The whole of Fairyland is very excited
- there's going to be a new royal baby! But when Foster the stork fails to deliver the new
...

The lives & deaths of the Romanov family are redolent with colour & drama, but the personal life of the beautiful Tsarina Alexandra has remained enigmatic. Under Erickson's masterful scrutiny the full

Dimensions of the Empress's singular psychology are revealed: her childhood bereavement, her long struggle to attain her romantic goal of marriage to her handsome cousin Nicholas, anguishing shyness, the struggles with her in-laws, a false pregnancy, her increasing eccentricities as she became more preoccupied with matters of faith, & her growing dependence on a series of occult mentors, the most notorious of whom was Rasputin. With meticulous care, long-practised skill, & generous imagination, Erickson has brought Alexandra & her family back to life. Taking advantage of material unavailable until the fall of the Soviet Union, Erickson portrays Alexandra's story as a closely observed, enthrallingly documented, progressive psychological retreat from reality.

...

The last of Alexandre Dumass many mistresses, the American actress Adah Menken, called him "the king of romance." She was not thinking only of his immensely popular novels The Three Musketeers & The Count of Monte Cristo
- everything about Dumas was touched with the spirit of romance, & it is that spirit which this exhilarating biography captures.

There was romance in Dumass ori A-gins. He grew up in the country, the son of a general who fought under Napoleon in Egypt & Italy & whose own parents were a French marquis & a slave from Haiti. As a boy, Dumass closest friends were local poachers & a gardener whom he once watched cut open a grass snake to lib A-erate a frog. The world was full of magical possibilities, &, in his twen A-ties, after moving to Paris & working as a clerk under the Duc d Orleans, Dumas established himself, with Victor Hugo, as one of the leading Romantic playwrights.

In its scope & richness, Dumass life bears comparison to those of his fictional heroes. Drawing on Dumass memoirs & surviving correspon A-dence, Professor Hemmings constructs a fascinating story, first published in 1979, of a writer whose novels continue to excite our imagi A-nation.




...

Since 2003, Alexandre Gauthier has been the chef at La Grenouillere, a sixteenth-century farmhouse by the river Canche. There, he creates a highly personal cuisine, a snapshot of every season. Powerful, warm, sensuous, earthy yet delicate, it rests on the building blocks of a classic French cuisine that he has stripped of its formality & unnecessary intricacies. Gauthier has received the distinction of being named a Chevalier de L' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government & is one of the leading figures of new European cooking. Through this book, he offers a hundred of his culinary creations to read, to cook, to consider. superb photographs by Marie Pierre Morel showcase Gauthier's food & the beauty of the region, where La Grenouillere has become an important destination for foodlovers from all over the world. ...

For Marcus Didius Falco, agent to the Emperor Vespasian, Alexandria holds fascination & a hint of fear. Beautiful, historic & famously unruly, the great cosmopolitan city wears Roman rule lightly. While his wife, Helena Justina, wants to see the Lighthouse & the Pyramids, Falco has a mission at the Great Library that soon turns out to involve much more than stock-taking its innumerable scrolls. A mysterious death in the world-famous library bring him into immediate conflict with the darker side of academic life. With forensic science in its infancy, even an illegal autopsy fails to find real answers. To solve the crime for the Roman Prefect
- if indeed it is a crime
- Falco will have to draw on his own doggedness & intuition, at first supported only by Helena's commonsense & the loyal backup of her brother Aulus, who goes under cover as a student among the in-fighting academics. The philosophers lust after fame & fortune so ruthlessly there is soon another terrifying death, this time at the royal zoo. At the same time, his original innocent mission is overshadowed by the machinations of his Uncle Fulvius, who is living in Alexandria with his partner Cassius for obscure reasons. Their involvement in local affairs already seems shady when they are joined by their crony, Falco's father, Geminus, a man well known for disreputable business practices. If the irrepressible Pa has had any hand in what has gone wrong at the Library, Falco knows he stands no chance...

...

Alexandria is still alive & alters even when one tries to sum her up... Only the climate, only the north wind & the sea remain as pure as when Menelaus, the first visitor, landed three thousand years ago... In the autumn of 1915, in a slightly heroic mood, E.M. Forster arrived in Alexandria, full of lofty ideals as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Yet most of his time was spent exploring the magic, antiquity & complexity of the place in order to cope with living in what he saw as a funk-hole. With a novelist's pen, he brings to life the fabled, romantic city of Alexander the Great, capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, beacon of light & culture symbolised by the Pharos, where the doomed love affair of Antony & Cleopatra was played out & the greatest library the world has ever known was built. Threading 3, 000 years of historyith vibrant strands of literature & puncutating the narrative with his own experiences, Forster immortalised Alexandria, painting an incomparable portrait of the great city &, inadvertently, himself. ...

Alexandria was the greatest cultural capital of the ancient world. Accomplished classicist & author Theodore Vrettos now tells its story for the first time in a single volume. His enchanting blend of literary & scholarly qualities makes stories that played out among architectural wonders of the ancient world come alive. His fascinating central contention that this amazing metropolis created the western mind can now take its place in cultural history.

