Harper Perennial imprint: 588 books

An alternative version – the one Tolstoy originally intended, but has been hitherto unpublished – of Russia’s most famous novel; with a different ending, fewer digressions and an altered view of Napoleon – it’s time to look afresh at one of the world’s favourite books. ‘War and Peace’...

The authoritative biography of Britain's most subversive twentieth-century clown from celebrated biographer Graham McCann, author of Dad’s Army and Morecambe & Wise. Please note that this edition is text only and does not include any illustrations. The rambling perambulations, the catchphrases,...

This edition does not include illustrations. The first major life of the outstanding British painter – and Jack the Ripper suspect – Walter Sickert (1860-1942), by the highly acclaimed biographer of Aubrey Beardsley. Walter Richard Sickert is perhaps the outstanding figure of British art during...

This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the brilliant, prolific writer, C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis was a deeply complex man, capable of inspiring both great devotion and great hostility. This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the clever child from the ‘Little End Room’ of his Ulster...

The riveting tale of how the wanabee aristo Conrad Black and his social-mountaineering wife Barbara gulled their way into the City, the Tory party, Wall Street and High Society. This new paperback edition will be fully updated to include details of Black’s high-profile trial for corporate fraud,...

Following on from the success of ‘The Speckled People’, Hugo Hamilton's new memoir recounts the summer he spent working at a local harbour in Ireland, at a time of tremendous fear and mistrust. Young Hugo longs to be released from the confused identity he has inherited from his German mother and...

This edition does not include illustrations. ‘Irresistible…history at its most human. Elegant and addictively readable.’ William Dalrymple During the course of the 18th- and 19th-century a small group of women rose from impoverished obscurity to positions of great power, independence and wealth....

The long awaited story of one of Britain’s greatest comic legends. 'Some people walk on stage and the audience warms to them. You can't explain it, and you shouldn't try. It's an arrogant assumption to say you 'decide' to become a comedian. The audience decides for you.' Eric Sykes, December 2001...

In one corner, a godless young warrior, Voltaire’s heralded ‘philosopher-king’, the It Boy of the Enlightenment. In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of ‘outdated’ music, a scorned genius in his last years. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a turbulent age. Behind...

This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of ‘Faithfull’, one...

An entertaining, impassioned polemic on the retreat of reason in the late 20th century. An intellectual call to arms, Francis Wheen’s Sunday Times bestseller is one of 2004’s most talked about books. In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In Britain, an era of...

The definitive history of a golden age in British show-business, Sunshine On Putty is based on hundreds of interviews with the leading comedians of the era, as well as managers, agents, producers, directors, executives and TV personalities. In the 1990s, British comedy underwent a renaissance –...

A scandalous story of money, drugs, fast cars, high politics, lowly crime, hundreds of beautiful woman and one man, Porfirio Rubirosa from the celebrated author of RAT PACK CONFIDENTIAL. The Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa died at 8:00 am on July 5, 1965, when he smashed his Ferrari into a tree...

The true story of Gerard Mercator, the greatest map-maker of all time, who was condemned to death as a heretic. ‘Geographie and Chronologie I may call the Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left, of all history.’ In ‘The World of Gerard Mercator’, Andrew Taylor chronicles both the...