Matthew Parker

Una de las batallas más famosas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial fue la de Monte Cassino, en la que las tropas alemanas impidieron durante meses el avance de los aliados a pesar de estar en una considerable inferioridad numerica y de medios.Parker empieza el libro con un analisis de la decision de invadir Italia tomada por las autoridades aliadas y de como la indecision al respecto y las rencillas entre ingleses y americanos hicieron que la campaña no dispusiera de los medios humanos ni materiales, ni tuviera detras la voluntad politica necesarios para cumplir sus objetivos en el plazo previsto.

The six-month battle for Monte Cassino was Britains bitterest and bloodiest encounter with the German army on any front in World War Two.At the beginning of 1944 Italy was the western Allies only active front against Nazi-controlled Europe, and their only route to the capital was through the Liri valley. Towering over the entrance to the valley was the medieval monastery of Monte Cassino, a seemingly impenetrable fortress high up in the bleak and sinister mountains. This was where the German commander, Kesselring, made his stand.MONTE CASSINO tells the extraordinary story of ordinary soldiers tested to the limits under conditions reminiscent of the bloodbaths of World War One. In a battle that became increasingly political, symbolic and personal as it progressed, more and more men were asked to throw themselves at the virtually impregnable German defences. It is a story of incompetence, hubris and politics redeemed at dreadful cost by the heroism of the soldiers.

The story of the British Empire at its maximum territorial extent including a wider range of voices of the colonised than have ever been recorded before

La fascinante crónica de la mayor y más terri­ble batalla librada entre las fuerzas Aliadas y el Ejército nazi, del desesperado enfrentamiento que se prolongó a lo largo de seis meses en las montañas

A fully illustrated graphic memoir of a child of the 60s who was raised into a life of crime and addiction but graduated into freedom. Matthew Parker was in his mid-forties when he started college. Hed been sidetracked: Eleven years were eaten up by serving time in various county jails, state penitentiaries, and federal prison. Hed been arrested more than thirty times, racking up eight felonies in a crime career that began at age thirteen, when he started dealing pot. When he got out of prison for the last time and kicked his heroin addiction, he was determined to spend the next chapter of his life in the classroom. And he did just that, going on to complete a masters degree from Columbia Universitys highly competitive creative writing program.Through captivating black-and-white illustrations drawn in a distinctively primitive style, Larceny in My Blood flashes back on Parkers childhood, with memories of a loving but lawless mother teaching him that breaking the law was the way to survive. From there it moves to an account of Parkers lost decades, where he resorted to petty crime to support a heroin habit. After years of fighting the system, Parker sees the light and Larceny in My Blood becomes a poignant portrait of a man trying to find his way in the straight and narrow. A unique memoir, Parkers images and words form a mesmerizing road to redemption.

Breathtaking... vital and important. A wonderful readPETER FRANKOPANMarvellous... escapes the inane, balance-sheet view of Empire and sees its full complexitySATHNAM SANGHERAExcellent... his mastery of detail is impeccableDOMINIC SANDBROOK, Sunday TimesExtraordinary... [brings] the world of a century ago to fresh, vivid life ALEX VON TUNZELMANNTHE STORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE AT ITS MAXIMUM TERRITORIAL EXTENTOn Saturday 29 September 1923, the Palestine Mandate became law and the British Empire now covered a scarcely credible quarter of the worlds land mass, containing 460 million people. It was the largest empire the world had ever seen. But it was beset by debt and doubts. This book is a new way of looking at the British Empire. It immerses the reader in the contemporary moment, focusing on particular people and stories from that day, gleaned from newspapers, letters, diaries, official documents, magazines, films and novels: from a remote Pacific island facing the removal of its entire soil, across Australia, Burma, India and Kenya to London and the West Indies.In some ways, the issues of a hundred years ago are with us still: debates around cultural and ethnic identity in a globalised world; how to manage multi-ethnic political entities; racism; the divisive co-opting of religion for political purposes; the dangers of ignorance. In others, it is totally alien. What remains extraordinary is the Empires ability to reveal the most compelling human stories. Never before has there been a book which contains such a wide spread of vivid experiences from both colonised and coloniser: from the grandest governors to the humblest migrants, policemen and nurses.

