John Murray
Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire
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The Bonaparte clan depicted in Flora Fraser’s biography could rival any reality TV family for scandal. Pauline Bonaparte is thought to have ...Read Review
An Incomplete Revenge
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As a Maisie Dobbs newcomer, for me this book was a revelation. It is fresh, unpretentious, and totally gripping. Unlike her other books—...Read Review
The Creator’s Map
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For the first few chapters, this is a Da Vinci Code-style thriller. Rival groups of unscrupulous men from sinister organisations (Himmler’s SS, ...Read Review
The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite
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Born to a cabaret singer but orphaned in scandalous circumstances, Lilly is alone in the world. She is brought up at St. Xavier’...Read Review
The Gaol: The Story of Newgate, London’s Most Notorious Prison
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Forget Alcatraz, the Bastille, or the Black Hole of Calcutta: the most notorious prison in history was surely Newgate. For over a century ...Read Review
A Voyage Long and Strange
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This is a travelogue rather than a history book, written by a journalist, not an historian. The Voyage Long and Strange is a ...Read Review
The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English
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This is not a history of the English language, despite the subtitle. There is little about grammar and syntax and nothing at all ...Read Review
Leningrad: State of Siege
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The city that was Leningrad for seventy years is St Petersburg again, and trades mainly on its imperial past. But an eternal flame ...Read Review
Boss of Bosses
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This is the story of Bernardo Provenzano, Italy’s most notorious criminal. Provenzano was initiated into the Mafia in the 1950s when, for ...Read Review
Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death
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This is the second in a series featuring Oscar Wilde as detective. The plot starts as a game at a dinner party where ...Read Review