John Fleming and Hugh Honour were giants of the art world. To Susanna Johnston, however, they were simply John and Hugh, an inseparable couple and two of her closest friends. They had met in the 1950s at Gli Scafari, the opulent villa on the Italian Riviera of the blind writer Percy Lubbock - one of Henry James' inamoratos and Iris Origo's step ......
Is the internet changing the relationship between the sexes? While eighty per cent of those interviewed in polls say that affairs are wrong, for example, the percentage who admit to having had an affair has doubled every ten years to 2010. Looking at the latest data, social scientist Catherine Hakim traces new faultlines between men and women and ......
When MI5 receives a first-ever invitation to monitor turbulence in China's restive New Silk Road region, Tony Underwood is dispatched as part of a gesture of goodwill. He has no special knowledge of the part of China that touches the stans, or of China full stop; but MI5 is not about to be misled by Bejing's suppression of the area's Muslim Uighur ......
Nostalgic Letters on Fifteen Years of Rationing in Britain
This engaging collection of letters gives a quirky picture of family life in Britain under fifteen years of rationing. Everyone and almost everything was affected, from pets to fashion, corsets and turn-ups, to cigarettes, restaurants, heating and petrol, and the availability of fruit, eggs, vegetables and bread, and much more. Millions of people ......
How Lord Byron's Daughter Launched the Digital Age Through the Poetry of Numbers
Through the infamous divorce of her parents, Ada Lovelace became the most talked-about child in Georgian Britain. This riveting biography tells the extraordinary yet little known story of her life and times-when mathematics was as fashionable as knitting among women and Ada became the world's first computer programmer. But for her era's view on ......
Kenneth Murphy's brother was one of the last US soldiers to be killed during the Vietnam. Travelling through Vietnam, he captures its ancient culture and what remains after French and US imperialism and the onslaught of the 21st century finance; and gradually falls in love with the country where his brother is burried.
Following the US execution of Bin Laden, a Syrian sleeper cell detonates a nuclear bomb in the heart of London by ramming a vehicle into the Bank of England. Forced to take shelter from the packed radiation dust, a seemingly random group of people gathers in a hairdressing salon nearby. They are all connected to the attack in some way, but how? It ......
Look and Feel Ten Years Younger Without Breaking the Bank
Helena Frith Powell noticed her first wrinkle when she accidentally caught sight of herself in her car's rear-view mirror. It set her off on an entertaining quest to find the most potent weapons in the battle against the effects of time on the face and body, without spending a fortune.
This mischievous novel, set in Lucca, Italy, centres around an unexpectedly passionate affair and the ripples it causes around it. There is Patricia, a young English woman and is happily married with an Italian academic and a young son. Malise and Christian are brothers from Hertfordshire. While Malise is beautiful, smart, aloof, he is also cruel, ......
