Sex, intrigue and adultery in the world of high politics and huge wealth in late eighteenth-century England.

This text initiates the series of six Palliser novels in which Anthony Trollope reached the height of his literary powers.

The fourth of Trollope's Palliser novels, this text tells the story of Phineas Redux, who returns to politics only to find that a series of quarrels hamper his progress. The beautiful and enigmatic Madame Max Goesler, familiar from earlier political novels, plays her part in this tale.

Samuel Pepys achieved fame as a naval administrator, a friend and colleague of the powerful and learned, a figure of substance. But for nearly ten years he kept a private diary in which he recorded, with unparalleled openness and sensitivity to the turbulent world around him, exactly what it was like to be a young man in Restoration London.

A biography of Charlotte Bronte that describes her life of claustrophobic confinement in a Yorkshire parsonage belied by the heights of imagination to which she was able to soar in her writing. It also describes the 'extraordinary genius' that seemed to have touched her family and the intense suffering that also visited them.