The unredeemed captive

Sample

Roy Jenkins

"In this evocation of twelve world cities which have either been intertwined with his life, or have otherwise aroused his particular interest, Roy Jenkins follows up Churchill with a book of a very different shape; short and semi-autobiographical, but also full of the wit, erudition and carefully chosen illustrations which made Churchill such a success. The cities are each described with a mixture of architectural interest, topographical insight and personal anecdote." "Jenkins has three British cities: Cardiff, which was the metropolis of his Monmouthshire childhood; Birmingham, which he represented in Parliament for twenty-seven years; and Glasgow, which he did not know well until he won a famous bye-election there in 1982, but which then aroused in him an enthusiasm far transcending politics." "There are four North European cities: Paris, of which his memories go back to 1931; Brussels, where he lived for four years as President of the European Commission; Bonn, not exactly a metropolis but the modest capital of the very successful West German polity for forty years; and Berlin, surveyed from its Wilhelmine splendour, through its 1945 degradation to its reunification and architectural resurgence in the 1990s. Then there are two essays on South European cities which both have a special and strong flavour - Naples and Barcelona." "From over a hundred visits to North America there emerge highly personal recollections of New York and a more objective view of the architectural sparkle of Chicago. Dublin, so near to home and yet so distant, concludes this delightful collection."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Ian Kelly

"A unique feast of biography and Regency cookbook, Cooking for Kings takes readers on a culinary tour of the palaces of Britain and Europe in the ultimate age of gastronomic indulgence, when, for the first time, chefs became celebrities and the modern restaurant was born." "Drawing on the legendary cook's rich memoirs, Ian Kelly traces Antonin Careme's meteoric rise from a child abandoned on the streets of revolutionary Paris to international celebrity and provides a dramatic below-stairs perspective on one of the most momentous, and sensuous, periods in European history - First Empire Paris, Georgian England, and the Russia of War and Peace - when emperors, kings, and princes wielded Careme's gastronomy as a diplomatic tool." "Careme was much more than the inventor of the chef's hat, the vol-au-vent, and the souffle. He had an unfailing ability to cook for the right people in the right place at the right time. He knew the foibles and the favorite dishes of the Romanovs, the Rothschilds, and Rossini. He worked for the gourmet-king George IV, the Viennese court, and even made Napoleon's wedding cake. But Careme's reputation rested ultimately on a novel idea that changed cooking forever: by marrying food and glamour in his books - which transported readers to the tables of the famous households for whom he cooked - he was the first chef to become rich and famous by publishing cookbooks."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Peter Kurth

"Never before has Isadora Duncan's life been so engagingly explored. Biographer Peter Kurth recounts this sensational life filled with lavish love affairs, artistic zeal, marvelous performances, and personal tragedies. Kurth allows the free spirit and idiosyncratic personality of this passionate artist to shine through, revealing her dramatic story set against the sweeping backdrop of Europe and the United States in the early twentieth century. Kurth tells of Isadora's longtime love affairs; with English designer Gordon Craig, father of her daughter, Deirdre; with sewing-machine heir Paris Singer, father of her son, Patrick; and with Russian poet Sergei Esenin. Also on this tumultuous stage are her many friends and family, including Auguste Rodin, Jean Cocteau, Edward Steichen, Preston Sturges, Mary Desti, Mercedes de Acosta, the six "Isadorables," and the colorful Duncan clan.". "Drawing from extensive research of major archival sources in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, including several private archives and unpublished manuscripts, Peter Kurth has created a compelling portrait of an intelligent, complicated, conflicted woman. As the New York Times said of her in 1928: "It is quite certain that no other American woman has so impressed the world outside of America - made such a mighty stir, commanded such a following at home and abroad... left behind her such a legend of personality and such a trail of effects.""--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Sebastian Faulks

A worthy successor to Birdsong' Alain de BottonIn 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special oeprations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in 'the black years'. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusistic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism. Through the local resistance chief Julien, Charlotte meets his father, a Jewish painter whose inspiration has failed him.In a series of shocking narrative climaxes in which the full extent of French collusion in the Nazi holocaust is delineated, Faulks brings the story to a resolution of redemptive love. In the delicacy of its writing, the intimacy of its characterisation and its powerful narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is a worthy successor to Birdsong.