Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Politics & Activism

Oleg Gordievsky was the highest ranking KGB officer ever to work for Britain. For 11 years, he acted as a secret agent, reporting to the British Secret Intelligence Service while continuing to work as a KGB officer. He gave such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the whole system of Soviet government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism. 

In the first volume of this epic new series, Alison Weir strips away centuries of romantic mythology and prejudice to reveal the lives of England's queens in the century after the Norman Conquest. Beginning with Matilda of Flanders, who supported William the Conqueror in 1066, to the turbulent life of the Empress Maud, who claimed to be queen of England in her own right and fought a bitter war to that end, the five Norman queens emerge as hugely influential figures and fascinating characters.

In A Royal Duty, Paul Burrell reveals the truth about Princess Diana, as well as a faithful account of her thoughts. He was the favourite footman who formed a unique relationship with the Queen. He was the butler who the Princess of Wales called "my rock" and "the only man I can trust". He was accused of theft, then acquitted following the historic intervention of the monarch. He was the Princess' most intimate confidant.

A unique investigation of the most important cases of the twentieth century, this exploration of the world's most glamorous and dangerous job - including information newly released under the Freedom of Information Act - will keep you enthralled until the last page. Neil Root's insightful book focuses on the personalities of many enigmatic figures, discusses their motivations and influences, and asks whether they were heroes, traitors or just scapegoats.

From pop culture and politics to tourism and heritage, and from the Jazz Age to the climate crisis, it's impossible to imagine the twentieth century without the discovery of Tutankhamun - yet so much of the story remains untold. Here, for the first time, Christina Riggs weaves compelling historical analysis with tales of lives touched by an encounter with Tutankhamun, including her own. Treasured offers a bold new history of the young pharaoh who has as much to tell us about our world as his own.

A balanced account of game changes, conflicts and ambitions. The fall from popular grace of the previously adulated brother of the heir to the British throne as a consequence of his marriage to a beautiful and dynamic Hollywood starlet of colour makes for fascinating listening in best-selling royal author Lady Colin Campbell's balanced account. Lady Colin knows her royal history and psychology, and as the first seven years of her adult life were spent in the USA, she has a foot in both the American and British camps. 

Brunhild was a Visigothic 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 sixth-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 for decades, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes.

One of the most comprehensive oral histories of apartheid, Mandela: An Audio History tells the story of the struggle against apartheid. It weaves together more than 50 first-person interviews with an unprecedented collection of archival sound: a rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela’s life sentence; a visit between Mandela and his family secretly taped by a prison guard; and pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Congress.

After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that's made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he's been up to for the past twenty years—and it isn't pretty. Elwood has worked for a murderer's row of clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar—namely, the bad guys. In All the Worst Humans, Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the public—not shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career.

You already know the stereotypes. The strong, independent woman who strips to support her own sumptuous lifestyle choices; the smart, sassy student who strips to pay her way through university; or the savvy immigrant who sends money to her family back home. Or what about the wayward party girl rebelling against her strict upbringing, or the single-mum raising her child with precious little in the way of resources?

Here is the first full-length biography of a much maligned but astonishingly colourful Queen of England. In Newgate Street, in the city of London, stand the meagre ruins of Christ Church. On the same site once stood a royal mausoleum set to rival Westminster Abbey in the 14th century. Among the many crowned heads buried there was Isabella of France, Edward II's queen - one of the most notorious femme fatales in history. But how did she acquire her evil reputation? And is it justified?

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

The remarkable, moving story of Prince Philip's mother by eminent biographer Hugo Vickers, updated in this new edition - for fans of Kingmaker and The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse Princess Alice, mother of Prince Phillip, was something of a mystery figure even within her own...

'Money is handy for doing messages' was a phrase the young Tommie Gorman heard from his father, growing up in Sligo in the 1960s. Struggle was never far away but their household had a surplus of love and warmth. From modest beginnings as a local reporter at the Western Journal, where his deadlines were dependent on the bus schedule, Tommie landed at RTÉ, taking up the post of North-West correspondent in 1980. Over the next four decades he became a familiar presence in Irish homes, known for his coverage of Europe and Northern Ireland.

A biography of the remarkable, and in her time scandalous, seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicized affair with the poet Lord Byron—he was 24, she 26. Her phrase 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' became his lasting epitaph. Antonia Fraser's biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know.

After his sudden rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most dramatic period of British history in almost a century. From the controversial prorogation of Parliament in August 2019 to the historic landslide victory later that year, the agonising upheaval of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic—and the scandals unleashed by both—the Afghanistan crisis, and the conflict in Ukraine, Johnson's premiership was more turbulent than any other in living memory.

Matt Hancock served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from 2018 to 2021, leading the UK government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, the biggest health crisis the country, and the world, has faced for generations. This unique book, based on the author's contemporaneous records of those extraordinary months, candidly recounts firs-hand the most important events and decisions as they unfolded throughout this unprecedented global emergency. Pandemic Diaries provides the definitive account of Britain's battle to turn the tide against COVID-19.

Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England's fourteenth-century consorts. Using personal letters and wonderfully vivid sources, Alison Weir evokes the lives of five remarkable queens: Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois.

The true story of the White House Plumbers, a secret unit inside Nixon's White House, their ill-conceived plans to stop the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, and how they led to Watergate and the President's demise.