Adulteress? Sorceress? Immoral Temptress? No English Queen has been so persistently vilified as Anne Boleyn. Even after her execution in May 1536 - on trumped-up charges of adultery - the portrait that has come down to us is the one drawn by her enemies. Joanna Denny's compelling new biography of Anne presents a radically different picture of her - a highly literate, accomplished and intellectual woman, and a devout protagonist of the Protestant faith.

he bestselling revisionist biography of one of the great women of the 16th centuryOrphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at fourteen to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots and like many of her children he died young). When her second son became king she was the power behind the throne.

'One of the great love stories of history, in a league with Napoleon and Josephine, and Antony and Cleopatra ... Excellent, with dazzling mastery of detail and literary flair' EconomistIt was history's most successful political partnership - as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition.

A genuinely new biography of Churchill, focusing on his contradictory and lifelong relationship with the British Empire.One of our finest narrative historians, and journalist for the SUNDAY TIMES and LITERARY REVIEW, Lawrence James, has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, set within a fully detailed historical context, but solely focusing on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late 19th century, Churchill's first experience of the Empire was serving in conflicts in India, South Africa and the Sudan.

In Gentleman Jack, historian and series consultant Anne Choma draws from the explosive diaries of Anne Lister to recreate the life and times of one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Anne’s remarkable diaries, partly written in a secret code, detailed her innermost thoughts on everything from sex, menstruation and money to relationships, politics and society. As Choma shows, they have opened up a previously unknown world to us. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, Anne forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. This is the real Gentleman Jack, following Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife.

Despite his status as the most despised political figure in history, there have only been four serious biographies of Hitler since the 1930s. Even more surprisingly, his biographers have been more interested in his rise to power and his methods of leadership than in Hitler the person: some have even declared that the Führer had no private life. Yet to render Hitler as a political animal with no personality to speak of, as a man of limited intelligence and poor social skills, fails to explain the spell that he cast not only on those close to him but on the German people as a whole. In the first volume of this monumental biography, Volker Ullrich sets out to correct our perception of the Führer. While charting in detail Hitler’s life from his childhood to the eve of the Second World War against the politics of the times, Ullrich unveils the man behind the public persona: his charming and repulsive traits, his talents and weaknesses, his deep-seated insecurities and murderous passions.

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Nelson Mandela became the democratically elected, first black president of the republic of South Africa on 27 April 1994. Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.'Burns with the luminosity of faith in the invincible nature of human hope and dignity . . .

During the past twenty years, innumerable books about the Third Reich have been published, but little attention has been paid to the women wholived alongside the Nazi leaders. Magda Goebbels (1901-1945) is arguably the most contradictory and the most intriguing among them. What made a beautiful and intelligent woman go from being deeply in love with the ardent Zionist leader Victor Chaim Arlosoroff to marrying Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda and a ferocious anti-Semite?

Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still 'la reine mechante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.

Antonia Fraser's bestselling biography of one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history - a special 40th anniversary edition.Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years.

A striking and sympathetic portrait of England's first Queen, Mary I - whose character has been vilified for over 400 years. Instead of the bloodthirsty bigot of Protestant mythology, Mary Tudor emerges from the pages of this deeply-researched biography as a cultured renaissance princess, a courageous survivor of the violent power struggles that characterised the reigns of her father, Henry VIII, and brother Edward VI.

Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession by bestselling historian Alison Weir, author of Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen, is the second captivating novel in the Six Tudor Queens series. An unforgettable portrait of the ambitious woman whose fate we know all too well, but whose true motivations may surprise you. Essential reading for fans of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick.

Winner of the British Book Awards History Book of the YearLonglisted forthe Samuel Johnson PrizeThis thrilling biography of Stalin and his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of Stalin as Soviet dictator, Marxist leader and Russian tsar. Based on groundbreaking research, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals in captivating detail the fear and betrayal, privilege and debauchery, family life and murderous cruelty of this secret world.

An epic story of courage, genius and terrible folly, this is the first history of how the Soviet Union's scientists became both the glory and the laughing stock of the intellectual world. Simon Ings weaves together what happened when a handful of impoverished and underemployed graduates, professors and entrepreneurs, collectors and charlatans, bound themselves to a failing government to create a world superpower. And he shows how Stalin's obsessions derailed a great experiment in 'rational government'.

Compiled from his own words, this history-making autobiography IS MartinLuther King: the mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who rebelled against segregation; the dedicated young minister who constantly questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom; the loving husband and father who sought to balance his family's needs with those of a growing nationwide movement; and the reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere.

A Rothschild by birth and a Baroness by marriage, beautiful, spirited Pannonica - known as Nica - seemed to have it all: children, a handsome husband and a trust fund. But in the early 1950s she heard a piece by the jazz legend Thelonious Monk. The music overtook her like a magic spell, and she abandoned her marriage to go and find him. Arriving in New York, Nica was shunned by society but accepted by the musicians. They gave her friendship; she gave them material and emotional support.

Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. They were the most destructive and lethal regimes in history, murdering millions. They fought the largest and costliest war in all history. Yet millions of Germans and Russians enthusiastically supported them and the values they stood for. In this first major study of the two dictatorships side-by-side Richard Overy sets out to answer the question: How was dictatorship possible? How did they function? What was the bond that tied dictator and people so powerfully together? He paints a remarkable and vivid account of the different ways in which Stalin and Hitler rose to power, and abused and dominated their people. It is a chilling analysis of powerful ideals corrupted by the vanity of ambitious and unscrupulous men.

Olga Chekhova was the niece of playwright Anton Chekhov and a stunning Russian beauty. She was also a famous Nazi-era film actress, closely associated with Adolf Hitler. After fleeing Bolshevik Moscow for Berlin in 1920, she was recruited by her composer brother Lev to work for Soviet intelligence. In return, her family were allowed to join her. Several of them were trapped in Berlin as the Red Army approached in 1945. As Olga had appeared in photographs with Hitler his entourage, the rest of her family in Moscow were waiting to be arrested by the NKVD secret police. Based largely on new material, Antony Beevor has pieced together a breathtaking story of a family surviving through the Russian Revolution, the Civil War, the rise of Hitler and Stalin, and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

There have been many political philosophies published throughout the time of literate man, but few have made such an impact in so few words as Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. This eminently quotable treatise on the nature of rulers is unsettling in that it does not merely discuss the specific political geography of 16th century Europe, a world comprised of kings and nobles who ruled absolutely; it has endured for nearly 500 years because it is an all-encompassing understanding of men in power, and the common traits, motives and struggles which have characterized leaders from Roman emperors to modern-day presidents.

Joann Fletcher, presenter of BBC2's 'Ancient Egypt: Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings' has written an enthralling account of Nefertiti, one of Egypt's most compelling and mysterious figures. She and her controversial pharaoh husband Akhenaten lived in perhaps the most tumultuous period in the country's long history, fascinating for both the enormous changes it brought to Egypt's culture and the many mysteries surrounding it. Top Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher has taken a fresh eye to the evidence and arrived at one of the most dramatic discoveries of recent times. She and her expert team have identified a long-forgotten mummy from the Valley of the Kings as the body of a female pharaoh of the Amarna Period, whom she believes is Nefertiti. It tells a story which will forever change the way we see Nefertiti - and women throughout Egyptian history. At last we see the full significance of her role as co-regent and later as Pharaoh, and understand the astonishing luxury and decadence of her life as the country around her disintegrated.

The six wives of Henry VIII - Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr - 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 were not willing victims.