Preventa de eBooks de Biografías

From the hopeful beginnings of Britains entry into the European project to the bitterness of Brexit, Continental Drift is a vivid, personal account of a political life spent at the heart of the European Parliament.As Europes longest-serving MEP, Bill Newton-Dunn offers a front-row view of the shifting tides in Britains often uneasy relationship with its continental neighbours. Spanning the four decades from 1979 to 2020, this lively memoir chronicles the currents of Euroscepticism, internal wranglings of UK delegations and the complex dance between Westminster and Brussels.But Continental Drift is more than political history: it is also rich with behind-the-scenes stories, sharp observations and colourful pen portraits of the characters who shaped Europe, from British premiers and fiery backbenchers to European visionaries and bureaucratic bruisers, not to mention impassioned Communists and rumoured Mafiosi. With dry wit and unsparing honesty, Newton-Dunn brings to life the dramas, debates and diplomatic showdowns that marked a turbulent era.Candid, compelling and frequently funny, Continental Drift is a timely reflection on Britains place in Europe and what was lost when the flag came down.

O menino de Cordisburgo que escrevia em papéis de mercearia, o médico que mergulhou na vida do sertão, o diplomata que lapidou Sagarana em meio às bombas da Segunda Guerra Mundial, o criador de Grand

A revealing and controversial exposé of international white-collar crime.Alexander Lebedev continues his investigation of banksters (gangster-bankers) scams which he started in his autobiographical book, Hunt the Banker. Each chapter examines a different sophisticated fraudulent scheme whereby stolen billions are laundered in offshore tax havens and deposited in secret accounts with the major UK and US banks, invested in shares of blue-chip companies, and converted into mansions, yachts, private jets, works of art and luxury goods.The topics covered include the cheating of their customers by supposedly respectable financial institutions in Europe and America, their complicity in laundering illegal proceeds of corrupt officials from all over the world, the financial pyramid schemes of Bernie Madoff and other mega-fraudsters, and black holes in the charity universe.Lebedev investigates the phenomenon of the symbiosis of dirty money and the latest information technologies of the blockchain, which threatens the global financial system with a cryptocurrency apocalypse, and he describes the degradation of political elites inebriated by biased mainstream media and fake news stories.

Nigel Farage is the great disruptor of British politics. Since co-founding UKIP in 1993, he has challenged the status quo in areas including the UKs membership of the European Union, mass immigration and net zero. He is the only person in the modern era to steer two different political parties to victory in successive national elections, topping the poll in the European elections in 2014 with UKIP and in 2019 with the Brexit Party. Now he is attempting to crown that achievement as the leader of Reform UK by sweeping to power at the next general election and becoming Prime Minister.Farage is considered an outsider with a devil-may-care attitude; a populist equally at home on Im A Celebrity and GB News as he is discussing the European Convention on Human Rights. So why is this anti-Establishment figure being spoken of as a future occupant of 10 Downing Street? Can he turn a political start-up into an election-winning machine that appeals to both the left and the right? And could he bring unity to Britain?In this meticulously researched and highly entertaining book, Michael Ashcroft charts Farages extraordinary life before examining Reform UKs advance, its struggles, its impact on British politics and its prospects for electoral success.With unparalleled access to those who know Farage best, Reformation: Nigel Farage and the Rise of Reform UK will help voters judge just how credible is his aim of forming the next government.

Trust in British politics has hit rock bottom. From the extravagant promises of Brexit to the chaos of Partygate and the fallout from Liz Trusss ill-fated premiership, the hidden wiring of government is sparking for all to see. While ministers and civil servants clash publicly, the issues that matter to voters housing, health and social care, the cost of living, climate change go unaddressed. When tragedies like Grenfell or the Post Office scandal occur, accountability is nowhere to be found.Part memoir, part manifesto, Bad Government takes us behind the famous black door to reveal why the ship of state is so hard to steer.As the first female private secretary in No. 10, the author was the only other woman in the room when Margaret Thatcher resigned. Having shaped reforms under both Thatcher and Blair before working to deepen governments connection with civil society, she now offers an unprecedented insiders view of how the system evolved and why it is breaking.Exploring why successive Prime Ministers have failed in their promises to reset government and rebuild trust, this arresting book draws on compelling personal insights into the functioning of No. 10, weaving together thirty years of history with the crises of today.This is a vital look at the urgent need for a different model of government before the electorate loses faith entirely.

