Search results for ""Author Matthew Dennison""

Matthew Dennison's elegant and magisterial biography of Her late Majesty, updated following the death of Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III. 'A worthy and balanced overview of the Queen's life. Dennison is especially good on her childhood... quietly, tactfully, tastefully reverent.'The Times The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022 was more than just a moment of profound sadness; her passing marked the end of an era in our national life – and the final closing of the Elizabethan Age. For millions of people, both in Britain and across the world, Elizabeth II was the embodiment of monarchy. Her long life spanned nearly a century of national and global history, from a time before the Great Depression to the era of Covid-19. Her reign embraced all but seven years of Britain's postwar history up to the accession of her son King Charles III; she was served by fifteen UK prime ministers from Churchill to Truss, and witnessed the administrations of fourteen US presidents from Truman to Biden. In this brand-new biography of the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, Matthew Dennison traces her life and reign across an era of unprecedented and often seismic social change. Stylish in its writing and nuanced in its judgements, The Queen charts the joys and triumphs as well as the disappointments and vicissitudes of a remarkable royal life; it also assesses the achievement of a woman regarded as the champion of a handful of 'British' values endorsed – if no longer practised – by the bulk of the nation: service, duty, steadfastness, charity and stoicism.

Read more less

Book of the Week on Radio 4, and in the Observer, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and The Week 'Riveting, and immaculately written' Sunday Telegraph 'A superb psychological study of a literary genius' Business Post 'A rounded picture... and gets to Dahl's flawed, human core' Country Life 'Crisply done and well-judged' TLS Roald Dahl was one of the world's greatest storytellers. He conceived his vocation as one as intrepid as that of any explorer and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child's viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a moral, and filled with vibrant characters that endure in public imagination to the present day. In this brand-new biography, Matthew Dennison re-evaluates the received narrative surrounding Dahl – that of school sporting hero, daredevil pilot, and wartime spy-turned-author – and examines surviving primary resources as well as Dahl's extensive literary output to tell the story of a man who identified as a rule-breaker, an iconoclast and a romantic, both insider and outsider, hero and child's friend.

Read more less

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR. 'Matthew Dennison skilfully covers the facts, producing a vivid impression of this strange, shy, awkward figure. The result is a highly readable book' Literary Review. 'A haunting new biography... A compelling account of Grahame's life' Daily Mail. 'A sensitively probing and nuanced portrait that makes sense of the darker character furled in the dreamer' New Statesman. During the week Kenneth Grahame sat behind a mahogany desk as Secretary of the Bank of England; at the weekend he retired to the house in the country he shared with his fanciful wife Elspeth and fragile son Alistair and took lengthy walks along the Thames in Berkshire, 'tempted [by] the treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, the splash of a frog.' The result of these pastoral wanderings was The Wind in the Willows: an enduring classic of children's literature; a cautionary tale for adult readers; a warning of the fragility of the English countryside; and an expression of fear at threatened social changes that, in the aftermath of the World War I, became reality. Like its remarkable author, it balances maverick tendencies with conservatism. Grahame was an Edwardian pantheist whose work has a timeless appeal, an escapist whose withdrawal from reality took the form of time travel into his own past.

Read more less

Matthew Dennison's elegant and magisterial biography of Her late Majesty, updated following the death of Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III. 'A worthy and balanced overview of the Queen's life. Dennison is especially good on her childhood... quietly, tactfully, tastefully reverent.'The Times The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022 was more than just a moment of profound sadness; her passing marked the end of an era in our national life – and the final closing of the Elizabethan Age. For millions of people, both in Britain and across the world, Elizabeth II was the embodiment of monarchy. Her long life spanned nearly a century of national and global history, from a time before the Great Depression to the era of Covid-19. Her reign embraced all but seven years of Britain's postwar history up to the accession of her son King Charles III; she was served by fifteen UK prime ministers from Churchill to Truss, and witnessed the administrations of fourteen US presidents from Truman to Biden. In this brand-new biography of the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, Matthew Dennison traces her life and reign across an era of unprecedented and often seismic social change. Stylish in its writing and nuanced in its judgements, The Queen charts the joys and triumphs as well as the disappointments and vicissitudes of a remarkable royal life; it also assesses the achievement of a woman regarded as the champion of a handful of 'British' values endorsed – if no longer practised – by the bulk of the nation: service, duty, steadfastness, charity and stoicism.

Read more less

Book of the Week on Radio 4, and in the Observer, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and The Week 'Riveting, and immaculately written' Sunday Telegraph 'A superb psychological study of a literary genius' Business Post 'A rounded picture... and gets to Dahl's flawed, human core' Country Life 'Crisply done and well-judged' TLS A brand-new biography of Roald Dahl, re-evaluating the received narrative surrounding the life of the much-loved author and creator of numerous iconic literary characters – from one of our finest contemporary biographers. Roald Dahl was one of the world’s greatest storytellers. He considered his vocation to be as bold and exciting as an explorer’s and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child’s viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a moral, and filled with vibrant characters that endure in the public imagination to the present day.

Read more less

Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, later Princess Henry of Battenberg, was the last-born – in 1866 – of Victoria and Albert's children, and she would outlive all of her siblings to die as recently as 1944. Her childhood coincided with her mother's extended period of mourning for her prematurely deceased husband, a circumstance which may have contributed to Victoria's determination to keep her youngest daughter as close to her as possible. She would eventually marry Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885, but only after overcoming her mother's opposition to their union. Beatrice remained Queen Victoria's favourite among her five daughters, and became her mother's constant companion and later her literary executor, spending the years that followed Victoria's death in 1901 editing her mother's journals and voluminous correspondence. Matthew Dennison's elegantly written biography restores Beatrice to her rightful place as a key figure in the history of the Victorian age, and paints a touching and revealing portrait of the life and family of Britain's second-longest-reigning monarch.

Read more less

Empress of Rome is the fascinating biography of one of the most perplexing and powerful figures of the ancient world: the empress Livia. Second wife of the emperor Augustus and the mother of his successor Tiberius, Livia has been vilified by posterity (most notably by Tacitus and Robert Graves) as the quintessence of the scheming Roman matriarch, poisoning her relatives one by one to smooth her son's path to the imperial throne. In this elegant and rigorously researched biography, Matthew Dennison rescues the historical Livia from this crudely drawn caricature of the popular imagination. He depicts a complex, courageous and richly gifted woman whose true crime was not was not murder but the exercise of power, and who, in a male-dominated society, had the energy to create for herself both a prominent public profile and a significant sphere of political influence.

Read more less

One of them was a military genius; one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned. Six of their number were assassinated, two committed suicide, and five of them were elevated to the status of gods. They have come to be known as the 'twelve Caesars' - Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. Under their rule, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years.In The Twelve Caesars, Matthew Dennison offers a beautifully crafted sequence of imperial portraits, triumphantly evoking the luxury, licence, brutality and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith.

Read more less

Beatrix Potter is one of the world's bestselling, most cherished authors, whose books have enchanted generations of children for over a hundred years. Yet how she achieved this legendary status is just one of several stories of Beatrix Potter's remarkable and unexpected life. Inspired by the twenty-three 'tales', Matthew Dennison takes a selection of quotations from Potter's stories and uses them to explore her multi-faceted life and character: repressed Victorian daughter; thwarted lover; artistic genius; formidable countrywoman. They chart her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman, so deeply unusual for the Victorian era in which she grew up. Embellished with photographs of Potter's life and her own illustrations, this short biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter's work.

Read more less