As heard on the Empire podcast, the epic story of one of the most extraordinary engineering feats in world history: the building of the Panama Canal.A completely wonderful book, beautifully written, amazingly researched William DalrympleAn excellent, excellent book Anita AnandHells Gorge traces a heroic dream that spanned four centuries: to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans The human cost was immense: in appalling working conditions and amid epidemics of fever, tens of thousands perished fighting the jungle, swamps and mountains of Panama, a scale of attrition comparable to many great battles.Matthew Parker explores the fierce geo-political struggle behind the heroic vision of the canal, and the immense engineering and medical battles that were fought. But he also weaves in the stories of the ordinary men and women who worked on the canal, to evoke everyday life on the construction and depict the battle on the ground deep in Hells Gorge. Using diaries, memoirs, contemporary newspapers and previously unseen private letters, he draws a vivid picture of the heart-breaking struggle on the Isthmus, in particular that of the British West Indians who made up the majority of the canal workforce.Hells Gorge is a tale of politics, finance, press manipulation, scandal and intrigue, populated by a dazzling cast of idealists and bullies, heroes and conmen. But it is also a moving tribute to the Forgotten Silvermen, so many of whom died to fulfil the centuries-old canal dream.

THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Completely fascinating, authoritative and intriguing William BoydThe big bang of Bond books... Beautiful, brilliant Tony Parsons_______________________________________________________________________Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond.From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye - the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaicas north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here. Fleming adored the Jamaica he had discovered, at the time an imperial backwater that seemed unchanged from the glory days of the empire. Amid its stunning natural beauty, the austerity and decline of post-war Britain could be forgotten. For Fleming, Jamaica offered the perfect mixture of British old-fashioned conservatism and imperial values, alongside the dangerous and sensual: the same curious combination that made his novels so appealing, and successful. The spirit of the island - its exotic beauty, its unpredictability, its melancholy, its love of exaggeration and gothic melodrama - infuses his writing.Fleming threw himself into the islands hedonistic Jet Set party scene: Hollywood giants, and the cream of British aristocracy, the theatre, literary society and the secret services spent their time here drinking and bed-hopping. But while the whites partied, Jamaican blacks were rising up to demand respect and self-government. And as the imperial hero James Bond - projecting British power across the world - became ever more anachronistic and fantastical, so his popularity soared.Drawing on extensive interviews with Ians family, his Jamaican lover Blanche Blackwell and many other islanders, Goldeneye is a beautifully written, revealing and original exploration of a crucially important part of Ian Flemings life and work.

At the beginning of the 1650s, England was in ruins wrecked, impoverished, grief-stricken by plague and civil war. Yet shimmering on the horizon was an intoxicating possibility, a vision of paradise: Willoughbyland.Ambitious and free-thinking adventurers poured in, attracted by the toleration, the optimism, the rich soil and the promise of the gold of El Dorado. It was Englands most hopeful colony. But the Restoration saw the end of political freedom, and brought in its place spies, war, rebellion and treachery. The advent of racial slavery poisoned everything. What started out as a heaven was soon to become one of the cruellest places on earth.The history of Willoughbyland is a microcosm of empire, its heady attractions and fatal dangers.

For 200 years after 1650 the West Indies were the most fought-over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold. Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors of life in Britain, created immense dynastic wealth but produced a society poisoned by war, sickness, cruelty and corruption. The Sugar Barons explores the lives and experiences of those whose fortunes rose and fell with the West Indian empire. From the ambitious and brilliant entrepreneurs, to the grandees wielding power across the Atlantic, to the inheritors often consumed by decadence, disgrace and madness, this is the compelling story of how a few small islands and a handful of families decisively shaped the British Empire.