Thanks to the invidious reputation of his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? Might he not have been an infinitely more sympathetic figure, prone to political missteps, professional failures and personal dramas? Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his father's penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher's hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile. In doing so, Lee uncovers hitherto unobserved connections between Machiavelli's life and thought. He also reveals the world through which Machiavelli moved: from the great halls of Renaissance Florence to the court of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, from the dungeons of the Stinche prison to the Rucellai gardens, where he would begin work on some of his last great works. As much a portrait of an age as of a uniquely engaging man, Lee's gripping and definitive biography takes the reader into Machiavelli's world - and his work - more completely than ever before.

Thanks to his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? In Machiavelli: His Life and Times, Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his fathers penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher's hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile. In doing so, Lee uncovers hitherto unobserved connections between Machiavelli's life and thought. As much a portrait of an age as of a uniquely engaging man, Lees gripping and definitive biography takes the reader into Machiavelli's world — and his work — more completely than ever before.

Thanks to his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? In Machiavelli: His Life and Times, Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his fathers penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher's hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile. In doing so, Lee uncovers hitherto unobserved connections between Machiavelli's life and thought. As much a portrait of an age as of a uniquely engaging man, Lees gripping and definitive biography takes the reader into Machiavelli's world — and his work — more completely than ever before.

The New Machiavelli is a gripping account of life inside 'the bunker' of Number 10. In his twenty-first century reworking of Niccolo Machiavelli's influential masterpiece, The Prince, Jonathan Powell - Tony Blair's Chief of Staff from 1994 - 2007 - recounts the inside story of that period, drawing on his own unpublished diaries. Taking the lessons of Machiavelli derived from his experience as an official in fifteenth-century Florence, Powell shows how these lessons can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, The New Machiavelli is designed to be The Prince for modern times.

The most important historical source on one of the most powerful leaders of the ancient world, Arrian's The Campaigns of Alexander illustrates how Alexander the Great came to rule over a vast empire of his own making, translated from the Greej by Aubrey de Selincourt, and revised with an introduction and notes by J.R. Hamilton in Penguin Classics. Although written over four hundred years after Alexander's death, Arrian's Campaigns of Alexander is the most reliable account of the man and his achievements we have. Arrian's own experience as a military commander gave him unique insights into the life of the world's greatest conqueror. He tells of Alexander's violent suppression of the Theban rebellion, his total defeat of Persia and his campaigns through Egypt, India and Babylon - establishing new cities and destroying others in his path. While Alexander emerges from this record as an unparalleled and charismatic leader, Arrian succeeds brilliantly in creating an objective and fully-rounded portrait of a man of boundless ambition, who was exposed to the temptations of power and was worshipped as a god in his own lifetime Aubrey de Selincourt's vivid translation is accompanied by J.R. Hamilton's introduction, which discusses Arrian's life and times, his synthesis of other classical sources and the composition of Alexander's army. This edition also contains appendices, maps, a list for further reading and a detailed index. The details of Arrian's life (b. 86) are uncertain, though the shape of it indicates a man of wide and varied talents. He was governor to the Emperor Hadrian, the author of a number of works of non-fiction and an Athenian citizen. In 145 he rose to become a chief magistrate of Athens and thereby part of the governing body of the city. His date of death is not known.

'They are memorials to times and countries whose best is probably past and gone . . . I was lucky to have known them when I did, before darkness began to fall from the air.' When Laurie Lee first left his country village aged nineteen, he discovered a delight in the outside world that remained undiminished throughout his writing life. This enchanting collection of his 'first loves and obsessions' brings together pieces including recollections of his Gloucestershire childhood celebrated in Cider With Rosie; reflections on life, love and death, such as a moving report from the tragic Welsh village of Aberfan; and evocative travel writings on Tuscany, Mexico and the West Indies, amongst others, before they were transformed by mass tourism. Together they capture a world that is lost forever.

'A deliciously funny novel and an affectionate offering to all that is noblest and least changing in the people and life of Spain' The Times Driven away from his parish by a censorious bishop, Monsignor Quixote sets off across Spain accompanied by a deposed renegade mayor as his own Sancho Panza, and his noble steed Rocinante – a faithful but antiquated SEAT 600. Like Cervantes’s classic, this comic, picaresque fable offers enduring insights into our life and times.

