Julia Kavanagh Book order (chronological)

Cestopisně laděné vyprávění popisuje zážitky z cest po známých i pozapomenutých místech na území historického Království obojí Sicílie, tedy po jižní části Apeninského poloostrova a Sicílii. Kniha obsahuje barvité líčení tradičních turistických míst jako Sorrento, Neapolský záliv, Benátky, Paestum, Capri, Palermo či Neapol a lze ji v jistém smyslu položit vedle známějších cestopisů viktoriánského období z pera Johna Murrayho, Johna Ruskina či Charlese Dickense. Vyprávění obohacuje řada esejisticky laděných zamyšlení na vybraná historická, společenská a kulturní témata, ale i líčení mnohdy humorných setkání s místními obyvateli všech společenských vrstev a jejich způsobu života. Kniha překračuje úzce vymezený žánr dobového „turistického průvodce“ a stává se živoucím svědectvím o kultuře, zvycích a tradicích jižní Itálie a Sicílie poloviny devatenáctého století.

Focusing on a significant 19th-century event, this historical true crime narrative delves into the Phoenix Park murders in Dublin, an incident that captivated global attention and reshaped Irish history. Authored by acclaimed journalist and Costa Biography Award finalist Julie Kavanagh, the book offers a meticulous exploration of the circumstances surrounding the murders and their lasting impact on Ireland.

A brilliant work of historical true crime charting a pivotal event in the l9th century that gripped the world and forever altered the course of Irish history.

The little known, riveting story of the most famous courtesan of her time: muse and mistress of Alexandre Dumas fils and Franz Liszt, the inspiration for Dumas's The Lady of the Camellias and Verdi's La Traviata, one of the most sought after, adored women of 1840s Paris. Born in 1824 in Normandy, Marie Duplessis fled her brutal peasant father (who forced her to live with a man many years her senior). Julie Kavanagh traces Marie's reinvention in Paris at sixteen: as shop girl, kept woman, and finally, as grand courtesan with the clothes, apartment, coach and horses that an aristocratic woman of the time would have had. Tall, willowy, with dramatic dark hair, Marie acquired an aristocratic mien, but coupled with a singular modesty and grace, she was an irresistible figure to men and women alike. Kanavagh brings her to life on the page against a brilliantly evoked background of 1840s Paris: the theater and opera, the best tables at the cafés frequented by society figures, theater directors, writers, artists--and Marie, only nineteen, at the center of it all. Four years later, at twenty-three, she would be dead of tuberculosis.

"From his birth on a train in Siberia at the height of Stalin's Terrors, Rudolf Nureyev's life was extraordinary. His career was decided at the age of eight, and nine years later, leaving his Tatar peasant family behind him, he realized his dream of studying at the Kirov's school. This account of Nureyev's Leningrad years focuses on a teacher of genius who moulded the late starter into a star; the guilty affair with his beloved mentor's wife; and the dancer's homosexual rite of passage, a secret liaison with an East German student who was the catalyst behind Nureyev's escape to the West. The 1961 defection was just the beginning. Nureyev spent the rest of his life breaking barriers, reinventing male technique: 'crashing the gates' of modern dance; iconoclastically changing ballet's most hallowed classics; and making dance history by partnering England's prima ballerina assoluta, Margot Fonteyn - a woman twice his age." "This biography, ten years in the making, draws for the first time on private papers, diaries and home-movie footage, and includes reminiscences from colleagues and friends, the closest of whom had hitherto refused to co-operate with any writer."--Jacket.