Bloomsbury Reader imprint: 830 books

These political biographies are intended to analyse in depth the real men lurking behind the personality cults of great contemporary statesmen. Their purpose is to explain how such political leaders as Mao Tse-Tung and Macmillan, de Gaulle and Stalin formed their political outlooks, to examine how...

Van der Valk is intrigued. It isn't everyday that a quiet housewife is machine gunned down at lunchtime in a block of flats. But the body isn't discovered until hours later, and by that time, the killer's trail is already getting cold. Van der Valk is left with more than one problem posed by the death...

Passions and intrigues abound in this epic historical novel. Kagami follows three families in 19th Century Japan, the Yamamotos and the Okuras, traditionalists dedicated to the old feudal Samurai ways, and the commercial Fukudas, eager to seize trading opportunities opened up by the arrival of Commodore...

Aces High is the vivid chronicle of aerial warfare over the Western Front in World War One and the personalities that characterised the era. These were the airmen who became legends in their own lifetimes: Albert Ball, Manfred von Richthofen (also known as the Red Baron), Mick Mannock, René...

First published in 1973, Arena discusses the Year AD 80, when the Colosseum opened with quite the longest and most nauseating organized mass orgy in history. It was a mammoth celebration on the grandest scale, a fitting inauguration for an arena built to epitomize all the majesty and power of the...

'She was small, she was slight, with limber hands and fingers and white and consonant teeth; hazel was the colour of her eyes, and she wore size three shoes on her high-arched feet. There was more, though, more than pigmentation, more than fineness of form and feature: she was the repository of winning...

First published in 1981, this is Ronald Clark's engagingly readable account of Queen Victoria's relationship with "Our dear Balmoral" and the life that went on there. The biography of Balmoral begins with the first visit to Scotland of the young Queen Victoria and her husband Prince...

“What is gamesmanship? Most difficult of questions to answer briefly. 'The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating' – that is my personal 'working definition'. What is its object? There have been five hundred books written on the subject of games. Five hundred books on play and the tactics...

Sep 1939 - 27 Apr 1941 'Between your body and his,' the old Arab woman told the lovely Greek-ltalian girl, Daphnis, 'lies the Sword of Fate.' In the battle-scarred days of 1940 Julian Day finds himself in Alexandria – in a whirlpool of intrigue and spy-rings. He falls under suspicion both...

Beautifully written, intelligent and provocative reflections on the world scene as Ascherson looks first at the painful business of being English in a period of decline marked by public nastiness and private confusion. He goes on to attack - in an important and original series of arguments -the politics...

'At the first mention of going to Roumania, a great many people, as I did myself, would take down their atlas and open the map. For Roumania, there can be no question, is among the lesser known lands of Europe.' So begins Sir Sacheverell Sitwell's account of his Roumanian journey, made in the...

First published in 1943, Cloudless May explores the political and psychological circumstances of the defeat of France in the Spring of 1940.The novel follows the life of a French businessman, his friends and his mistress, as they try to weather the storm that is the fall of France, during the devastation of the war.

1938 - 20 Jan 1939 Julian Day, while seeking revenge upon those who had ruined his career in the Diplomatic Service, becomes drawn into a quest for treasure, buried for over 2,000 years. It was for lovely Sylvia Shane that Julian decided to set out upon his quest, but it was the damnably dangerous...

Feride and Nilüfer lead a elegant and comfortable life in Turkish aristocratic society until their lives are turned upside down by Atatürk's fight for independence after WWI. Finding strength and courage they didn't know they had, the women become pioneers for the freedom of their countrywomen. When...