In this major new double biography, Anka Muhlstein examines the turbulent relationship between Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots. At this time, quite uniquely, both the thrones of the British Isles were occupied by women, which for the first time brought the issue of royal consorts to the fore. The story of these two queens is one of the most fascinating in British history.

Thomas Carlyle was a major figure in Victorian literature and a unique commentator on nineteenth-century life. Born in humble circumstances in the Scottish village of Ecclefechan in 1795, his rise to fame was marked by fierce determination and the development of a highly distinctive literary voice. In this clear, authoritative and readable biography, John Morrow traces Carlyle's personal and intellectual career. Wide-ranging, prophetic and invariably challenging, his work ranged from the astonishing pseudo-autobiography "Sartor Resartus" to major historical works on the French Revolution and "Frederick the Great", and to radical political manifestos such as "Latter Day Pamphlets". "Thomas Carlyle" is an account of his work and of his life, including celebrity as the Sage of Chelsea and his tempestuous marriage to Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Award-winning biographer Jenny Uglow follows-up books on Elizabeth Gaskell, William Hogarth and the Lunar Society with the life of Thomas Bewick. In "Nature's Engraver" Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer's son from Tyneside who never courted fame yet revolutionised wood-engraving and influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change and radical politics, of Newcastle and the Tyne, workshops and family life, mines and fells, the sea and the fierce west winds - a journey into a past whose energy and power still haunt us today, and the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world.

Welcome to the fabulous world of Harry Gordon Selfridge (1856-1947): father of modern retailing, philanderer, gambler, dandy and the greatest showman the consumer world has ever known. In Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge, the bustle of turn-of-the-century America is thrillingly evoked by fashion PR legend Lindy Woodhead as we’re introduced to the men who created the first department stores – what Zola called ‘great cathedrals of shopping’. The young Mr Selfridge learnt his trade in the nascent metropolis of Chicago – the Dubai of its day – where riches were lost as quickly as fortunes were made. Moving to London in 1907, Harry Selfridge lived through the tumult of the First World War and the glittering excesses of the 1920's when he lost millions at the gaming tables in France before being ousted from his store in 1939. His seductive talents extended much further than the shop floor too, as he racked up a lengthy list of female companions over the years. To this irrepressible man, ‘the store was a theatre with the curtain going up at 9 o’clock’: Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge tells the story of what happened before the curtain fell.