Michael R. Taylor Books

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR For two hundred years, the abolition of slavery in Britain has been a cause for self-congratulation - but no longer. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire. But for the next 25 years more than 700,000 people remained enslaved, due to the immensely powerful pro-slavery group the 'West India Interest'. This ground-breaking history discloses the extent to which the 'Interest' were supported by nearly every figure of the British establishment - fighting, not to abolish slavery, but to maintain it for profit. Gripping and unflinching, The Interest is the long-overdue expose of one of Britain's darkest, most turbulent times. 'A critical piece of history and a devastating expose' Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire 'Thoroughly researched and potent' David Lammy MP 'Essential reading' Simon Sebag Montefiore

A close look at Man Ray's interwar portraiture, as well as the friendships between the photographer and his subjects: the international avant garde in Paris

When this book was first published three years ago, the author predicted that when it came to Taylor's career, the best was still to come.

Examines Seleucid military strength and organization číst celé

Carly Simon is truly a musical phenomenon. Few female artists have achieved such a magnificent body of work; even fewer have been involved in so many facets of the music business; and no one has written so candidly to create an audio diary for the whole world to hear.

The Beach Boys are one of the most celebrated bands in the history of pop music. In a career that began before the Beatles and lasted long after their demise, they were responsible for almost single-handedly spearheading a new music genre. číst celé

"Life isn't how to survive the storm, it's about how to dance in the rain" This is the definitive story of Taylor Swift and her incredible rise to success from being just a smalltown girl with a dream to becoming one of the most influential and successful artists of her generation. Ever since she was 14-years-old Taylor has never known any other world than showbusiness, and we follow her journey through the good times and the times not so good, none more heartbreaking than losing the rights to her own music - her "stolen lullabies." In her own words and those who have played major parts in her career, we look back at how she turned failures into unbelievable success and chart the creation of a wonderful legacy by one of music's undoubted masterminds. There is no doubt that with her words of inspiration and the powerhouse lyrics to her songs, the world is a far better place thanks to the unstoppable force that is TAYLOR SWIFT.

This book describes the evolution of an often-overlooked infantry brigade and its controversial commander, from its beginnings as an element of Lloyd George's Welsh Army through to its destruction in the undergrowth of Bourlon Wood. Originally consisting of four Welsh bantam battalions it was reorganized and rebuilt twice in 1918.

“Vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary” (Tom Holland), this on-the-ground, page-turning narrative weaves together the chance discovery of dinosaurs and the rise of the secular age.When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country’s southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the “first” dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years—as the science of paleontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited radical new theories of evolutionary biology, and as scholars began to identify the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures—everything changed. Beginning with the archbishop who dated the creation of the world to 6 p.m. on October 22, 4004 BC, and told through the lives of the nineteenth-century men and women who found and argued about these seemingly impossible, history-rewriting fossils, Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind’s place in the world.