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An impressive biography of the celebrated Restoration diarist John Evelyn. Perfect for readers of Claire Tomalin, Margaret Willes and Peter Ackroyd. John Evelyn (1620-1706) was a man with an insatiable curiosity. A keen reader and avid traveller, Evelyn had an unquenchable thirst for new knowledge in nature, science and the arts. He wrote and published on a huge range of topics, including theology, music and architecture, although today he is principally recognised as a pioneer of English gardening and forestry, his Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees bringing him fame in his lifetime. A friend of Samuel Pepys, Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren, and patron of Grinling Gibbons, Evelyn was in high favour at the court of King Charles II and a valued member of the Royal Society, both of which presented curiosities to Evelyn's observant eye and vivid pen. He lived through turbulent times, writing in his Diaries of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the plague, the Great Fire of London, the Popish Plot and the Glorious Revolution. Historian John Bowle draws upon Evelyn's many and varied writings to bring to life the personality of John Evelyn in the context of his times, producing a fascinating and rewarding picture of the man and his world. John Evelyn and His World is an authoritative literary biography of one of seventeenth-century England's great diarists. 'an entertaining, readable account' The American Historical Review

The 1914 memoirs of Evelyn Nesbit, the beautiful chorus girl and model whose association with architect Stanford White would later lead to his sensational murder at Madison Square Garden. In June 1906, Pittsburgh playboy Harry K. Thaw shot and murdered Stanford White, one of America's most famous architects, over a deadly dispute involving White's seduction of Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit. Known as "the girl on the red velvet swing," Evelyn earned this moniker when she described swinging naked on a red velvet swing in Stanford White's New York studio apartment. Stanford White had supposedly drugged and raped the sixteen-year-old Evelyn in the autumn of 1901. The scandal rocked the nation with its lurid details of sex, power, drugs, and insanity. The newspapers and tabloids had a field day with the story and labeled the murder "The Crime of the Century."

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and the Financial Times A completely fresh view of one of the most gifted—and fascinating—writers of our time, the enigmatic author of Brideshead Revisited Graham Greene hailed Evelyn Waugh as “the greatest novelist of my generation,” and in recent years Waugh’s reputation has only grown. Now, half a century after Waugh’s death in 1966, with Evelyn Waugh, Philip Eade has delivered a hugely entertaining biography that is both authoritative and full of new information, some of it sensational. Drawing on extensive unseen primary sources, Eade’s book sheds new light on many of the key phases and themes of Waugh’s life: his difficult relationship with his embarrassingly sentimental father; his formative homosexual affairs at Oxford; his unrequited love for various Bright Young Things; his disastrous first marriage; his momentous conversion to Roman Catholicism; his unconventional yet successful second marriage; his checkered wartime career; and his shattering nervous breakdown. Along the way, we come to understand not only Waugh’s complex relationship with the aristocracy, but also the astonishing power of his wit, and the love, fear, and loathing that he variously inspired in others. Waugh was famously difficult, and Eade brilliantly captures the myriad facets of his character, even as he casts new light on the novels that have dazzled generations of readers.

Blending scholarship with an original approach, this new introduction to Confucianism is an informative and intriguing guide to China's ancient philosophical tradition. Against the backdrop of 17th century China, the book follows a Confucian couple, together with their family, friends and staff, through a typical day. The result offers a fascinating insight, not only into the intellectual and scholarly aspects of Confucianism, but also into the nature of belief, culture and society in a living philosophical tradition. The key topics covered include: the intellectual and social role of women; Confucianism, art and poetry; the relationship with the western world and western faiths. Capturing the full scope of an ancient tradition, this innovative, well-research and accessible text should be of interest to anyone interested in Confucianism, scholars, students and general readers alike