Princess Dorothea Lieven was wife to the Russian ambassador in London from 1812 to 1840. As a woman, she was debarred from having any formal power in the world of European diplomacy. But as a Baltic Russian, brought up under the harsh regime of Catherine the Great, Dorothea Lieven was not meant to be the power behind any man: it was centre stage she craved.
Setting / LocationLondon & UK
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreThe princess and the politicians Lead Character
Since the 1950s Cyprus has been a place of tension, friction, and violence caused by the clashing interests and claims of the two local communities and three NATO allies - Greece, Turkey and Britain. This book is a scholarly work of analysis and interpretation examining the causes and dynamics of the Cyprus problem at both the domestic and international levels. The Cyprus dispute has also presented a threat to international peace and security, and caused UN, NATO and EU involvement in various ways and settings. The book examines these aspects and implications of the problem, and provides some insight into the dynamics and complexities of ethnopolitics and international politics.
"Michael Heseltine has enjoyed one of the most colourful and creative careers of modern British politics. By bestowing two successive nicknames - first 'Tarzan' and then 'Hezza' - the public displayed its instinctive rapport with him. For thirty years, from his days as Minister of Aerospace in the early 1970s to his appointments as Deputy Prime Minister in the mid-1990s, he has consistently ranked as one of the best-known and most admired of public figures." "In this autobiography he tells the story not just of his political life but of his business career as well - of his earliest commercial days running first a boarding-house and then a hotel in Bayswater; of how in 1962, as a property developer, he was almost forced into bankruptcy; of the way, after a disastrous start, he patiently built up his magazine empire to the point where it is today, one of the largest private companies in the land." "The book offers a number of personal glimpses. He tells of how he nearly died of meningitis at the age of five, of his sensitivity to his relative failure at his public school, of his feeling of vindication in being elected President of the Oxford Union in 1954 and of the subsequent ordeal of being trained as a national serviceman with the Brigade Squad at Caterham. He also writes movingly of his pride and joy, the arboretum at his country estate in Oxfordshire that he began planting twenty years ago."--Jacket.
V.1: "The first volume of Richard Gwyn's definitive biography of John A. Macdonald follows his life from his birth in Scotland in 1815 to his emigration with his family to Kingston, Ontario, to his days as a young, rising lawyer, to his tragedy-ridden first marriage, to the birth of his political ambitions, to his commitment to the all-but-impossible challenge of achieving Confederation, to his presiding, with his second wife Agnes, over the first Canada Day of the new Dominion in 1867. Colourful, intensely human and with a full measure of human frailties, Macdonald was beyond question Canada's most important prime minister. This volume describes how Macdonald developed Canada's first true national political party, encompassing French and English and occupying the centre of the political spectrum. To perpetuate this party, Macdonald made systematic use of patronage to recruit talent and to bond supporters, a system of politics that continues to this day. Gwyn judges that Macdonald, if operating on a small stage, possessed political skills--of manipulation and deception as well as an extraordinary grasp of human nature--of the same calibre as the greats of his time, such as Disraeli and Lincoln. Confederation is the centerpiece here, and Gywn's commentary on Macdonald's pivotal role is original and provocative. But his most striking analysis is that the greatest accomplishment of nineteenth-century Canadians was not Confederation, but rather to decide not to become Americans. Macdonald saw Confederation as a means to an end, its purpose being to serve as a loud and clear demonstration of the existence of a national will to survive. The two threats Macdonald had to contend with were those of annexation by the United States, perhaps by force, perhaps by osmosis, and equally that Britain just might let that annexation happen to avoid a conflict with the continent's new and unbeatable power."--Publisher description. V.2: "John A. Macdonald, Canada's first and most important prime minister, is the man who made Confederation happen, who built this country over the next quarter century, and who shaped what it is today. From Confederation Day in 1867, where this volume picks up, Macdonald finessed a reluctant union of four provinces in central and eastern Canada into a strong nation, despite indifference from Britain and annexationist sentiment in the United States. But it wasn't easy. The wily Macdonald faced constant crises throughout these years, from Louis Riel's two rebellions through to the Pacific Scandal that almost undid his government and his quest to find the spine of the nation: the railroad that would link east to west. Gwyn paints a superb portrait of Canada and its leaders through these formative years and also delves deep to show us Macdonald the man, as he marries for the second time, deals with the birth of a disabled child, and the assassination of his close friend Darcy McGee, and wrestles with whether Riel should hang. Indelibly, Gwyn shows us Macdonald's love of this country and his ability to joust with forces who would have been just as happy to see the end of Canada before it had really begun, creating a must-read for all Canadians."--Publisher description.
An eye-opening account of the last chapter in the life of Fidel Castro: his near death, his enemies and their fifty-year failed battle to eliminate him, and the carefully planned succession and early reign of his brother Raul.
The princess and the politicians by John Charmley | Literally Just Books
