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This is the first biography of the fateful relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It was the defining relationship of their lives, and marked the intersection of the great Tudor and Stuart dynasties, a landmark event in British history.Distinguished biographer Jane Dunn reveals an extraordinary story of two queens ruling in one isle, both embodying opposing qualities of character, ideals of womanliness and of divinely ordained kingship. Theirs is a drama of sex and power, recklessness, ambition and political intrigue, with a rivalry that could only be resolved by death.As regent queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were deplored for their femininity, compared unfavourably with each other, and courted by the same men. By placing this dynamic and ever-changing relationship at the centre of the book, Dunn throws new light and meaning on the complexity of their natures. She reveals an Elizabeth revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone, while Mary is not the romantic victim of history, but a courageous adventurer with a reckless heart. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two, she was untroubled by plotting Elizabeth’s murder. Elizabeth, however, was in anguish at having to sanction Mary’s death warrant for treason.Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, she lets them speak to us across more than four hundred years, their voices and responses surprisingly familiar to our own, their characters vivid, by turns touching and terrible.

Longlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction; both conservative and subversive, Burke’s beliefs have never been more relevant, as MP Jesse Norman explains.Philosopher, statesman, and founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke is both the greatest and most under-rated political thinker of the past three-hundred years. Born in Ireland in 1729, and greatly affected by its bigotry and extremes, his career constituted a lifelong struggle against the abuse of power.Amid the 18th century’s golden generation that included his companions Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon, Burke’s controversial mixture of conservative and subversive theories made him first a marginal figure, and finally a revered theorist – a hero of the Romantics. He warned of the effects of British rule in Ireland, the loss of the American colonies, and most famously, he foresaw the disastrous consequences of revolution in France. This he predicted, would trigger extremism, terror and the atomisation of society – a profound analysis that continues to resonate today.In this absorbing new biography Conservative MP Jesse Norman gives us Burke anew, vividly depicting his dazzling intellect, imagination and empathy against the rich tapestry of 18th century Europe. Burke’s wisdom, Norman shows, applies well beyond the times of empire to the conventional democratic politics practised in Britain and America today. We cannot understand the defects of the modern world, or modern politics, without him.

The new face of risky drinking is female. The problem: a global epidemic of bingeing. The solution: a brave new approach to female recovery.This is my story, and it's particular. But I am not alone. Drinking problems challenge a growing number of women.The new reality: binge drinking is increasing among young adults – and women are largely responsible for this trend. Women’s buying power has been growing for decades, and their decision-making authority has grown as well. The alcohol industry, well aware of this reality, is now battling for women’s downtime – and their brand loyalty.Our relationship with alcohol is complex, and growing more so. This book will be essential reading for a huge number of women, a book that's breaks a major taboo. This will be a book for best friends to give one another, mothers to give daughters, sisters to give to each other – a book to read in hiding, when you know you're in trouble. This book will offer companionship for women of every age. It will answer a myriad tough questions.Intimate and startlingly honest, ‘Drink’ will be a book to change the lives of women of all ages – and those who love them. A book for anyone who thinks they have a problem, or knows someone who may have a problem, and wants to know more. Which means: just about everyone.

Max Hastings's account of his family's tumultuous 20th century experiences embraces the worlds of fashion and newspapers, theatre and TV, pioneering in Africa and even – his father's most exotic 1960 stunt – being cast away on a desert island in the Indian Ocean.The author is the son of broadcaster and adventurer Macdonald Hastings and journalist and gardening writer Anne Scott-James. One of his grandfathers was a literary editor while the other wrote plays and essays, and penned an enchanting memoir of his own Victorian childhood. His great-uncle was an African hunter who wrote poetry and became one of Max's heroes. The author tells a richly picaresque story, featuring guest appearances by a host of celebrities from Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad to John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster, who became Anne Scott-James's third husband. 'All families are dysfunctional', Anne asserted impenitently to Max, but the Hastings’ managed to be more dysfunctional than most. His father roamed the world for newspapers and as a presenter for BBC TV's legendary Tonight programme, while his mother edited ‘Harper's Bazaar’, became a famous columnist and wrote best-selling gardening books.Here, the author brings together this remarkable cast of forebears, 'a tribe of eccentrics', as he himself characterises them. By turns moving, dramatic and comic, the book portrays Max's own childhood fraught with rows and explosions, in which the sudden death of a television set was only one highlight. His story will make a lot of people laugh and perhaps a few cry. It helps to explain why Max Hastings, whose family has produced more than eighty books over three generations, felt bound to follow their path of high adventure and popular journalism.

Written with self-excoriating candour and the driest humour, comes a book about being a dad from one of our best loved journalists.“For me the hardest task of fatherhood was always the oppressive obligation to lead by example. My sons have been present on countless occasions when I have, as we say in my homeland, completely lost my shit. During these stressful moments I have often wished to turn to them as a judge might to a jury and say, “Please strike the next few minutes from the record”, but many of those instances are chronicled in these pages. It’s not because I’m any less ashamed now; it’s because if I left them out there wouldn’t be enough for a book.Perhaps this is my life’s true purpose: maybe I’m here to teach my sons that self-esteem comes and goes – it can get rolled right out of you at short notice – but that you still can get by in life without any, as long as you don’t want to be a contestant on The Apprentice. That, at least, is my experience. And for what it’s worth, my example.”

As Lance Armstrong’s precipitous fall from grace continues, New York Times sports reporter Juliet Macur takes the reader behind the scenes to bring you the astonishing twists and turns of an outrage that has rocked the world of cycling.With unprecedented access to the key players in the drama – from Armstrong’s fellow cyclists and top cycling officials to doctors, trainers and wives – ‘Cycle of Lies’ reveals how Armstrong built a fortress of people around him to protect his image and upend the lives of anybody who stood in his way.As America’s fallen idol faces potential perjury charges, ‘Cycle of Lies’ widens the focus to expose corruption at all levels of the sport in a thrilling, page-turning work of contemporary narrative history.

A revealing and witty new examination of how Agatha Christie became the world’s most successful and popular female playwright, including details of never-before-published scripts and stories.Agatha Christie is revered worldwide for her books and her many film and TV adaptations. Less well-known today is her extraordinary repertoire of stage plays that firmly established her as the most successful female dramatist of all time.Now Julius Green raises the curtain on Agatha Christie’s towering contribution to popular theatre, from her first serious attempts at playwriting – in a very different style to the whodunits for which she became famous – to her record-breaking achievements in the West End and her conquest of Broadway. Astonishing revelations about this often disregarded side of her life are illustrated with extracts from hitherto unknown plays, deleted scenes from her theatrical classics, and unpublished private letters, including her extensive correspondence with the legendary ‘Mousetrap Man’, theatrical impresario Sir Peter Saunders.Meticulously researched and full of groundbreaking discoveries, this book adds a fascinating new layer to Agatha Christie’s remarkable story.

A powerful and inspiring book from the founders of IDEO, the award-winning design firm, on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us.Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the ‘creative types’. But two of the foremost experts in innovation, design and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative.In an entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, and with many of the world's top companies and design firms, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, allow us to think outside the box in terms of how we approach and solve problems.‘Creative Confidence’ is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.