Bloomsbury Reader imprint: 830 books

First published in 1975, this tells of one of the Bright Young Things in that brilliant and stimulating era between the wars, Alec Waugh remembers 1931 as being a year of firsts. It was the year he attended his first garden party, the year he made his first transatlantic phone call, the year he became...

The classic, bestselling account of the infamous Kray twins, now a major film, LEGEND, starring Tom Hardy. Reggie and Ronald Kray ruled London's gangland during the 1960s with a ruthlessness and viciousness that shocks even now. Building an empire of organised crime such as nobody has done...

First published in 1978 Façades details the lives of three of the twentieth century's most intriguing literary figures: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. Aristocrats emanating from a privileged but loveless youth, they moulded the scene of the English avant-garde throughout the 1920s and in...

John Pearson knows more about the Krays than anyone alive. Legend, starring Tom Hardy, was based on his book The Profession of Violence and it was Pearson who exposed the Boothby connection in 1994. In 1967 the twins asked Pearson to write their biography. He remained a confidant of the family and...

From the author of All the Money in the World, now a major motion picture, comes a history of Lady Diana's family, the Spencers, a dynasty that rose from sheep farmers to the ranks of upper aristocracy and, finally, royalty. When Lady Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales in 1981, very...

Growing up in the supreme moral rigour of Queen Victoria's court, young Bertie was always going to find it hard to live up to his parents' expectation. He was far from a brilliant student, and though charming, his carnal inclinations were widely rumoured to have sped up his Father's decline, with...

It is almost a century since Thomas Alva Edison, the world's greatest inventor, gave the world electric light - and exactly one hundred years since he built the first successful phonograph (forerunner of the gramophone). The man who declared that "genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent...

In his time, Harry S. Truman was one of the most under-rated presidents of the twentieth century. Succeeding the charismatic Roosevelt, he was often seen as an uninspiring leader, a poor diplomat and a fumbling politician. He was the first man to authorise the use of nuclear weapons, and was in office...

It was the railway system which moulded the American hobo into the legendary figure he became, especially in the depression years, but surviving until today. His origins, however, go back to the early pioneer days. He is in fact a unique and indigenous American product, 'capriciously used and discarded...

The Course of My Life is not only the autobiography of one of the most distinguished figures of modern times, but a revealing panoply of twentieth-century political, international and social history. Born in 1916, Edward Heath became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1950, following a glittering...

First published in 1984, explosively topical and penetrating in insight, this bestseller from the world's expert on international, high-flying big business is essential and fascinating reading for anyone who has ever looked down on the world from a plane and wondered how airlines have changed it.

First published in 1932, this is the story of eighteenth century Bath, where Beau Nash ruled as uncrowned king for so many years, the fashionable members of English society found a splendid justification for improving their health and enjoying themselves at the same time. They took the waters assiduously,...

The true story of the Getty family as featured in the TV series Trust and the movie All the Money in the World Boardroom battles, sex, money, drugs, power, crime, tragedy, and family intrigue; at the centre stands the figure of John Paul Getty, the grandfather, an eccentric oil billionaire...

First published in 1981, The Money Lenders reveals the power, the workings and the personalities of the money men who have made the world go round: The Superbankers – including Chase Manhattan's David Rockefeller, Citibank's Walter Wriston, Lloyds' Sir Jeremy Morse and Robert McNamara. The...