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Trevithick, Frances Life of Richard Trevithick with an Account of His Investigation, 2 vols bound together
London: E & F N Spon, 1872. Illustrated by Numerous diagrams & Illustrations, 3 Foldouts. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/No DJ. Lge 8vo Cover in exceptionally good condition. Brown illustrated cloth, gilt illustration on upper cover, bright gilt titling on spine and upper cover. Slightly rubbed to edges. 2 volumes bound as 1. Frontis of Richard Trevithick, to volume 1.staining and foxing spots. Title page light spotting. x, 388 pages . Volume 2, 403 pages plus 16 pages of ads . making a total 791 pages + adverts at the rear of volume II.Index at the rear of each volume. A few foxing spots but generally very clean and tightly bound. (Book ref. 122349)   £265.00
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Jarvis, Stan Essex Pride
UK: Ian Henry Publications, 1984. Illustrated by Illustrations. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo 0860258777 Dust jacket, rubbed to dges, unclipped. Black cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. Small ownership label on f. paste down [iv], 163pp, 4pp index. Clean and tight. Illustrations in text. Short biographies of some interesting and some important Essex people, including poets, industrialists, generals and hermits, socialites and shop keepers, inventors and dreamers, politicans and vagabonds, all making up the pattern of Essex life over years. (Book ref. 122317)   £5.00
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Castle, Charles. NOEL: BIOGRAPHY OF NOEL COWARD
London: WH Allen, 1972. Illustrated by Numerous Photographs. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. Lge 8vo 0491005342 Dust jacket small tears at eges, price clipped. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. Illustrated end papers. No ownership inscription. 272 pages clean and tight. NOEL is like no biography of the great Noel Coward that has ever been written. It is a kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a thrilling evocation of the life and times of this supreme artist -playwright, composer, lyricist, singer, actor, producer, director and wit. The Master himself has given his seal of approval to this book, and to the film of his life (This is Noel Coward) which Charles Castle has prepared for world-wide television distribution, and on which the book is modelled. From the reminiscences and observations of Coward himself and of his friends and colleagues, Charles Castle has created a vivid, warm, humorous and candid account of the real Noel. The willing contributors to these expressions of reminiscence and tribute include John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Michael Wilding, Anna Neagle, Lilli Palmer, David Niven, Yul Brynner, John Mills, Margaret Leighton, Joan Sutherland, Brian Aherne, Lord Mountbatten, Edith Evans. The contributions of Maurice Chevalier and Gladys Cooper constituted their last film appearances, and their recollections are included here. All of these people have talked to Charles Castle, frankly, amusingly, sometimes scathingly, of Noel as they krtew him. A tapestry of contemporary photographs, playbills, cartoons, lyrics and scores decorates the book. There are photographs from Coward's own collection, rare records of historic occasions, masterly caricatures by Osbert Lancaster, and extracts from the best of Coward's very large body of work. (Book ref. 122245)   £4.00
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Rose, Leonard A Burr Under the saddle or "A Rose Amongst Thorns"
Essex: Autoprint Publishing Company, 1984. Illustrated by Photographs. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 5.75" By 8.75" Tall' 0947596011 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Brown cloth with black lettering to spine. No ownership inscriptions. 198 pages, clean bright and tightly bound. In Leonard F. Rose's autobiography he tells of Old Harwich, his love of "country and the sea", his career as Chartered Surveyor Auctioneer, Estate Agent Accountant Insurance Broker and A. F. A.I. His love of animals his horses and dogs his motor cycles and cars, but above all the book could be des cribed as being highly controversial as an Essex County Councillor and " watchdog of the Public Purse" and gives an astounding insight into his fight against Injustice and his lifelong tussle with "The Establishment". I t has been said that Leonard Rose is "A Character", a man fearless when fighting loo his and others Rights. A book of absorbing interest of a man who has lived his life his way, despite efforts from many sources to effect a "cover-up in their determination td Hush-up the Wrongdoings of the System" with Corruption mentioned where-ever the Public Sector is discussed. (Book ref. 122210)   £0.00
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Haymon, Sylvia The Quivering Tree. An East Anglian Childhood
