Now All Roads Lead to France : The Last Years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis

Edward Thomas was perhaps the most beguiling and influential of First World War poets. "Now All Roads Lead to France" is an account of his final five years, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas's fatal decision to fight in the war. The book also evokes an astonishingly creative moment in English literature, when London was a battleground for new, ambitious kinds of writing. A generation that included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke were 'making it new' - vehemently and pugnaciously. These larger-than-life characters surround a central figure, tormented by his work and his marriage. But as his friendship with Frost blossomed, Thomas wrote poem after poem, and his emotional affliction began to lift. In 1914 the two friends formed the ideas that would produce some of the most remarkable verse of the twentieth century. But the War put an ocean between them: Frost returned to the safety of New England while Thomas stayed to fight for the Old. It is these roads taken - and those not taken - that are at the heart of this remarkable book, which culminates in Thomas's tragic death on Easter Monday 1917.

Winne of the Costa Biography Award 2011 - Now in paperback

(Description courtesy of Faber & Faber)

Great Victorian Railway Journeys by Karen Farrington

The perfect companion to Bradshaw's guide book. Showcasing in colour all that is great about Bradshaw's guide. Great British Railway Journeys has been a hugely successful TV programme, which is now into its third series on BBC2. Much as Michael Palin built up a dedicated fan base for travel around the globe, so Michael Portillo has done likewise for lovers of trains in his explorations the length and breadth of the United Kingdom from the window of a train seat. Both charming and insightful, Michael again uses Bradshaw's guides, and now undertakes five unique journeys that were constructed by the Victorians from 1830-1900. Across 25 episodes he delves into this fascinating and colourful period of our history, and show how the modern British landscape was created from this Victorian legacy. From Windsor to Weymouth, Great Yarmouth to London, Oxford to Milford Haven, Berwick to Barrow, and finally Dublin to Belfast -- Michael will go back in time to showcase areas of outstanding Victorian engineering and design across Queen Victoria's dominions. Key parts of the programme and tie-in book will showcase how the world's very first fixed-track train in Merthyr Tydfil operated; how the world's first electric train service ran in Southend to its famous pier; and he also celebrates the wide variety of lines that opened up trade and mobility to the Victorian classes. Travelling on a variety of existing, and in some cases restored, Victorian train lines, he meets their passionate supporters who lovingly work on them, and also looks at the modern landscape to tell the story of how each area was shaped by their Victorian forebears. Lavishly produced, this will once again be a 'must have' purchase for all train lovers, as well as those who simply want to find out their heritage and what is now available to view and travel upon in the 21st century to transport them back in time.

(Description courtesy of HarperCollins)

 The Dreyfus Affair by Piers Paul Read

Intelligent, ambitious and a rising star in the French artillery, Captain Alfred Dreyfus appeared to have everything: family, money, and the prospect of a post on the General Staff. But his rapid rise had also made him enemies - many of them aristocratic officers in the army's High Command who resented him because he was middle-class, meritocratic and a Jew.
In October 1894, the torn fragments of an unsigned memo containing military secrets were retrieved by a cleaning lady from the waste paper basket of Colonel Maximilien von Schwartzkoppen of the German embassy in Paris. When French intelligence pieced the document back together to uncover proof of a spy in their midst, Captain Dreyfus, on slender evidence, was charged with selling military secrets to the Germans, found guilty of treason by unanimous verdict and sentenced to life imprisonment on the notorious Devil's Island.
The fight to free the wrongfully convicted Dreyfus - over twelve long years, through many trials - is a story rife with heroes and villains, courage and cowardice, dissimulation and deceit. One of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in history, the Dreyfus affair divided France, stunned the world and unleashed violent hatreds and anti-Semitic passions which offered a foretaste of what was to play out in the long, bloody twentieth century to come.
Today, amid charged debates over national and religious identity across the globe, its lessons throw into sharp relief the conflicts of the present. In the hands of historian, biographer and prize-winning novelist Piers Paul Read, this masterful epic of the struggle between a minority seeking justice and a military establishment determined to save face comes dramatically alive for a new generation.

