Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Europe

The crown of England is the oldest surviving political institution in Europe. Throughout this audiobook Dr David Starkey emphasises the Crown's endless capacity to adapt to circumstances and reshape national policy, whilst he unmasks the personalities and achievements, the defeats and victories, which lie behind the kings and queens of British history. Each of these monarchs has contributed to the religion, geography, laws, language, and government which we live with today.

Mary Boleyn was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In this astonishing and riveting biography, Alison Weir’s extensive research gives a new and detailed portrayal, in which she recounts that, contrary to popular belief, Mary was entirely undeserving of her posthumous notoriety as a great whore.

The six wives of Henry VIII have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended. But, as Antonia Fraser conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters. They may have been victims of Henry's obsession with a male heir, but they displayed considerable strength and intelligence at a time when their sex supposedly possessed little of either. Inevitably there was great rivalry and jealously between them. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling.

The Fens is Britain's most distinctive, complex, man-made and least understood landscape. Francis Pryor has lived in, excavated, farmed, walked and loved the Fen Country for more than 40 years: its levels and drains, its soaring churches and magnificent medieval buildings. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist.

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.

Life in Cockney London was tough in the post-war years. The government's broken promises had led to a chronic housing shortage, rampant crime and families living in squalor. But one thing prevailed: the unbeatable spirit of the East End, a tight-knit community who pulled through the dark times with humour and heart. Drawing on both family history and her own memories of growing up in the 1950s and '60s, as well as her working life as a district nurse and local police officer, Jean Fullerton vividly depicts this fascinating part of London.

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.

When civil rights protests in the 1960s gave way to armed struggle, the Provisional IRA in Derry–both city and county–led the fight against the British security forces. In the city Martin McGuinness–a young butcher’s assistant from the Bogside–quickly rose through the ranks, launching a bombing campaign that reduced the city centre to rubble. In tandem, the IRA’s active service units fought the British Army in the streets and alleys of the Bogside, Creggan, Shantallow and the Waterside.

Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned, and the project was left abandoned and unfinished. Yet in the early 20th century, it attracted three fascinating women: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim.

The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill.

Even on the most smog-bound of days, the rocky outcrop on which the Acropolis stands is visible above the sprawling roofscape of the Greek capital. Athens presents one of the most recognizable and symbolically freighted panoramas of any of the world's cities: the pillars and pediments of the Parthenon – the temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom, that crowns the Acropolis – dominate a city whose name is synonymous for many with civilization itself.

John Hooper's marvelously entertaining and perceptive new book is ideal for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Looking at the facts that lie behind and often belie the stereotypes, his revealing book sheds new light on many aspects of Italian life: football and Freemasonry, sex, symbolism, and the reason Italian has twelve words for a coat hanger yet none for a hangover.

In this remarkable book, Alison Weir recounts one of the greatest and most remarkable love stories of medieval England. It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress, and later the wife, of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. But Katherine Swynford was much more than that.

She came to the throne in 1952 when Britain had a far-flung empire, sweets were rationed, mums stayed home and kids played on bombsites. Seventy years on, everything has changed utterly—except the Queen herself, ageing far more gracefully than the fractious nation over which she so lightly presides. How did we get from there to here in a single reign? To cancel culture, anti-vaxxers and Twitter feeds? Matthew Engel tells the story—starting with the years from Churchill to Thatcher—with his own light touch and a wealth of fascinating, forgotten, often funny detail.

A history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most influential patrons. From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of 15th- and 16th-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers.

Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. One of the key figures of the Wars of the Roses, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, she married Henry Tudor to bring peace to a war-torn England. In Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen, Alison Weir builds a portrait of this beloved queen, placing her in the context of the magnificent, ceremonious, often brutal world she inhabited.

Mary, Queen of Scots’ marriage to the Earl of Bothwell is notorious. Less known is Bothwell’s first wife, Jean Gordon, who extricated herself from their marriage and survived the intrigue of the queen’s court. Daughters of the North reframes this turbulent period in history by focusing on Jean, who became Countess of Sutherland, following her from her birth as the daughter of the ‘King of the North’ to her disastrous union with the notorious Earl of Bothwell—and her lasting legacy to the Earldom of Sutherland.

The story of one of the most remarkable–and feared–British aircraft of the Second World War: the de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito fighter-bomber.

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?

Admiral Lord Collingwood, the eldest son of a Newcastle merchant, went to sea in 1761 at the age of 13. In his nearly fifty years in the Navy Collingwood's service took him to Boston, where he lived and fought during the American War of Independence; to Antigua, where he and Nelson both fell in love with Mary Moutray; to Corsica; Sicily; and Menorca, where he ended his career as the effective viceroy of the Mediterranean.