London: Constable & Co Ltd, 1990. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo 0094697507 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. Frontis plate. 236 pages clean and tight. When Sylvia Haymon's first volume of autobiography, Opposite the Cross Keys, was published in 1988, it was likened to the classic Lark Rise to Candleford, but `with added wit, zest and conversation', and the first printing sold out within weeks of publication. Now, in the sequel, in 1930, we meet Sylvia again, aged twelve, still the darling of her middle-class Norwich family, surrounded by the accoutrements of school, on the doorstep of Chandos House, the Edwardian home of two schoolmistresses with whom she is to board for two eventful years. Under its roof live the diminutive mathematics teacher, Miss Gosse, with her olive-skinned Pekinese face and bootbutton eyes; Miss Locke, the bottom-tweaking history teacher of classical brow, undeniably beautiful in her sleeveless shift of greeny-blue; Mrs Benyon, the housekeeper, light-fingered and tyrannical. Outside, in the extensive garden, the advantages of friendship with Joey Betts, the small, knobbly, bow-legged gardener, and Bagshaw, the donkey, contrast with the daily suffering at the hands of the headmistress, Mrs Grail, who, speaking in low gentle tones, disseminates sarcasm, venom, and a total hatred of children. Retreating to her poky little room with its tree-shadowed window, Sylvia, constantly fighting the pangs of hunger, athirst for life and its many surprises, faces the world with stoicism, humour and an iron will to survive (Book ref. 122207)   £5.00
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Fletcher, Ronald [ Editor ] The Biography of a Victorian Village: Richard Cobbold's Account of Wortham, Suffolk 1860
London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1977. Illustrated by 90 Contemporary Illustrations. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 4to 0713407875 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth covered boards, bright gilt lettering to spine. corner cut from ffep. 168 pages clean and tight. In 1860 the Reverend Richard Cobbold, Rector of Wortham in Suffolk, decided to keep a detailed and systematic record of his parishioners, their occupations, where they lived, their foibles, vices, virtues and eventual fates. A talented artist, he also sketched them. The result is a vivid, exact and extremely moving description of life in a mid-Victorian village which ranks with the classic, Parson Woodforde's Diary. (Book ref. 122206)   £10.00
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West, Rebecca; Marcus, Jane The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17
London: Macmillan, 1982. Card Cover. Very Good. 8vo Book Description: Macmillan in association with Virago Press, London, 1982. Uncorrected proof copy. Card cover. Rubbed area on ffep where an inscription has been removed. 392 pages clean and tight. (Book ref. 122174)   £4.00
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Raleigh, Walter Alexander Robert Louis Stevenson
London: Edward Arnold, 1895. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good +/No DJ. 12mo Decorated cloth cover with gilt titling on upper cover, fading to spine. No ownership inscription. 79 pages clean and tight. (Book ref. 122166)   £10.00
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Forbes, Robert B. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. Macdonald Maritime History Series
London: Macdonald and Jane's Publishers Limited, 1974. Second Edition, Revised. Hard Cover. Very Good/No DJ. 8vo 0356047571 Half Leather look spine over illustrated cloth boards. Bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. Reprinted from the edition of 1882, Boston. Second Edition, Revised to which is added Rambling Recollections Connected With China. 412 pages plus list of vessels.6 pages. Clean & tight. (Book ref. 122155)   £14.95
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Swanson, Gloria Swanson on Swanson-An Autobiography
London: BCA, 1981. Illustrated by Photographs. Reprint. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo Dust jacket complete, small rubbed area from sticker removal. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. vi, 535 pages clean and tight. Throughout the 1920s Gloria Swanson was the international ideal of feminine sophistication, the supreme film star. Now, for the first time, she tells the story of her life, from the early Mack Sennett one-reelers, through her years of spectacular stardom and her several marriages. As a young girl Gloria Swanson came under the tutelage of Cecil B. De Mille, and by her early twenties had become, along with Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, one of the world's greatest stars, the idol of millions of fans everywhere and a symbol of the Babylonian splendours of a now vanished Hollywood. Her teenage marriage to the actor Wallace Beery was a disaster; her second marriage was hardly better. But the tremendous