8 books found
by Sir Herbert Maxwell
1913
Herbert Henry Asquith had a heart that burned for politics - and women. At sixty-years old in 1912, he had five children by his first wife and two by his second wife. He was also the prime minister of Great Britain at a critical time - just two years before the outbreak of World War One. Venetia Stanley was only twenty-two-years old and the best friend of Asquith's daughter, Violet, who later became Lady Violet Bonham Carter. Between 1912 and 1915, Asquith wrote more than five hundred passionate love letters to Venetia. Asquith wrote to her while conducting Cabinet meetings and during debates in the House of Commons. Once war began, he told her government secrets, and he reportedly valued her advice above all others. Historians have long been haunted by whether or not the relationship ever turned into a physical affair. Like a good detective story, you'll be led to your own conclusion in The Prime Minister and His Mistress.
by Sir Adolphus William Ward, George Walter Prothero, Stanley Mordaunt Leathes
1909
In the course of the Second World War, more than a quarter of a million European and American soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese in Malaysia, the Dutch East Indies and the Pacific. They went on to suffer years of deprivation and brutality, most of them failing to survive at all. Harold Atcherley was fortunate enough to be one of the survivors. Throughout his time as a prisoner, from the fall of Singapore on 15th February 1942 until 14th September 1945, he kept a diary, which he was able to bring home with him. This book is based on that diary, along with other diaries and official documents. The original diary can now be viewed at The Imperial War Museum, London. He was fortunate enough to count among his friends and comrades the celebrated artist Ronald Searle, whose drawings have been used to illustrate his text; they give a far better impression of what life was like for a POW of the Japanese than mere words can, though neither words nor pictures could ever convey the appalling stench of disease and death on such a massive scale.