Search results for ""Author Philip Eade""

'Brisk, lively and wonderfully entertaining' John Banville'Excellent ... read this book' Literary Review'The best single-volume life of the author available' Irish TimesThe much mythologised author of Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited was hailed by Graham Greene as 'the greatest novelist of my generation', yet reckoned by Hilaire Belloc to have been possessed by the devil. Evelyn Waugh's literary reputation has continued to rise since Greene's assessment in 1966. Fifty years after his death, Philip Eade draws on extensive unpublished sources to paint a fresh and compelling portrait of this endlessly fascinating man, telling the full story of his dramatic, colourful and frequently bizarre life.

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The biography of the last Ranee of Sarawak, born into the aristocracy as Sylvia Brett in 1885 and destined to become 'Queen of the Headhunters'.'Jaw-dropping ... If you thought White Mischief the last word in English expatriate decadence, you haven't yet met Sylvia and the Brookes' The TimesSylvia Brooke was the consort of His Highness Sir Vyner Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, the last in a bizarre dynasty of English despots who ruled their jungle kingdom on Borneo until 1946. The White Rajahs were long held up as model rulers, but the spectacularly eccentric behaviour of Ranee Sylvia - self-styled Queen of the Headhunters - changed everything. This is the compelling story of her part in their downfall.

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The Sunday Times bestseller A Radio 4 Book of the Week, June 2021 ‘Highly readable … deserves to take its place among the first rank of modern royal biographies’ Daily Mail ‘The narrative is as suspenseful as any thriller. Truly, an excellent read’ Lynn Barber, Sunday Times Married for over seventy years to the most famous woman in the world, Prince Philip was the longest-serving royal consort in British history. Yet his origins have remained curiously shrouded in obscurity. In the first book to focus exclusively on his life before the coronation, acclaimed biographer Philip Eade uncovers the extraordinary story of the prince’s turbulent upbringing in Greece, France and Nazi Germany, during which his mother spent five years in a secure psychiatric clinic and his father left him to be brought up by his Mountbatten relations in England just when he needed him most. Remarkably the young prince emerged from this unsettled background a character of singular vitality and dash – self-confident, capable, famously opinionated and devastatingly handsome. Girls fell at his feet, and the princess who was to become his wife was smitten from the age of thirteen. Yet alongside the considerable charm and intelligence, the prince was also prone to volcanic outbursts and to putting his foot in it. Detractors perceived in his behaviour emotional shortcomings, a legacy of his traumatic childhood, which would have profound consequences for his family and the future of the monarchy. Containing new material from interviews, archives and film footage, this revelatory biography is the most complete and compelling account yet of his storm-tossed early life.

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