strength of character that brought her to stardom also kept her there, and while her contemporaries fell victim to scandal and all the extravagant corruptions that the young Hollywood offered, she kept her head, despite the hysterical adulation that accompanied her wherever she went. By the time she was twenty-seven she was world famous and had turned down a Paramount contract for more than a million dollars a year. Instead she became her own producer at United Artists, and there she violated one of Hollywood's strictest taboos by filming Somerset Maugham's Rain, the outspoken story of a prostitute and the hypocritical minister who falls in love with her. Though the film was a gigantic success, it also ran well over budget. It was Joseph P. Kennedy, then a forty-year-old Boston financier, who came to her rescue. In Swanson on Swanson she tells the story of their long-secret, three-year romance for the first time. (Book ref. 122150)   £4.00
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Prunier, Madame La Maison The History of Prunier's
London: Longmans Green & Co, 1957. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. Previous owner's inscription on title page. 298 pages clean and tight. This is the story of one of the world's most famous restaurants and of the family which has made `La Maison' great. Alfred Prunier, the author's grandfather, ran away from a humble home in Normandy at the age of thirteen and after an apprenticeship as dishwasher, then cellarman, married and started a small restaurant in Paris. It was not long, however, before Maison Prunier was known not only in Paris but throughout Europe and in America, attracting the foremost figures in the world of politics, art, society, and business. The story of Prunier's thus becomes a picture of successive historical epochs. Russian Grand Dukes and European royalty, Sarah Bernhardt, Cesar Franck, Oscar Wilde and Clemenceau were among the first visitors to the rue Duphot, and it was from here that General Boulanger watched the collapse of his attempt to overthrow the French Republic. The great Emile Prunier took over when his father died, carrying on the illustrious tradition with renewed vigour and imagination, and adding to the fame of Prunier's. On his death his daughter, the author, ran La Maison with her husband and it was on her initiative that the London Prunier's was opened with herself in charge. Prunier's conquered London as it had previously conquered Paris. After a fabulous opening night the beau monde continued to flock to 72 St James's, among them the Prince of Wales. Each generation of Prunier's has known some of the most interesting people of its time, and this fascinating book abounds in lively portraits and amusing anecdotes of those whose names have been headline news during the last eighty years. (Book ref. 122144)   £5.00
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Barber, Richard (ed.) Samuel Pepys Esquire : [ essays Which Form a Catalogue of the Exhibition Held at the National Portrait Gallery in 19 70 )
London: National Portrait Gallery/ G. Bell and Son, 1970. Illustrated by Colour & b/w Illustrations. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Square 8vo 0713517824 Dust jacket complete. Illustrated cloth cover, with bright gilt titling & decorations. No ownership inscription. 72 pages clean and tight. (Book ref. 122135)   £4.00
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Durrell, Lee ( Chosen By ) The Beast of Gerald Durrell
London: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1996. Illustrated by Colour & b/w Photographs. First Edition, First Impression. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo 0002556979 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 266 pages clean and tight. Many people's introduction to Gerald Durrell was My Family and Other Animals, the glorious description of his childhood in Corfu, full of sunshine, humour and sheer delight in discovering the natural world and the animals inhabiting it. Durrell saw, earlier than most, the threats to the animal kingdom of human ignorance and greed, and spent the rest of his life contributing in every way he could to the conservation struggle. By the time he died in 1995 he had written nearly forty books, amusing countless readers and inspiring them to join the fight to prevent the despoiling of the natural environment and its creatures. Lee Durrell, his wife, became as engrossed as he in the preservation of wildlife, and for The Best of Gerald Durrell she has chosen the most evocative, quirky, engaging and humorous of his writings to give a wonderful picture of how his extraordinary life unfolded. Starting with his early naturalist days and the rapid development of his passion for animals, this irresistible anthology guides us through his collecting trips to such places as Cameroon, Argentina and Madagascar, his growing concern about the nature of zoos, the emergence of his conservation plans, and the realization of his lifelong dream - a zoo of his own - and how it became a model for the future. Durrell's enviable ability to tell a good story and his unrivalled, acutely perceptive and utterly delightful observations of both animals and the human species made him one of our most consistently popular and entertaining authors. This lavishly illustrated collection brings together the best of his writings, and serves as a glowing testimony to one of the animal world's most famous champions. (Book ref. 122052)   £5.95
