Product Description: Dr. Jamal Nasir advised the King of Jordan through most of the last fifty years of the twentieth century and shares a personal insight on the way events unfolded in Jordan and Palestine. This heartwarming narrative follows Nasir from a young Palestinian refugee, through to a career at the bar in London, and on to being legal advisor to King Hussein, amongst others...read more

Product Description: "A beautifully constructed, beautifully modulated and balanced story. To say that this is a haunting book seems a cliché, but it is true." - Pamela Hansford Johnson "[T]he writing is taut and precise, generating a sustained emotional tension ...read more

Product Description: Jonathan Fryer re-examines the literary achievement of Firbank and provides an absorbing insight into his private and public life amongst Britain's literati at the turn of the Century. A radical and ingenious writer of the modernist school, Ronald Firbank's most influential novels include Vainglory (1915), Prancing Nigger (1924) and Valmouth (1918)...read more

Product Description: This is one title in a series of short, illustrated biographies. They tell the stories of those who have shaped our present and our past, from Beethoven to Dietrich and from Einstein to Churchill. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), self-styled master of the "bon mot" turned Victorian bogeyman, was resurrected by a more liberal age as St Oscar, slayer of the dragons of pomposity, hypocrisy and cant...read more

Product Description: In a compelling narrative of moral courage and personal integrity, this biography tells the story of Robert Baldwin Ross, the man who first seduced Oscar Wilde and never wavered in his loyalty to the flamboyant wit and playwright...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In the Autumn of 1891, Oscar Wilde set about conquering literary Paris. Gide was dazzled by the Irishman's energy and verve, but was driven to the edge of a nervous breakdown by Wilde's merciless paradoxes and questioning of religious faith...read more

Product Description: The National Portrait Gallery's "Character Sketches" series provides biographical sketches of a specific group of historical figures from the Gallery's collection of portraits. Each volume examines the public images and private faces, the characters and relationships that gave each group its identity and importance...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A striking portrait of the friendship between a controversial British playwright and an unconventional French novelist uses personal letters and intimate journals to explore this unlikely relationship. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Dylan Thomas's indulgent friends would describe him as an eccentric whose defiance of social convention was a natural extension of his over-fertile imagination. Others were more blunt, calling him a liar, a scrounger, a coward and a thief...read more

The history and construction of China's Great Wall are viewed within the context of Chinese society and ideology to illuminate its significance