Vrettos describes how & why the brilliant minds of the ages -- Greek scholars, Roman emperors, Jewish leaders, & fathers of the Christian Church -- all traveled to the shining port city Alexander the Great founded in 332 B.C. at the mouth of the mighty Nile. There they enjoyed learning from an extraordinary population of peaceful citizens whose rich intellectual life would quietly build the science, art, faith, & even politics of western civilization. No one has previously argued that, unlike the renowned military centers of the Mediterranean such as Rome, Carthage, & Sparta, Alexandria was a city of the mind. In a brief section on the great conqueror & founder Alexander, we learn that he himself was a student of Aristotle.

In Part Two of his majestic story, Vrettos shows that in the sciences the city witnessed an explosion: Aristarchus virtually invented modern astronomy; Euclid wrote the elements of geometry & founded mathematics; amazingly, Eratosthenes precisely figured the circumference of the earth; & 2, 500 years before Freud, the renowned Alexandrian physician Erasistratus identified a mysterious connection between sexual problems & nervous breakdowns.

What could so cerebral a community care about geopolitics? As Vrettos explains in the third part of this epic saga, if Rome wanted power & prestige in the Mediterranean, the emperors had to secure the good will of the ruling class in Alexandria. Julius Caesar brought down the Roman Republic, & then almost immediately had to go to Alexandria to secure his power base. So begins a wonderfully told story of political intrigue that doesn't end until the Battle of Actium in 33 B.C. when Augustus Caesar defeated the first power couple, Anthony & Cleopatra.

The fourth part of Alexandria focuses on the sphere of religion, & for Vrettos its center is the famous Alexandrian Library. The chief librarian commissioned the Septuagint, the oldest Greek version of the Old Testament, which was completed by Jewish intellectuals. Local church fathers Clement & Origen were key players in the development of Christianity; & the Coptic religion, with its emphasis on personal knowledge of God, flourished.

Vrettos has blended compelling stories with astute historical insight. Having read all the ancient sources in Ancient Greek, Hebrew, & Latin himself, he has an expert's knowledge of the everyday reality of his characters & setting. No reader will ever forget walking with him down this lost city's beautiful, dazzling streets.









...

For Marcus Didius Falco, agent to the Emperor Vespasian, Alexandria holds fascination & a hint of fear. Beautiful, historic & famously unruly, the great cosmopolitan city wears Roman rule lightly. While his wife, Helena Justina, wants to see the Lighthouse & the Pyramids, Falco has a mission at the Great Library that soon turns out to involve much more than stock-taking its innumerable scrolls. A mysterious death in the world-famous library bring him into immediate conflict with the darker side of academic life. With forensic science in its infancy, even an illegal autopsy fails to find real answers. To solve the crime for the Roman Prefect
- if indeed it is a crime
- Falco will have to draw on his own doggedness & intuition, at first supported only by Helena's commonsense & the loyal backup of her brother Aulus, who goes under cover as a student among the in-fighting academics. The philosophers lust after fame & fortune so ruthlessly there is soon another terrifying death, this time at the royal zoo. At the same time, his original innocent mission is overshadowed by the machinations of his Uncle Fulvius, who is living in Alexandria with his partner Cassius for obscure reasons. Their involvement in local affairs already seems shady when they are joined by their crony, Falco's father, Geminus, a man well known for disreputable business practices. If the irrepressible Pa has had any hand in what has gone wrong at the Library, Falco knows he stands no chance...

...

When Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, finds himself stranded in Alexandria in the winter of 2010 after his flight to South Africa has been cancelled, he sets out to explore a nation on the brink of revolution. Guided by two native Egyptians, Stothard traces his own life-long interest in the history of Cleopatra, & his repeated failure to write the book about her that he had always wanted to. In Alexandria, part memoir & part travel literature, Stothard was the sights & sounds of the ancient city to reconnect with the formative experiences of his childhood education, & his literary career. Melancholy & sometimes humorous, Alexandria offers a first-hand glimpse into the fracturing police state of Hosni Mubarak, before the uprising in Tahir Square changed everything. ...

Alexei Sayle reveals his true vocation: proprietor of an imaginary sandwich shop. Blending politics, comedy, philosophy & memoir, this is the Godfather of Alternative Comedy at his most anarchic & irresistibly entertaining Alexei Sayle has been telling people he runs a sandwich bar on Gray's Inn Road that doesn't exist since the mid-1970s. From behind this imaginary counter Alexei dispenses wisdom & focaccia to his famous customers as he explores his love of pretending, reveals why he disappeared from our TV screens in the 1990's, lobbies for eleven-hour long episodes of Newsnight & discusses rampant nepotism in coveted careers. & from drawing striking comparisons between capitalism & all-you-can-eat buffets to discussing the hidden depths of Taylor Swift, this flight of fancy packs a surprising punch & will leave you hungry for more. ...