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Marrill, Alvin H.; Kennedy, Arthur (foreword) The Films of Anthony Quinn
New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1975. Illustrated by 400 b/w Photographs. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 4to 0806504706 Dust jacket slightly rubbed and chipped to edges. Cloth covered boards with bright orange titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 256 pages clean and tight. One of the most successful and highly respected motion picture actors, internationally acclaimed in his profession, is Anthony Quinn. Quinn was fourteen years old when he preached sermons for Aimee Semple McPherson in her Angelus Temple in Los Angeles; at sixteen he was a sparring partner for Primo Camera; a year later he engaged in occasional duets with the legendary Chaliapin. Before he had reached his twenty-first birthday Quinn had acted with Mae West and shared drinks with John Barrymore. For the first quarter-century of his acting life Quinn's career was fairly uneventful. His early screen roles seemed equally divided among slick-haired hoodlums, angry Indians, and sullen gigolos. Few of these performances drew critical attention, though many audiences responded to the menacing quality of his character projections. Eventually the power of his acting ability was revealed. Vivid and often memorable characterizations in Lust for Life, La Strada, Ride Vaquero and, of course, Zorba the Greek earned him the applause of his peers and public acceptance as a major artist. This book is a complete wrap-up of Anthony Quinn's career, including his powerful interpretations on the stage in A Streetcar Named Desire and Beckett. Every film in which Quinn appeared is described, along with casts, credits, synopses and reviews of the important films. More than 400 photographs, including rare candids, illustrate the volume. The sympathetic and revealing biography of Quinn as both man and artist bears out the perceptive foreword by Arthur Kennedy, who writes of his friend as a "man who lives life to the fullest." (Book ref. 122046)   £8.00
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Gifford, Denis THE COMIC ART OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN
London: Hawk Books Ltd, 1989. Illustrated by Numerous Illustrations. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Folio 0948248211 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth covered boards with bright gilt titling and illustrations. 128 pages reproductions of many graphic tributes to Chaplin. Cartoons and comic strips from newspapers and magazines of the days. Photographs & Advertisements. The book dwells on the ephemeral side of Chaplin's image and on his Centenary, the book bring the reader some of the fun that the man spent a lifetime creating. Clean and tight. Heavy book but will be despatched for the default charge within the UK. (Book ref. 122015)   £12.00
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Stephan, John J. The Russian Fascists - Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978. Illustrated by Photographs. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Lge 8vo 024110033X Dust jacket, unclipped tiny closed tear. Red cloth spine with bright titling, over boards. No ownership inscription. xxii, 450pp, clean and tight. This is the absorbing story of a quixotic crusade by a group of Russian emigres to take over the Soviet Union, dislodge its Communist rulers, and establish a fascist state there. Rich in irony, humour, and not a little pathos, The Russian Fascists provides the first full account of this small but dynamic element within the Russian emigration. Cast out by the Revolution and now powerless, these exiles tried to compensate for their political impotence by engaging in desperate fantasies. Eager to reestablish themselves in their homeland, they sought collaboration with anyone who catered to their illusions-Chinese warlords, Japanese generals, Nazi satraps and, eventually, Josef Stalin. The Russian fascists were fitfully tolerated inside the Third Reich, where Hitler opposed Russian nationalist aspirations, but they did find congenial bases in the Far East and the United States. In Manchuria, where thousands of Russian refugees had settled, a vigorous fascist organization arose, replete with martial music, brawling stormtroopers, swastika armbands, and its own vozhd-Fuhrer-an ill-starred dreamer named Konstantin Rodzaevsky. A second fascist centre sprang up, improbably, on the lush Connecticut estate of a Chicago pork and wheat heiress who had married the Western Hemisphere vozhd, "Count" Anastase Vonsiatsky. A consummate showman, Vonsiatsky, assisted by an entourage of local cronies, baffled Nazis, Communists, and the FBI alike by publicizing his imaginary network of saboteurs within the USSR and by holding grandiose manoeuvres of his "armed forces," which consisted of toy battleships purchased at Woolworth's and a "tank corps" of swastika-painted turtles that patrolled the local ponds and woods. (Book ref. 121958)   £10.00