The explosive, no-holds-barred account of the life of a globally renowned classical musician, Julian Lloyd Webbers autobiography lifts the lid on a world previously shrouded in mystery.From vivid descriptions of Julians childhood in one of the worlds most famous musical dynasties to unfiltered stories from his collaborations with such stars as Elton John, Yehudi Menuhin, Stephane Grappelli, Philip Glass, and his brother, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bows and Arrows reveals a cut-throat world of agents, promoters, record companies, violin dealers and substance abuse, laying bare the classical music profession as never before.With refreshing honesty and humour, Julian recounts the break-up of three of his four marriages, his lifelong passion for ensuring that every child should have a chance to play a musical instrument and his devastation at the 2014 injury that forced him to stop playing and sell his Stradivarius cello. This earth-shattering loss, however, led to a new calling, prompting Julians appointment as principal of a leading royal conservatoire and his re-emergence as a tireless champion of music education, working closely with politicians including Gordon Brown, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.Culminating in Julians return to the stage for the first time in twelve years, this is a powerful story of passion, loss and a life reborn.

Dallas, 22 November 1963. The main event is supposed to be downtown, on Main Street. News footage shows office workers leaning out of windows, peering at the motorcade through a blizzard of ticker tape. On the sidewalks, the crowds are fifty deep, a wall of noise and celebration. Everyone thinks this is the place to be.A few blocks away, in Dealey Plaza, the air is different. There is no ticker tape here. The crowds are thin. The only person filming is a dressmaker balanced on a concrete plinth. In this quiet corner, theres a man opening an umbrella even though it isnt raining, a construction worker in a hard hat who claims he was sent here by God, three tramps who stand on the verge of becoming suspects, an unidentified witness known only as the Babushka Lady, and many more.This is not a book about conspiracies or a lone gunman. This is a book about memory, about how we construct our shared history, and about what happens when your life is defined by a single, fleeting moment. Its about a group of real people who opted out of the main event before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, only to find themselves accidental witnesses to the most scrutinised six seconds of the twentieth century.

Virginia Mendozas first memories are of drought. She grew up in La Mancha, Spain, the driest region in Europe. Her parents, grandparents, and almost every word, tool, and tradition of her homeland conveyed one conviction: without water, there is no life; without water, there is no civilization.In The Search for Water, Mendoza weaves this personal reflection together with a dazzling scientific and anthropological enquiry into the ways the search for water has shaped the story of humanity. From flows of migration, agriculture and pagan rain gods to contemporary struggles with drought and climate change, Mendoza writes a gripping and inventive history of humankind as driven and united by one force: thirst.

Henrietta Moraes first discovered Soho when she was eighteen or so she tells us. Her favourite sport was social climbing (heaven knows she enjoyed the exercise) and she was good at it, going to all the right parties and simply gate-crashing others. From the summit of the 1950s bohemian scene she surveyed the life and times of those who broke all the rules, such as the artists Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon (for whom she became a muse). But thats not all she did as a key counter-culture figure in the 1960s Chelsea Set, no other woman was more indefatigable in becoming a bohemian legend.Through Hen, youll learn how to steal your best friends boyfriend; enchant and ensnare a husband; blossom into a magnificent muse; dress like a comic book superhero; become a connoisseur of every illicit drug known to medical science and dose a Rolling Stones concert with them; join the caravan set and head along the gypsy trail in search of the Holy Grail, before rematerialising as the minder for a mind-blowing pop iconAlong the way youll indulge in the gentle art of cadging drinks; the feline felony of cat burglary; the canny craft of charity shop shoplifting and the haphazardness of steamy sex in second-hand bookshops.Hen, Mistress of Mayhem takes you to the epicentre of Sohos Golden Age; stage by stage it forms a complete guide to a hell-raising companion.

In the summer of 1961, Stanley Johnson, accompanied by Tim Severin and Michael de Larrabeiti, set out from Oxford on two BSA 500cc Shooting Star motorcycles to follow Marco Polos route from Venice to Beijing. Although they came tantalizingly close to the Chinese frontier, they were forced to divert to India. With one motorcycle out of action, the three of them rode the remaining machine down the Grand Truck Road from Kabul to Calcutta. In 2023, Stanley set off again with his fourth son, Max, to finish the journey he had started sixty-two years earlier. With a brilliant camera-crew in tow, they followed Marco Polos precise route across China, all the way to the Summer Palace of Kubla Khan in Xanadu and on to Beijing itself. This book tells the tale of an extraordinary dream come true.

