Non-Fiction Books
When Dr Horatio Lestoq, All Souls Prize Fellow and freelance journalist, discovers the body of a 91-year-old Admiral in suspicious circumstance, he is soon on the trail of more than a murderer.For there is a scandal which goes to the very heart of the United States of Europe - the corrupt, bureaucratic, xenophobic Euro-superstate which has, in the 30 years since the Aachen Referendum, almost snuffed out British national identity.Buckingham Palace, now Attali House, is the regional headquarters of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The now-defunct Houses of Parliament have been renamed The Westminster Heritage, Amenity and Leisuredrome. Even Horatio's namesake has removed from his column in Delors Square.Can the overweight, snobbish, lecherous, asthmatic, cowardly Lestoq - the most unlikely of heroes - stay one stop ahead of his sinister pursuers? Is his new lover - Cleopatra Tallboys, the sexiest secret policewoman in Europol - all that she seems? Is it coincidental that William Mountbatten-Windsor, King of New Zealand and Pretender to his father's former throne, should be visiting London? Will the ghastly truth emerge of how British independence was extinguished by the all powerful European mega-state?In this gripping fictional debut, the historian Andrew Roberts has created an Orwellian Britain that is a frightening possibility.A thriller - and a warning to us all.
At six years of age, Robert Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was sent to a brutal boarding school he likened to “an existence among devils.” By 23, he was a member of the British Parliament. And before his death at age 73 in 1903, he would spend nearly two decades as Britain’s Prime Minister, single-mindedly driving the British Empire to extend its iron grip to five continents. This multiple award-winning biography sheds uncompromising light on Lord Salisbury’s troubled family life, his transformational experiences in Australia, India, and Africa, and his dogged pursuit of political power in the court of Queen Victoria.
'His book is timely and a triumph. Roberts manages to convey all the reader needs to know about two men to whom battalions of biographies have been devoted' EVENING STANDARD Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill were two totally opposite leaders - both in what they stood for and in the way in which they seemed to lead. Award-winning historian Andrew Roberts examines their different styles of leadership and draws parallels with rulers from other eras. He also looks at the way Hitler and Churchill estimated each other as leaders, and how it affected the outcome of the war. In a world that is as dependent on leadership as any earlier age, HITLER AND CHURCHILL asks searching questions about our need to be led. In doing so, Andrew Roberts forces us to re-examine the way that we look at those who take decisions for us.
A dozen star historians on what might have happened at history's turning points if the dice had fallen differently. 'Stimulating, provocative and playful' Literary Review Throughout history, great and terrible events have often hinged upon luck. Andrew Roberts has asked a team of twelve leading historians and biographers what might have happened if major world events had gone differently? Each concentrating in the area in which they are a leading authority, historians as distinguished as Antonia Fraser (Gunpowder Plot), Norman Stone (Sarajevo 1914) and Anne Somerset (the Spanish Armada) consider: What if? Robert Cowley demonstrates how nearly Britain won the American war of independence. Following her acclaimed GEORGIANA, Amanda Foreman muses on Lincoln's Northern States of America and Lord Palmerston's Great Britain going to war, as they so nearly did in 1861. Whether it's Stalin fleeing Moscow in 1941 (Simon Sebag Montefiore), or Napoleon not being forced to retreat from it in 1812 (Adam Zamoyski), the events covered here are important, world-changing ones.