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Dudden, Faye E. Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth-Century America
Middletown, Connecticut, USA: Wesleyan University Press, 1983. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo 0819550728 Dust jacket, small tears, rubbed to edges, unclipped. maroon cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 344 pages clean and tight. Domestic service employed more women in nineteenth-century America than any other occupation, dwarfing even factory and needlework. Was is a route to upward mobility or another domain of subservience? Through letters, diaries, women's magazines, memoirs, and literature, Faye Dudden explores the relationships between woman-as-employer and woman-as-servant-separate sphere within separate sphere-the dynamics of privilege and deprivation, supervision and submission; the practical bases of the culture of domesticity. She documents a shift from early and rural household hired girl or "help," who shared the family's life, to urban "domestic," who was stranger and menial. The shift reflected the growing class hostility stimulated by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Serving Women re-creates the conditions of service: the lack of privacy and control of one's free time, the arduous and lonely labor, the isolation. from family and home life, the descent of a number into crime or prostitution, the special difficulties of widows, blacks, and of persons with physical handicap for whom housework was an occupation of last resort. (Book ref. 121952)   £12.00
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De BARBIN, Lucy and MATERA, Dary Are You Lonesome Tonight? : The Untold Story of Elvis Presley's One True Love and the Child he Never Knew.
London: Century, 1987. Illustrated by Photographs. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo 0712617485 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Red cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. 294 pages clean and tight. On a cool night in Memphis, high on a grassy hilltop, Elvis Presley fell in love with a beautiful teenager of French descent with sparkling green eyes, a melting smile - and a haunted existence. This love ignited a passionate romance hidden from the world for twenty-four years. When they met in 1953, Lucy de Barbin was a troubled sixteen-year-old who begged God nightly to free her from a physically and psychologically tortured life. Elvis Presley was an eighteen-year-old dreamer filled with an intense desire that would fuel an unparalleled rise to fame, fortune, and, eventually, to a legendary status too heavy to bear. Their love was born of necessity, grew in secrecy, and was fraught with impossibilities. Yet for nearly a quarter of a century, it remained unbending. Elvis inspired Lucy to shake off the chains of despair and hopelessness and free herself from the brutal husband foisted upon her at age eleven by a family in the Deep South. She repaid him by sacrificing herself and her love so he could initially achieve, and then maintain, the fame he cherished. She gave birth to his first child, but her desire to shield Elvis from scandal forced her to conceal their baby. And to conceal the father from the child. The single legacy that Lucy allowed their daughter was her name Desiree. This was the endearment Elvis bestowed upon Lucy, the name he chose as the most romantic way to express his love. Though Lucy ran from Elvis to protect him, he always found her. They met secretly in parks, by the banks of rivers and ponds, and in hotel rooms across the country. When the roles were reversed and Elvis was emotionally crumbling, Lucy was there. Her love comforted him in the fog of his final years and provided an intermittent oasis that might have given Elvis the only peace he ever knew. But Lucy's scars never completely healed. Driven by her protective instincts and terrified by a past that could never be forgotten, she delayed in agreeing to the marriage Elvis had intently pursued from the beginning. (Book ref. 121949)   £4.00
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Trevor, William Excursions in the Real World