Labours greatest ever Prime Minister is seen afresh in this concise and illuminating account. Attlees government did not simply respond to hardship; it reshaped the state, creating the NHS, extending welfare and redefining the relationship between citizen and country.As Jason Cowley, former editor of the New Statesman, attests, Attlees revolution was understated, but its effects proved enduring a reminder that long-lasting social and political change are more achievable than we often think.

Trail-blazing journalist Mea Allan was born in a leafy suburb of Glasgow in 1909 and made her name as a tenacious reporter on the grim streets of a city ruled by Peaky Blinders-style gangs, even interviewing members of the IRA. Soon she went south to Fleet Street, where she reported on life on the Home Front, witnessing the worst of the London Blitz and experiencing it too, as she was bombed out herself. As the war turned in favour of the Allies, she was the first woman accredited to the British Forces as a war correspondent, accompanying them across the Continent, witnessing the liberation of Belsen and the plight of thousands of displaced persons.After the traumas of the war, she immersed herself in village life, became an avid gardener whose works on the subject were immensely popular and finally found love and set up home with photographer Grace Woodbridge, with whom she collaborated on several books. By the time she died in 1982, Mea had 12 non-fiction books to her name, four novels, thousands of yards of newsprint, and a legacy that is begging to be told.

Mary Boleyn has long been dismissed as the great and infamous whore - her story overshadowed by scandal and myth. But what if everything we thought we knew about her was wrong?Drawing on newly re-translated original sources and rare archival material, this ground-breaking book peels away centuries of rumour to reveal the true Mary Boleyn. Far from the reckless wanton of legend, she emerges as a woman of ambition, resilience, and intelligence. Through meticulous research and fresh analysis, this book challenges out-dated narratives, uncovering the real extent of Marys relationships with Henry VIII and Francis I, her role in the rise and fall of her younger sister Anne, and her life beyond the royal spotlight.This revelatory biography rewrites Mary Boleyns story - a must-read for Tudor history enthusiasts.

Titanic represents a microcosm of the world in 1912. It was a mans world in many respects, across law, land ownership, voting rights, family structures and religious hierarchies. The stories we know about those involved that fateful night are as varied as the people aboard the ship, but many of them revolve around the roles and actions of the men.This new book from Melinda Ratchford delves into the world as it was for women in 1912, and presents a selection of womens stories, including a variety of women who travelled aboard Titanic, from rich to poor, and well-known to largely forgotten, and also stories of some women who didnt travel but whose lives were inextricably linked to the tragedy and changed forever. This collection of stories presents the lives of these women before, during and after the tragedy that irrevocably changed their world, and ours.

On 13 March 1996 Thomas Hamilton walked into the gym hall of a primary school in Dunblane armed with four legally owned handguns and in less than four minutes fired 105 bullets, killing 16 young children, their teacher and injuring many more. It was a crime that first shocked the world then changed the nation.Based on original archival research and exclusive interviews with parents, politicians and police, One Morning in March tells for the first time the incredible and powerful true story of how, in their darkest hour, a band of parents used their grief as fuel in a fight to forever ban handguns in Britain, and create the tightest gun laws in the world.

How do we lose touch with the things we love? And is it possible to find our way back to them? These pressing questions drive Nadia Beard on a quest to reclaim the dreams of her childhood for her adult self.Many, if not most of us, set aside the pursuits of youth once the reality of working life sets in, leaving the joys and skills of those days far in our slipstream. The Melody of Things depicts what coming back to those early loves entails, as Beard uproots her life to return to study the piano, years after she had stopped playing as a teenager.Beard explores the pleasures, frustrations and revelations of re-dedicating herself to the instrument as an amateur. Her story is an invitation: to seek out the restorative power waiting to be discovered in the pieces of ourselves we have, perhaps unknowingly, lost to time.