(Description courtesy of Bloomsbury)

An Honourable Man by Gillian Slovo

From one of Britain's most important writers, An Honourable Man is set in the tumultuous world of late Victorian England. Beginning in the Sudan and London of 1884, this extraordinary new novel is played out against the shambolic end of the Empire.

Slovo draws on the lives of two real men: Charles Gordon, an heroic, hubristic, career army man whose refusal to obey orders helped bring down the Gladstone government, and W T Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, the father of tabloid journalism. Their story is intercuts with the tale of a poor, working woman in London. This is a book about destiny and about how wrong men can be; about foreign adventure and heroism doomed to failure; about women struggling to carve a place for themselves in the world; about political compromise and military mayhem. It is magnificent.

(Description courtesy of Virago)

Our Man in Rome by Catherine Fletcher

1527. Gregorio 'The Cavalier' Casali is Henry VIII's man in Rome. An Italian freelance diplomat, he charmed his way into the English service before he was twenty. But now he faces an almighty challenge. Henry wants a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and Casali must persuade Pope Clement VII of his master's case.

Set against the backdrop of war-torn Renaissance Italy, Our Man in Rome weaves together tales from the grubby underbelly of Tudor politics with a gripping family saga to reveal the extraordinary true story behind history's most infamous divorce.

Through six years of cajoling, threats and bribery, Casali lives by his wits. He manoeuvres his brothers into lucrative diplomatic postings, plays off one master against another, dodges spies, bandits and noblemen alike. But as the years pass and Henry's case drags on, his loyalties are increasingly suspected. What will be Casali's fate?

Drawing on hundreds of unknown archive documents, Our Man in Rome reconstructs his tumultuous life among the great and powerful at this turning point for European history. From the besieged Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome to the splendours of Greenwich Palace, we follow his trail in the service of Henry VIII. Lavish ceremony and glamorous parties stand in contrast to the daily strains of embassy life, as Casali pawns family silver to pay the bills, fights off rapacious in-laws and defends himself in the face of Anne Boleyn's wrath.

This vivid and compelling book will make us think anew about Henry, Catherine and the Tudor world.

(Description courtesy of Random House)

Looking for Transwonderland by Noo Saro-Wiwa

Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality.

Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years. Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her father loved. She travelled from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the empty Transwonderland Amusement Park - Nigeria's decrepit and deserted answer to Disneyland. She explored Nigerian christianity, delved into its history of slavery, examined the corrupting effect of oil, investigated Nollywood. She found the country as exasperating as ever, and frequently despaired at the corruption and inefficiency she encountered.

But she also discovered that it was far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, and was seduced by its thick tropical rainforest and ancient palaces and monuments. Most engagingly of all she introduces us to the people she meets, and gives us hilarious insights into the Nigerian character, its passion, wit and ingenuity.

(Description courtesy of Granta)

All the King's Men by Saul David

"The British soldier," wrote a Prussian officer who served with Wellington, "is vigorous, well fed, by nature highly brave and intrepid, trained to the most vigorous discipline, and admirably well armed... These circumstances explain how this army ... has never yet been defeated in the field."

From the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the Downfall of Napoleon in 1815, Britain won a series of major wars against France that enabled her to lay the foundations of a global empire. By Waterloo, she was the paramount maritime and industrial power in the world, and would remain so for much of the nineteenth century.

This is the story of that extraordinary century and a half of martial success and the people who made it possible: the soldier-kings William III and the first two Georges; the generals Marlborough, Wolfe, Moore and Wellington; and the ordinary British redcoats who - despite harsh service conditions that included low pay, poor housing, inadequate food and brutal discipline - rarely let their commanders down in battles as far afield as Blenheim, Plassey, Quebec and Waterloo.

(Description courtesy of Penguin)