Sir Garnet Wolseley

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[by] Elizabeth Longford

Capaciously documented, this first volume of a two-volume life of the Duke of Wellington places its author, Lady Longford (author also of Queen Victoria) in the front ranks of 20th century military and political biographers. Through family connections with Wellington's inadequate wife, Kitty Pakenham, she has had access to hitherto untapped family records: her knowledge of his campaigns has enabled her to write knowledgeably of his defeats, victories and frustrations, his brutal discipline and his concern for the welfare of men who called him ""Nosey"" and followed him with grudging confidence. Three months older than Napoleon, Arthur Wesley or Wellesley was born in Ireland in 1769, the second--and awkward--son of a noble family. Poor and without apparent talents, he joined the army and in an appallingly mismanaged winter campaign in 1794 against the French learned how not to run an army or fight a war. Ordered to India in 1796, Arthur made money and enemies and achieved fame, now often forgotten, by defeating Tipoo, Sultan of Mysore, and the ""tumultous"" Mahrattas. Returning to England in 1806, he became involved with the notorious Hariette Wilson and made the mistake of marrying his former Irish sweetheart, Kitty Pakenham. Seat to Spain in 1808 when Napoleon prepared his own downfall by putting his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, Arthur, after six heartbreaking years drove tile French from the Peninsula, for which he was made Duke of Wellington. On Napoleon's escape from exile in Elba in 1815 he was appointed commander of the allied armies in Belgium, meeting and defeating his old enemy at Waterloo on June 16: the author's account of this battle is one of the best parts of tin amazing book. It is at once stirring biography and stimulating social history, dispassionate and sympathetic, and even it' Wellington hasn't quite the instantaneously identifiable appeal of Victoria, still it will he read widely, Implemented by its selection for April by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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Edward Gregg

The reign of Queen Anne was a period of significant progress for the country, but the Queen has received little credit for these achievements. This biography seeks to shatter the image of a weak and ineffective monarch.

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Peter Morton

"Despite his lifelong ill health and relatively short life, Grant Allen (1848-1899) was a writer of extraordinary productivity and range. His work reflects interests from Darwinian biology to cultural travel guides. His prosperity, however, was underpinned by fiction: he wrote more than thirty novels, including The Woman Who Did, which has attracted much recent attention from feminist critics and historians. This book is the first critical biography of Allen in a century, and it draws from all the surviving primary sources. "The Busiest Man in England" uses Allen's career to examine the role and status of the freelance author/journalist in the late Victorian period, and analyzes what it took to succeed in this notoriously tough profession."--BOOK JACKET.

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Desmond and Jean Bowen

"It is a curious paradox that, while for many centuries there has been deep antagonism between the British and the Irish, the latter have fought the former's wars with exemplary courage and tenacity. This has never been better demonstrated than when, as a result of the Irish regiments' superb service in the South African War (Boer War) at the end of the 19th Century, Queen Victoria ordered the formation of the Irish Guards in 1900 as a mark of the Nation's gratitude. Even after the trauma of Partition, Irishmen continued to serve in Irish regiments in large numbers and the tradition continued today. Indeed during the Second World War a very significant number of the most influential generals were of Irish extraction."--Publisher's description.