Author: Simon Winder Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 1429923717 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
Bond. James Bond. The ultimate British hero--suave, stoic, gadget-driven--was, more than anything, the necessary invention of a traumatized country whose self-image as a great power had just been shattered by the Second World War. By inventing the parallel world of secret British greatness and glamour, Ian Fleming fabricated an icon that has endured long past its maker's death. In The Man Who Saved Britain, Simon Winder lovingly and ruefully re-creates the nadirs of his own fandom while illuminating what Bond says about sex, the monarchy, food, class, attitudes toward America, and everything in between. The result is an insightful and, above all, entertaining exploration of postwar Britain under the influence of the legendary Agent 007.
Author: Simon Winder Publisher: ISBN: Category : Great Britain Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
After victory in World War II, Britain was a relieved but also a profoundly traumatized country. Simon Winder, born into this nation of uncertain identity, fell in love (as many before and since) with the man created as the antidote, a quintessentially British figure of great cultural significance: James Bond.
Author: Mark Logue Publisher: Quercus Publishing ISBN: 0857384147 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Lionel Logue was a self-taught and almost unknown Australian speech therapist. Yet it was this outgoing, amiable man who almost single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain's greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love for Mrs Simpson. The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue's grandson and drawing exclusively from his grandfather Lionel's diaries and archive. This is an astonishing insight into the House of Windsor at the time of its greatest crisis. Never before has there been such a portrait of the British monarchy seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.
Author: Robin Prior Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 030018400X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 373
Book Description
From the comfortable distance of seven decades, it is quite easy to view the victory of the Allies over Hitler’s Germany as inevitable. But in 1940 Great Britain’s defeat loomed perilously close, and no other nation stepped up to confront the Nazi threat. In this cogently argued book, Robin Prior delves into the documents of the time—war diaries, combat reports, Home Security’s daily files, and much more—to uncover how Britain endured a year of menacing crises. The book reassesses key events of 1940—crises that were recognized as such at the time and others not fully appreciated. Prior examines Neville Chamberlain’s government, Churchill’s opponents, the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. He looks critically at the position of the United States before Pearl Harbor, and at Roosevelt’s response to the crisis. Prior concludes that the nation was saved through a combination of political leadership, British Expeditionary Force determination and skill, Royal Air Force and Navy efforts to return soldiers to the homeland, and the determination of the people to fight on “in spite of all terror.” As eloquent as it is controversial, this book exposes the full import of events in 1940, when Britain fought alone and Western civilization hung in the balance.
Author: Lynne Olson Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 1429923644 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 450
Book Description
A riveting history of the daring politicians who challenged the disastrous policies of the British government on the eve of World War II On May 7, 1940, the House of Commons began perhaps the most crucial debate in British parliamentary history. On its outcome hung the future of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government and also of Britain—indeed, perhaps, the world. Troublesome Young Men is Lynne Olson's fascinating account of how a small group of rebellious Tory MPs defied the Chamberlain government's defeatist policies that aimed to appease Europe's tyrants and eventually forced the prime minister's resignation. Some historians dismiss the "phony war" that preceded this turning point—from September 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, to May 1940, when Winston Churchill became prime minister—as a time of waiting and inaction, but Olson makes no such mistake, and describes in dramatic detail the public unrest that spread through Britain then, as people realized how poorly prepared the nation was to confront Hitler, how their basic civil liberties were being jeopardized, and also that there were intrepid politicians willing to risk political suicide to spearhead the opposition to Chamberlain—Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, and Lord Robert Cranborne among them. The political and personal dramas that played out in Parliament and in the nation as Britain faced the threat of fascism virtually on its own are extraordinary—and, in Olson's hands, downright inspiring.
