Virginia Woolf''s only autobiographical writing is to be found in this collection of five unpublished pieces. Despite Quentin Bell''s comprehensive biography and numerous recent studies of her, the author''s own account of her early life holds new fascination - for its unexpected detail, the strength of its emotion, and its clear-sighted judgement of Victorian values. In ''Reminiscences'' Virginia Woolf focuses on the death of her mother, ''the greatest disaster that could happen'', and its effect on her father, the demanding patriarch who took a high toll of the women in his household. She surveys some of the same ground in ''A Sketch of the Past'', the most important memoir in this collection, which she wrote with greater detachment and supreme command of her art shortly before her death. Readers will be struck by the extent to which she drew on these early experiences for her novels, as she tells how she exorcised the obsessive presence of her mother by writing To the Lighthouse . The last three papers were composed to be read to the Memoir Club, a postwar regrouping of Bloomsbury, which exacted absolute candour of its members. Virginia Woolf''s contributions were not only bold but also original and amusing. She describes George Duckworth''s passionate efforts to launch the Stephen girls; gives her own version of ''Old Bloomsbury''; and, with wit and some malice, reflects on her connections with titled society.
Mein Kampf was first published in two volumes in 1925-6 and sold between eight and nine million copies during Hitler's lifetime, as well as being widely translated. It is the most notorious political tract of the twentieth century, a mixture of unreliable autobiography and half-baked political philosophy, which brought tragedy to Germany and the world.
Mein Kampf is an evil book, but it remains neccessary reading for those who seek to understand the Holocaust, for students of totalitarian psychology and for all who care to safeguard democracy.
This edition contains a new introduction of D.C.Watt, Professor of International History at the University of London, which analyses Hitler's background, gives the origins and history fo the book, and ends with a critical assesment both of Hitler's incoherent ideas and his ruthless understanding of politcial power.
The theatre for which Shakespeare wrote and acted was a cut-throat commercial entertainment industry. Yet his plays were also intensely alert to the social and political realities of their times.
One of the most successful women artists in history - a painter who possessed what her friend Goethe called an 'unbelievable' and 'massive' talent - Angelica Kauffman became the toast of Georgian England, captivating society with her portraits, mythological scenes and decorative compositions. This is her biography.
Explores how, over the past several years, the German people have shaped their natural environment and how the landscapes they created took a powerful hold on the German imagination. This study also shows that while mastery over nature delivers undoubted benefits, it has come at a tremendous cost to both the natural environment and human life.
Shows how Paris has drawn into its magnetic field people who have variously found there education or enlightenment, a refuge or a secret garden, even a different identity. This title features half a dozen individuals, all related in some way, which reveal a web of human feeling and experiences across two centuries.
The Nazi regime was essentially a religious cult, relying on the hypnotic personality of one man, Adolf Hitler, and it was fated to die with him. But while it lasted, his closest lieutenants competed ferociously for power and position as his chosen successor. This deadly contest accounted for many of the regime's worst excesses, in which millions of people died, and which brought Western civilization to its knees. The Devil's Disciples is the first major book for a general readership to examine those lieutenants, not only as individuals but also as a group. It focuses on the three Nazi paladins closest to Hitler - Goring, Goebbels and Himmler - with their nearest rivals - Bormann, Speer and Ribbentrop in close attendance. Others who were removed in various ways - like Gregor Strasser, Ernst R-hm, Heydrich and Hess - play supporting roles. Perceptive and illuminating, The Devil's Disciples is above all a powerful chronological narrative, showing how the personalities of Hitler's inner circle developed and how their jealousies and constant intrigues affected the regime, the war, and Hitler himself.
