety & frivolity & the unhappy truth of Nancy Mitford's life: her failed marriage & her long, unfulfilled relationship with 'the Colonel' contrasting sharply with literary celebrity & glittering social success. She has written a biography that is superbly entertaining & clear-eyed, of a life that Diana Mosley spoke of as being 'so sad one can hardly bear to contemplate it'.
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Keston Hall, Buckinghamshire, is the seat of the Lydiard family & the imposing setting for a compelling love story that begins in 1907.

Beautiful & spirited, Grace Merrill seems to stand with the world at her feet. But then, quite unexpectedly, a family tragedy obliges Grace to abandon her artistic talents & enter a life in service at the Hall. In this Upstairs Downstairs world of sadistic housekeepers & drunken butlers there is genuine hardship & drudgery for those employed in servicing the few.

But Grace soon discovers that she has another talent when, through the merest chance, she manages to escape from the kitchen to the nursery floor. Here she learns to love Lady Lydiard



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Keston Hall, Buckinghamshire, is the seat of the Lydiard family & the imposing setting for a compelling love story that begins in 1907.

Beautiful & spirited, Grace Merrill seems to stand with the world at her feet. But then, quite unexpectedly, a family tragedy obliges Grace to abandon her artistic talents & enter a life in service at the Hall. In this Upstairs Downstairs world of sadistic housekeepers & drunken butlers there is genuine hardship & drudgery for those employed in servicing the few.

But Grace soon discovers that she has another talent when, through the merest chance, she manages to escape from the kitchen to the nursery floor. Here she learns to love Lady Lydiard



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From Cosmopolitan Naples to the mysterious Pompeii, from enchanting Capri to the beautiful Ravello, the bluer-than-blue paradise of this coastline has been captivating visitors for over 2000 years. This fully updated edition of the guidebook has new archaeological tours & added nightlife listings for Capri in addition to its already extensive coverage of everything the visitor needs to plan the perfect trip. ...

Mc Lynn's life of Napoleon traces his extraordinary career, as well as the promethean legend he bequeathed, from his Corsican roots & the influential Bonaparte dynasty, through the years of the French Revolution & his military triumphs to his coronation in 1804 & his ultimate defeat & imprisonment. Particular emphasis is given to Napoleon's military genius & the astonishing feats of his Grande Armee, which radically altered the political shape of Europe, as well as to his civil achievements, as ruler of France. All means justified the end of Napoleonic ambition, & Mc Lynn is adept at interpreting the psycholgy that motivated Napoleon's genius, his errors & his stormy relationships with women. ...

Napoleon Bonaparte's character & achievements have always divided critics & commentators. In this compelling new biography Frank Mc Lynn draws on the most recent scholarship & throws a brilliant light on this most paradoxical of men
- as military leader, lover & emperor. Tracing Napoleon's extraordinary career, Mc Lynn examines the prometh-ean legend from the Corsican roots, through the years of the French Revolution & the military triumphs, to the coronation in 1804 & ultimate defeat & imprisonment. Napoleon the man emerges as an even more fascinating character than previously imagined, & Mc Lynn brilliantly reveals the extent to which he was both existential hero & plaything of Fate; mathematician & mystic; intellectual giant & moral pygmy; Great Man & deeply flawed human being.
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He took on Napoleon with a set of weapons that seemed unsuited to the task: flattery, courtesy & an alarmingly straight face. & he won. Quite as much as the Duke of Wellington it was the club-footed genius of French diplomacy who defeated the greatest conqueror since Julius Caesar. This is the story of Prince Talleyr&, who attracts as much scorn as Napoleon wins glory. To his critics the arch-aristocrat who delivered France & all Europe from the Emperor's follies is the prince of vice
- turncoat, hypocrite, liar, plotter, God-baiter & womanizer, &, to make matters worse, highly successful at them all.

In this life of the master diplomat, David Lawday follows Talleyrand's remarkable career through the most turbulent age Europe has known
- the mad leap from France's rotting ancien régime into the Revolution of 1789, Robespierre's Terror, Napoleon's epic wars & dramatic fall, & on through restored kings to more revolution. The performance by ' Old Talley', as a suspicious England called him, peaks in an extraordinarily perverse relationship with Napoleon which this book for the first time explores in intimate detail. Their bond had to be mutually faithless: Napoleon lived for war & conquest, Talleyrand for peace, comfort & the civilised French way of life.

The richly flawed & abundantly gifted character laid bare by David Lawday is the man to whom diplomats continue to look today for the subtlest tricks of the negotiator's art. A good 150 years before a united Europe came into being, Talleyrand's actions laid the ground for it
- as they have for a permanent peace now enduring for two centuries between France & her oldest enemy, Britain.






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