James Naughtie Books

From Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison, delve into more than 100 biographies of the world's greatest writers. Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured novelist, playwright, or poet, biographical entries trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and influenced their work, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots, and evocative settings that they created. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and paintings of writers' homes, studies, and personal artefacts - along with pages from original manuscripts, first editions, and their correspondence - this book introduces the key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each writer, revealing the imaginations and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. With a foreword introduction by James Naughtie, and covering an eclectic range of authors from the Middle Ages to the present day, Writers provides a compelling glimpse of the lives and loves of each great writer.

The acclaimed author and BBC broadcaster on US politics and the American dream, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.

A penetrating insider's view of the most important relationship in modern politics, the one on which the recent reinvention of Britain is founded: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. By the celebrated Radio 4 Today Programme presenter James Naughtie.

The third instalment in Naughtie's Cold War spy series about three brothers whose lives are all entwined with the intelligence services. Will is now British ambassador to Washington, but soon finds himself on a dangerous journey into his clandestine past, from conflict in Ireland to the long shadows of the Cold War.

Broadcaster James Naughtie takes a spellbinding journey through the history of music

The fascinating and compelling story of the 'special relationship' between Blair and America.

Paris, April 1968. The cafes are alive with talk of revolution, but for Will Flemyng – secret servant at the British embassy – the crisis is personal. A few words from a stranger on the metro change his life. His family is threatened with ruin and he now faces the spy's oldest fear: exposure. Freddy Craven is the hero and mentor Flemyng would trust with his life, but when he is tempted into a dark, Cold War labyrinth, he chooses the dangerous path and plays his game alone. Then a bizarre murder reveals a web of secrets, and his loyalty to family and friends is tested as never before. As the streets of Paris become a smoke-filled battleground, Flemyng, like his friends and enemies, discovers that where secrets are at stake, lives are too.

Will Flemyng was a spy who turned to politics and is rising to the top in the 1970s. But when a bizarre death, on one hot summer day in London, starts to unravel some of the most sensitive secrets of his government, he's drawn back into the shadows of the Cold War and begins to dance with danger once more. Buffeted by political forces and the powerful women around him, and caught in interlocking mysteries he must disentangle – including a potentially lethal family secret – Flemyng faces his vulnerability and learns, through betrayal and tragedy, more truth about his world than he has ever known.

Explore the fascinating lives and loves of the greatest novelists, poets, and playwrights. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and paintings of writers' homes, studies, and personal artifacts--along with pages from original manuscripts, first editions, and their correspondence--Writers Who Changed History introduces the key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each writer, revealing the imaginations and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured novelist, playwright, or poet, biographical entries trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and influenced their work, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots, and evocative settings that they created. Each entry explains how the person's writing developed during their lifetime and sets it in context, conveying a powerful sense of the place and the period of history in which they lived. Covering an eclectic range of authors from the Middle Ages to the present day, Writers Who Changed History provides a compelling glimpse of the lives and loves of each great writer. -- publisher.