Author: A.N. Wilson Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062749579 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 570
Book Description
In this companion biography to the acclaimed Victoria, A. N. Wilson offers a deeply textured and ambitious portrait of Prince Albert, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the royal consort’s birth. For more than six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great Empire at the height of its power. Beside her for more than twenty of those years was the love of her life, her trusted husband and father of their nine children, Prince Albert. But while Victoria is seen as the embodiment of her time, its values, and its paradoxes, it was Prince Albert, A. N. Wilson expertly argues, who was at the vanguard of Victorian Britain’s transformation as a vibrant and extraordinary center of political, technological, scientific, and intellectual advancement. Far more than just the product of his age, Albert was one of its influencers and architects. A composer, engineer, soldier, politician, linguist, and bibliophile, Prince Albert, more than any other royal, was truly a “genius.” It is impossible to understand nineteenth century England without knowing the story of this gifted visionary leader, Wilson contends. Albert lived only forty-two years. Yet in that time, he fathered the royal dynasties of Germany, Russia, Spain, and Bulgaria. Through Victoria, Albert and her German advisers pioneered the idea of the modern constitutional monarchy. In this sweeping biography, Wilson demonstrates that there was hardly any aspect of British national life which Albert did not touch. When he was made Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in his late twenties, it was considered as purely an honorific role. But within months, Albert proposed an extensive reorganization of university life in Britain that would eventually be adopted, making it possible to study science, languages, and modern history at British universities—a revolution in education that has changed the world. Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert’s voluminous correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue.
Author: Dilip Sarkar MBE Publisher: Air World ISBN: 1526795272 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
Adolph Gysbert Malan was born in Wellington, South Africa. A natural leader and driven individual with a totally positive outlook, aged fourteen Malan became an officer cadet in the South African Merchant Navy, before being commissioned into the Royal Navy Reserve. Well-travelled and worldly-wise, aged twenty-five the intrepid adventurer applied for a Short Service Commission in the RAF. Universally known as ‘Sailor’ in the RAF, Malan became a fighter pilot. Shortly after war was declared, Malan was involved in the infamous ‘Battle of Barking Creek’, in which 74 Squadron mistakenly destroyed friendly Hurricanes. Then, over Dunkirk in May 1940, Malan’s exceptional ability was immediately demonstrated in combat and a string of confirmed aerial victories rapidly accumulated. The following month, Malan scored the Spitfire’s first nocturnal kill. By August 1940 he was commanding 74 Squadron, which he led with great distinction during the Battle of Britain. In March 1941, Malan was promoted and became the first Wing Commander (Flying) at Biggin Hill, leading the three-squadron-strong Spitfire wing during operations over northern France. After a break from operations, Malan went on to command a succession of fighter training units, passing on his tactical genius and experience, and producing his famous ‘Ten Rules of Air Fighting’ which are still cited today. By the war’s end, Group Captain Malan was the RAF’s tenth top-scoring fighter pilot. Leaving the RAF in 1945 and returning to South Africa, he was disgusted by Apartheid and founded the ‘Torch Commando’ of ex-servicemen against this appalling racist policy. This part of Malan’s life is equally as inspirational, in fact, as his wartime service, and actually tells us more about the man than just his RAF record. Tragically, in 1963, he died, prematurely, aged just fifty-three, of Parkinson’s. Written with the support of the Malan family, this biography is the full story of a remarkable airman and politician.
Author: John Clarke Publisher: Policy Press ISBN: 1529227704 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 253
Book Description
This book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe. Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture. Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.
Author: Erik Larson Publisher: Crown ISBN: 038534872X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 609
Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Author: John Buckley Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300160356 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 548
Book Description
Historian John Buckley offers a radical reappraisal of Great Britain’s fighting forces during World War Two, challenging the common belief that the British Army was no match for the forces of Hitler’s Germany. Following Britain’s military commanders and troops across the battlefields of Europe, from D-Day to VE-Day, from the Normandy beaches to Arnhem and the Rhine, and, ultimately, to the Baltic, Buckley’s provocative history demonstrates that the British Army was more than a match for the vaunted Nazi war machine.div /DIVdivThis fascinating revisionist study of the campaign to liberate Northern Europe in the war’s final years features a large cast of colorful unknowns and grand historical personages alike, including Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery and the prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill. By integrating detailed military history with personal accounts, it evokes the vivid reality of men at war while putting long-held misconceptions finally to rest./DIV
Proudly powered by WordPress |
Theme: Rits Blog by Crimson Themes.
Author: Simon Winder
Author: Simon Winder
Author: Mark Logue
Author: Robin Prior
Author: Lynne Olson
Author: A.N. Wilson
Author: Dilip Sarkar MBE
Author: John Clarke
Author: Erik Larson
Author: John Buckley