What might a self-conscious turn to formal analysis look like in Renaissance literary studies today, after theory and the new historicism? The essays collected here address this question from a variety of critical perspectives, as part of a renewed willingness within literary and cultural studies to[...]

THE MITFORD GIRLS tells the true story behind the gaiety and frivolity of the six Mitford daughters - and the facts are as sensational as any novel: Nancy, whose bright social existence masked an obsessional doomed love which soured her success; Pam, a countrywoman married to one of the best brains [...]

Beryl Markham, like Karen Blixen, could only have come out of Africa. Pioneering aviatrix, flamboyant beauty, brilliant race-horse trainer, unscrupulous seducer - her life story is for every reader who was enthralled by Blixen's exotic world, that of Kenya between the wars. This fully authorised bio[...]

The Mitford girls were probably the most spectacular sister act of the twentieth century." "Vogue" This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-se[...]

The biography of Jane Digby, an 'enthralling tale of a nineteenth-century beauty whose heart - and hormones - ruled her head.' Harpers and Queen A celebrated aristocratic beauty, Jane Digby married Lord Ellenborough at seventeen. Their divorce a few years later was one of England s most scandalous a[...]