As the Second World War neared its conclusion, Germany was a nation reduced to rubble: 3.6 million German homes had been destroyed leaving 7.5 million people homeless; an apocalyptic landscape of flattened cities & desolate wastelands. In May 1945 Germany surrendered, & Britain, America, Soviet Russia & France set about rebuilding their zones of occupation. Most urgent for the Allies in this divided, defeated country were food, water & sanitation, but from the start they were anxious to provide for the minds as well as the physical needs of the German people. Reconstruction was to be cultural as well as practical: denazification & re-education would be key to future peace & the arts crucial in modelling alternative, less militaristic, ways of life. Germany was to be reborn; its citizens as well as its cities were to be reconstructed; the mindset of the Third Reich was to be obliterated. When, later that year, twenty-two senior Nazis were put in the dock at Nuremberg, writers & artists including Rebecca West, Evelyn Waugh, John Dos Passos & Laura Knight were there to tell the world about a trial intended to ensure that tyrannous dictators could never again enslave the people of Europe. & over the next four years, many of the foremost writers & filmmakers of their generation were dispatched by Britain & America to help rebuild the country their governments had spent years bombing. Among them, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell, Lee Miller, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder & Humphrey Jennings. The Bitter Taste of Victory traces the experiences of these figures & through their individual stories offers an entirely fresh view of post-war Europe. Never before told, this is a brilliant, important & utterly mesmerising history of cultural transformation. ...

As the Second World War neared its conclusion, Germany was a nation reduced to rubble: 3.6 million German homes had been destroyed leaving 7.5 million people homeless; an apocalyptic landscape of flattened cities & desolate wastelands. In May 1945 Germany surrendered, & Britain, America, Soviet Russia & France set about rebuilding their zones of occupation. Most urgent for the Allies in this divided, defeated country were food, water & sanitation, but from the start they were anxious to provide for the minds as well as the physical needs of the German people. Reconstruction was to be cultural as well as practical: denazification & re-education would be key to future peace & the arts crucial in modelling alternative, less militaristic, ways of life. Germany was to be reborn; its citizens as well as its cities were to be reconstructed; the mindset of the Third Reich was to be obliterated. When, later that year, twenty-two senior Nazis were put in the dock at Nuremberg, writers & artists including Rebecca West, Evelyn Waugh, John Dos Passos & Laura Knight were there to tell the world about a trial intended to ensure that tyrannous dictators could never again enslave the people of Europe. & over the next four years, many of the foremost writers & filmmakers of their generation were dispatched by Britain & America to help rebuild the country their governments had spent years bombing. Among them, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell, Lee Miller, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder & Humphrey Jennings. The Bitter Taste of Victory traces the experiences of these figures & through their individual stories offers an entirely fresh view of post-war Europe. Never before told, this is a brilliant, important & utterly mesmerising history of cultural transformation. ...

Shahid is a clean-cut student, trying to make an impression on his college lecturer, Deedee Osgood, who gives his spirits a lift when she takes him to a naked rave party. Shahid`s academic prospects are threatened by the intervention of his gangster brother Chili, who, with his Armani suits & Gucci loafers, moves into Shahid`s bedsit as a hideout, bringing unnecessary danger & excitement with him. Set in London in 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin wall & the fatwah, The Black Album is a thriller with a characteristically lively background: raves, ecstasy, religious ferment & sexual passion in a dangerous time. ...

The Black Book is Orhan Pamuk`s tour de force, a stunning tapestry of Middle Eastern & Islamic culture which confirmed his ...

In July 1940, Walter Schellenberg of the German Secret Service drew up a list of 2, 694 people believed to be living in Britain, who were known enemies of the Reich. In that month, the Wehrmacht was poised across the Channel ready to hit Britain with blitzkrieg, the terrible & hugely successful tactic that had already overwhelmed Pol&, Denmark, Norway, Holl&, Luxembourg, Belgium & France. The names on Schellenberg`s list represent the heart & soul of a nation that made the British what they were but the list also

Includes:: a diaspora from Europe
- the intellectuals, politicians & writers who had been driven out of their own homelands by the speed of the German conquests. All human life is there
- lives that were, to the Nazis, unworthy of life. Historians have found the list a curiosity. Surely, it cannot be real? It was. The Black Book is the first book to evaluate the list, & look at the chilling reality of what Hitler had in store for the nation.



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” Completely absorbing”. (Amanda Foreman). ” Enthralling”. (Guardian). ” The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of course are fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration for the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas` own father, Alex
- the son of a marquis & a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from private in the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown up among slaves, he was all for Liberty & Equality. Alex Dumas was the stuff of legend”. (Daily Mail). So how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why are there no statues of ` Monsieur Humanity` as his troops called him? The Black Count uncovers what happened & the role Napoleon played in Dumas` downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas
- from Haiti to the Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto
- Reiss, like the novelist before him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero. ” Entrances from first to last. Dumas the novelist would be proud”. (Independent). ” Brilliant”. (Glasgow Herald).


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` The Black Door` explores the evolving relationship between successive British prime ministers & the intelligence agencies, from Asquith`s Secret Service Bureau to Cameron`s National Security Council. At the beginning of the 20th Century the British intelligence system was underfunded & lacked influence in government. But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war. Now, covert action is incorporated seamlessly into government policy, & the Prime Minister is kept constantly updated by intelligence agencies. But how did intelligence come to influence our government so completely? ` The Black Door` explores the murkier corridors of No. 10 Downing Street, chronicling the relationships between intelligence agencies & the Prime Ministers of the last century. From Churchill`s code-breakers feeding information to the Soviets to Eden`s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, from Wilson`s paranoia of an MI5-led coup d`etat to Thatcher`s covert wars in Central America, Aldrich & Cormac entertain & enlighten as they explain how our government came to rely on intelligence to the extent that it does today. ...

Maybe it was time I forgot about Nico Peterson, & his sister, & the Cahuilla Club, & Clare Cavendish. Clare? The rest would be easy to put out of my mind, but not the black-eyed blonde.. . It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, Private Detective Philip Marlowe is as restless & lonely as ever, & business is a little slow. Then a new client arrives: young, beautiful, & expensively dressed, Clare Cavendish wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. Soon Marlowe will find himself not only under the spell of the Black-Eyed Blonde; but tangling with one of Bay City`s richest families
- & developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.. .
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This exquisite 40cm (16) illuminated globe is constructed from a glass-like material, held in a stainless steel half meridian & base. The sturdy globe is modelled to show raised relief for land areas & is coloured to portray the physical geography/land vegetation & the bathymetric detail of the ocean floor. Illumination accentuates the colour contrast but does not reveal any further detail. ...

Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, & then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, & dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, & society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent & invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black h&. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press & heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Standing between the American public & the Black Hand`s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the ” Italian Sherlock Holmes, ” he was a famously dogged & ingenious detective, & a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre & the Black Hand`s activities spread far beyond New York`s borders, Petrosino & the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country`s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino`s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand`s power would take him all the way to Sicily-but at a terrible cost. Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best. ...