Conjuring up the past in all its complexity, horror and pleasures, In The Name of the Family confirms Sarah Dunant's place as the leading novelist of the Renaissance and one of the most acclaimed historical fiction writers of our age. In the Name of the Family - as Blood and Beauty did before - holds up a mirror to a turbulent moment of history, sweeping aside the myths to bring alive the real Borgia family; complicated, brutal, passionate and glorious. Here is a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's doomed years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli. It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womaniser and master of political corruption is now on the Papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two, already thrice married and a pawn in her father's plans, is discovering her own power. And then there is Cesare Borgia: brilliant, ruthless and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with the diplomat Machiavelli which offers a master class on the dark arts of power and politics. What Machiavelli learns will go on to inform his great work of modern politics, The Prince. But while the pope rails against old age and his son's increasing maverick behavior it is Lucrezia who will become the Borgia survivor: taking on her enemies and creating her own place in history.

A very practical marriage makes Alexander Westcott question his heart in this stunning Regency romance from the New York Times bestselling author of Someone to Hold. When Alexander Westcott becomes the new Earl of Riverdale, he inherits a title he never wanted and a failing country estate he can't afford. But he fully intends to do everything in his power to undo years of neglect and give the people who depend on him a better life... A recluse for more than twenty years, Wren Heyden wants one thing out of life: marriage. With her vast fortune, she sets her sights on buying a husband. But when she makes the desperate-and oh-so-dashing-earl a startlingly unexpected proposal, Alex will only agree to a proper courtship, hoping for at least friendship and respect to develop between them. He is totally unprepared for the desire that overwhelms him when Wren finally lifts the veils that hide the secrets of her past... This is the sparkling third novel in the Regency romance Westcott series by New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh.

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, but he is now best remembered for his science fiction novels. "The New Machiavelli" is a 1911 novel, the story of Richard Remington who appears to be a man to envy. But underneath his superficial contentment, he is far from happy with either his marriage or the politics of his party. The novel describes the disarray into which his life is thrown, when he meets the young and beautiful Isabel Rivers and becomes tormented by desire.

Herbert George Wells (1866 — 1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, but he is now best remembered for his science fiction novels. "The New Machiavelli" is a 1911 novel, the story of Richard Remington who appears to be a man to envy. But underneath his superficial contentment, he is far from happy with either his marriage or the politics of his party. The novel describes the disarray into which his life is thrown, when he meets the young and beautiful Isabel Rivers and becomes tormented by desire..

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist. My Life and Times is an autobiography novel, an entertaining account of Jerome's life including an experience of his family falling into poverty owing to bad investments. He published it in 1926 being in his late sixties.

This is the definitive biography on one of the most important and controversial figures of the 20th century. Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the drama of a great Russian novel. When Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader in March 1985, the USSR was still one of the world’s two superpowers. By the end of his tenure six years later, the Communist system was dismantled, the cold war was over and, on 25 December 1991, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist. While not solely responsible for this remarkable upheaval, he set decisive changes in motion. Assessments of Gorbachev could not be more polarised. In the West, he is regarded as a hero. In Russia, he is widely hated by those who blame him for the collapse of the USSR. Admirers marvel at this vision and courage. Detractors, including many of his Kremlin comrades, have accused him of everything from naivete to treason.

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humourist. My Life and Times is an autobiography novel, an entertaining account of Jerome's life including an experience of his family falling into poverty owing to bad investments. He published it in 1926 being in his late sixties.

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humourist. My Life and Times is an autobiography novel, an entertaining account of Jerome's life including an experience of his family falling into poverty owing to bad investments. He published it in 1926 being in his late sixties.

Machiavelli’s highly influential treatise on political power 'It is far safer to be feared than loved...' The Prince shocked Europe on publication with its advocacy of ruthless tactics for gaining absolute power and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccolo Machiavelli drew on his own experience of office under the turbulent Florentine republic, rejecting traditional values of political theory and recognising the complicated, transient nature of political life. Machiavelli made his name notorious for centuries with The Prince, his clever and cynical work about power relationships. The key themes of this influential, and ever timely, writer are that adaptability is the key to success and that effective leadership is sometimes only possible at the expense of moral standards. 'Everyone should have a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince, whose original purpose may have been to counsel Renaissance rulers in the art of statecraft but is still applicable to and, indeed, acted on by modern politicians and power-brokers' Guardian