London: Hutchinson, 1993. Illustrated by Lucy Willis. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo 0091770866 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. xv, 201 pages clean and tight. These autobiographical essays are about people and places, personal fascinations and enthusiasms, that have remained snagged in William Trevor's memory over the years. He writes here of childhood and youth, of his schools and university days, his early life in Dublin and London, of Ireland and of England. Most of the portraits are of people who have either been well known to him or casually met; a few are drawn from the imagination, though the subjects are real. Some of the landscapes are equally familiar to him, while others are merely glimpsed: Persia in the early seventies, a Swiss valley, County Cork in the thirties, a Gloucestershire village, Venice in November, New York and San Francisco. 'Places do not die as people do,' William Trevor writes in his introduction, 'but they often change so fundamentally that little is left of what once they were. The landscape of the Nire valley that spreads over a northern part of County Waterford is timeless, but the Dublin remembered here is the Dublin of several pasts, and elsewhere among these impressions there is that same dichotomy.' Affectionate, poignant and often gently humorous, these essays are an expansion of a writer's notebook. Such excursions into memory convey the essence of William Trevor's world - read in conjunction with Lucy Willis's graceful illustrations, they illuminate unforgettably the background to his celebrated novels and short stories. (Book ref. 121857)   £4.00
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Payne, Robert The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
London: Published by Military Book Society, 1973. Illustrated by Photographs. Reprint. Hard Cover. Very Good/Fair. Lge 8vo 0224009273 Published by Military Book Society, 1973. Dust jacket rubbed, creased, chipped, tears. Black cloth with bright silver titling. Map end papers. No ownrship inscription. 623 pages clean and tight. More than twenty-five years after Adolf Hitler's death, his miasma still exerts a curious fascination and his shadow continues to darken the twentieth century. Even those spared the horrors of Hitler's atrocities must wonder how this one man cast a spell over Germany, conquered most of Europe (far exceeding the callousness of Napoleon) and was prevented from realizing his dream of world domination only by history's bloodiest war. Many have preferred to think of Hitler as an incarnation of evil rather than as a living man, and until now most studies of Hitler have dealt with isolated aspects of his career, such as his policies, his racist theories, his military strategy, or his psychosis. In this biography, Robert Payne, who once met Hitler in 1937, examines in his compelling narrative the whole private and public life of the man who at close quarters impressed him as `quiveringly alive, ruthlessly intelligent and far from a caricature'. Revealing a Hitler possessed of immense personal charm that attracted both men and women, Payne traces in detail the conduct of his early years: from childhood to his early twenties as a vagrant with shaggy hair and dark beard, sleeping rough in Vienna, having failed to exercise his passion for architectural design or complete his opera. Later he visited his half-brother in England, where in 1912 he spent a few months in morose solitude gazing with admiration at the procession of ships through Liverpool docks. Having tried to evade call-up, Hitler emerged from World War I - after four years as a suicidally heroic dispatch-rider and a spell, blind and helpless, in hospital - with a growing realization that his ability to mesmerize beer-hall audiences pointed to success in politics after he had failed at everything else. Once in undisputed command of the Nazi Party, he renounced the chastity of his youth and began a sordid affair with his niece, whose suicide prompted him to reject for ever all conventional morality. He promised anything for political support, then cold-bloodedly murdered his friends before they could claim a share of the power he reserved for himself. Thus with astute timing, superb tactics, a gift for oratory and an uncanny intuitive sense, Hitler seduced the German people in the 'thirties, bent the authority of state to his own purposes, blackmailed one by one the leaders of Europe, and plunged the world into the holocaust of World War II. Although presenting a good deal of information that is new, the author does not offer his book as a social or political history. Much has had to be omitted in order not to clog the astonishing story it tells with a mass of documentation that is strictly the province of the professional historian. In the end, his own interpretation of Hitler's life is clear: that he was not so much a man corrupted by power as a corrupt man allowed to achieve absolute power and to use it to an unprecedented degree, knowing at every moment exactly what he was doing and calculating his enemies' weaknesses to a hair's breadth, to satisfy his own private fantasies of personal aggrandisement. (Book ref. 121847)   £5.99
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