Mostrando resultados por Editor "HarperCollins Publishers Limited" en Historia

The warm, funny memoir of Gregor Fisher, the much loved Scottish actor best known for Rab C. Nesbitt, told as he uncovers his dramatic family history. Growing up in the Glasgow suburbs, Gregor was 14 when he asked where he was christened and was told that he was adopted. But it wasn't quite that simple. And so began an unfolding of truths, half truths and polite cover-ups from his various families.

An intimate portrait of Stephen Spender's extraordinary life written by Matthew Spender, shifting between memoir and biography, with new insights drawn from personal recollections and his father's copious unpublished archives. Stephen Spender's life was a vivid prism on the 20th century. Having met Auden and Isherwood at Oxford, he joined the early vocal critics of Hitler and participated in the Spanish Civil War.

Through the story of one street - Constance Street - we hear the true life tales of a tight knit group of working class women in the East End of London set against a backdrop of war, hardship and struggle. It's a story of matriarchy and deep family ties, of a generation that was scattered away from the street during the blitz bombings but which maintained the ties of that street for decades afterwards.

A heartwarming story of a woman who devoted her life to helping others. This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners' strike. Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time.

A painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators - her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy - the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.

A rich account of the impact of the Second World War on the lives of people living in the farms and villages of Britain. On the outbreak of war, the countryside was invaded by service personnel and evacuee children by the thousands; land was taken arbitrarily for airfields, training grounds, and firing ranges, and whole communities were evicted. Prisoner-of-war camps brought captured enemy soldiers to close quarters, and as horses gave way to tractors and combines farmers were burdened with aggressive new restrictions on what they could and could not grow.

In 1938, with the Japanese army approaching from Nanking, Huan Hsu's great-great grandfather, Liu, and his five granddaughters were forced to flee their hometown on the banks of the Yangtze River. But before they left, a hole was dug as deep as a man and as wide as a bedroom, in which was stowed the family heirlooms. Among their antique furniture, jade, and scrolls was Liu's prized porcelain collection, one he had amassed over many years and which contained priceless imperial items.

From best-selling and award-winning author of A Brilliant Little Operation comes the long neglected D-Day story of the Resistance uprising and subsequent massacre on the Vercors massif - the largest action by the French Resistance during the Second World War. In early 1941, three separate groups of plotters - one military, one political, one intellectual - began to organise and plan on and around the forbidding mountainous plateau near Grenoble - the Vercors.

A heart-warming nostalgia memoir from a member of the world famous dance troupe, The Tiller Girls. Based in London in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Irene's story will transport listeners back to a more innocent, simple way of life. This is the story of a little girl who loved to dance. Growing up in London in the 1930s, dancing was so much more to Irene than just a hobby. It was her escape and it took her off into another world away from the harsh realities of life.

With grey post-WWII skies hanging low over Britain, factories lining the streets and smoke stacks dotting the horizon, there was one way that ordinary families could escape: The ever-cheerful holiday camps of Butlin's. Rich in period detail and highly evocative, Wish You Were Here! follows the lives of seven of the camps' key figures through the highs and lows of the holiday season: From redcoats searching for stardom to young families who returned year after year, to pensioners who rediscovered an inner youth.

King of England, claimant King of France, Lord - and later King - of Ireland, Supreme Head of the Church of England and, perhaps most famously, six times a husband, Henry VIII is England's most notorious monarch. Succeeding his father, Henry VII, he allied with the Holy Roman Emperor and began his many obsessive invasions of France. From his childhood to his later years and famed appetites for food, sex and validation, Henry VIII: History in an Hour describes the life of a man whose desires and determination changed England and the world.

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, is an American icon. To many, he is a symbol of values, sacrifice and determination. Modern notions of nationalism, liberty, and constitution all owe their debt to Lincoln, as does the unity of the American states. And yet, in his own day, Lincoln was also reviled by many as a traitor, tarnished by his associations with the wrong kind of race and the wrong end of society.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. In a writing career that spanned over twenty years during the explosion of poetic and theatrical creativity of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, William Shakespeare produced a body of work that has become the bedrock of human thought, literature and language in English. His poetry and plays have endured for almost 450 years, such is their universal appeal and understanding of the human condition.

A history of walking and our relationship with the British countryside. On the afternoon of Sunday April 24, 1932, a group of approximately five hundred men and women set out for the summit of Kinder Scout, the highest point in Derbyshire's Peak District. They were not here to take in the fresh air and breath-taking vistas: they were here to make a stand. Kinder Scout, like almost every other site of natural beauty in Britain at that time, was privately owned and fiercely guarded.

The Royal British Legion was founded in 1921. It is now the country’s leading charity providing financial, social and emotional support to those who have served or who are currently serving in the British Armed Forces and their dependants. The RBL is behind the annual Poppy Appeal, the highest profile charity appeal in Britain.

Downton Abbey has captured the imagination of the nation. Written by Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes the show has become the benchmark for quality drama, and a commentary on all things British.Downton Abbey portrays a world of elegance and decadence, a world of duty and obedience and a world of romance and rivalry: this companion book, full of rich historical detail, takes fans deeper into that period than ever before.

A completely original history of one of the most extraordinary movements in the world – the Girl Guides – and how they helped win the war.Mention Girl Guides to any woman and the reaction will be strong.

Born Vera Welch on 20 March, 1917 in the East End of London, Dame Vera Lynn's career was set from an early age - along with her father, who also did a 'turn', she sang in Working Men's Clubs from just seven years old. She had a successful radio career with Joe Loss and Charlie Kunz in the 1920s and '30s, but it was with World War II that she became the iconic figure that captured the imagination of the national public.

Soldier, spy, lawyer, politician - Airey Neave was assassinated in the House of Commons car park in 1979. Forty years after his death, Patrick Bishop’s lively, action-packed biography examines the life, heroic war and death of one of Britain’s most remarkable 20th-century figures.

Chasing the Moon thoroughly reimagines the race to the moon, upending much of the conventional mythology. With newly revealed stories about the space race, from its earliest days to the monumental achievement of the lunar landing in 1969, the book features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events.