La biografía definitiva de la mujer más influyente en la Transición española.Carmen Díez de Rivera nació en Madrid en 1942 en el seno de una conocida familia aristocrática, de cuyos valores y privilegios opto por alejarse ya en su juventud. Estudio un tiempo en Paris, donde mantuvo contacto con Jean-Paul Sartre y otros intelectuales franceses, y a mediados de los sesenta se traslado a Costa de Marfil para trabajar como cooperante y tratar de dejar atras asi un doloroso episodio personal. De vuelta en España, en 1967 iniciara la carrera de Ciencias Politicas. Independizada economicamente de su familia, pronto crecio en ella un compromiso politico abiertamente izquierdista y el anhelo de que la dictadura diera paso a un regimen de libertades. Amiga temprana de los principes Juan Carlos y Sofia, y vinculada desde 1969 a la carrera politica de Adolfo Suarez como jefa de su Gabinete, primero en Television Española y entre 1976 y 1977 en Presidencia del Gobierno, Carmen Diez de Rivera desempeñara, siempre desde un aparente segundo plano, un papel decisivo en la progresiva democratizacion del pais, en la apertura a Europa y en episodios tan importantes de la Transicion como la legalizacion del Partido Comunista de España. Mas adelante, decepcionada de las intrigas politicas nacionales y cansada de la persecucion de la derecha mas reaccionaria, partira hacia Bruselas para ejercer, desde 1987, una brillante labor como europarlamentaria, defendiendo causas entonces novedosas como el feminismo y el ecologismo. Un cancer acabo con su vida en noviembre de 1999.

Dos tempos em que Mequinho foi herói nacional ao mergulho na religião, do xadrez como arma geopolítica na Guerra Fria aos embates paroquiais no interior de São Paulo, estão aqui os lances de uma traj

Hitler es, sin duda, el personaje más dramáticamente influyente del siglo xx; en buena medida, a partir de su azaroso ascenso al poder en enero de 1933, trazó un nuevo rumbo para la historia no sólo de Alemania o Europa, sino del mundo entero. Y, sin embargo, nos dice Ashby Turner en esta obra, la cadena de hechos y circunstancias que lo llevaron a ser canciller podra haberse evitado, Porque, en ese año de 1933, Hitler no era un hombre fuerte en el panorama politico aleman, sino el lider de un partido en clara decadencia; no conquisto el poder, se limito a jugar con astucia las cartas que otros repartian, y no se convirtio en canciller como resultado de unas elecciones, sino aprovechandose de los errores, la desidia y las pugnas de quienes estaban en condiciones de evitarlo.El relato de estos hechos es lo que nos encontramos en "A treinta dias del poder". De manera minuciosa y sorprendente, Ashby analiza lo que sucedio ese mes de enero del 33; como Hitler alcanzo una cancilleria que, en principio, no le correspondia, en un relato que logra transmitir toda la tension y el dramatismo de unos dias cruciales para la humanidad.

Se cumplen novecientos años de la muerte de Urraca de León, la primera mujer que reinó por derecho propio en la Europa medieval. Un mundo donde la soberanía y el poder eran prerrogativas masculinas, pero en el que Urraca, desafiando convenciones y prejuicios, supo defender sus derechos e imponer su autoridad. En 1109, tras la muerte de su padre, Alfonso VI, Urraca accedio al trono de Leon y Castilla como reina titular y soberana por derecho propio, una posicion inedita que tuvo que proteger desde el primer momento pues se le impuso un matrimonio con Alfonso I de Aragon y Pamplona, lo cual la sometia de nuevo a una tutela masculina y limitaba su poder. Urraca, sin embargo, decidio reinar en solitario y ejercer de pleno la soberania heredada, apoyada en una red de alianzas que supo consolidar con habilidad. Sin referentes femeninos previos, construyo una imagen inedita de reina soberana, aunque los prejuicios asociados a su condicion femenina marcaron profundamente la percepcion posterior, las cronicas minimizaron su actuacion politica, cuestionaron su figura desde la moral y redujeron su reinado a un mero parentesis entre su padre, Alfonso VI, y su hijo, Alfonso VII. Nada mas alejado de su verdadera dimension. Urraca ejercio el poder regio durante diecisiete años con eficacia y firmeza, defendio su legitimidad, sostuvo el reino ante presiones internas y externas y no dudo en negociar, forjar alianzas o tomar las armas cuando fue necesario. Nueve siglos despues, el libro Urraca. Una reina en el trono de un rey, de la historiadora Sonia Vital Fernandez, sirve tanto de homenaje a una soberana cuyo legado merece pleno reconocimiento, como de reevaluacion del papel de las mujeres de poder en la Edad Media, porque Urraca fue reina, aunque se sentara en el trono de un rey.