Wellington: the iron duke /anglais

Foremost military historian Richard Holmes offers us a compelling and at times terrifying account of what it means to be a contemporary soldier.

 In this remarkable book, Holmes draws on the testimonies and personal photographs of the 700 soldiers of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment in Iraq to vividly capture their day-to-day experiences of the conflict, from camp kitchens to the heart of an armoured convey barrelling out across the desert.

 As colonel-in-chief of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment himself from 1999 until 2007, Holmes combines acute observation with heartfelt experience to produce a gripping and deeply moving vision of his regiment at war.

Dusty Warriors - Modern Soldiers at War (Text Only)

'A masterly performance by the greatest literary biographer of his generation' Oldie

 In this kaleidoscope of stories spanning art, science and poetry, award-winning writer Richard Holmes travels across three centuries, through much of Europe and into the lively company of many earlier biographers.

 Central to this pursuit is a powerful evocation of the lives of women both scientific and literary, some well-known and others almost lost: Margaret Cavendish, Mary Somerville, Germaine de Staël, Mary Wollstonecraft and Zélide. He investigates the love-stunned John Keats, the waterlogged Percy Bysshe Shelley, the chocolate-box painter Thomas Lawrence, the opium-soaked genius Coleridge, and the mad-visionary bard William Blake.

 The diversity of Holmes's material is testimony to his empathy, erudition and at times his mischievous streak. This is his most personal and seductive writing yet.

This Long Pursuit - Reflections of a Romantic Biographer

Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes delivers an expertly written and exhilarating biography of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and Britain's finest soldier.

 Charting Churchill's rise to favour to lead his country to glory, cementing its position as a major player on the European stage and saviour of the Holy Roman Empire, Holmes paints a portrait of a man who combined passion, avarice and duplicity in his personal life with tenacity and utter brilliance on the battlefield.

Marlborough - Britain’s Greatest General (Text Only)

Sahib is a magnificent history of the British soldier in India from Clive to the end of Empire, making full use of personal accounts from the soldiers who served in the jewel in Britain's Imperial Crown.

 This is a stunning account of Indian soldiering in peace and war, from the barrack rooms to the cavalry swirling across open plains. Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes not only illuminates the lives and feelings of the men who served, but also those of the women who followed them across a vast continent, bore their children, and suffered alongside them in the merciless conditions.

Sahib - The British Soldier in India 1750–1914

Unique en son genre, cet ouvrage exceptionnel allie un récit précis sur le déroulement des faits, des photographies et témoignages qui éclairent le destin des soldats ordinaires et de chefs d'exception, des cartes détaillées sur les opérations et d'extraordinaires fac-similés de documents d'époque tels que carnets, lettres, croquis, rapports secrets, tracts ou journaux. Il nous fait revivre avec émotion les temps forts de cette gigantesque opération militaire qui reste sans pareille dans l'histoire.

Le débarquement - Du jour J à la libération de Paris

" Il y aura toujours des amoureux de Shelley, mais ce livre n'est pas pour eux. " Voilà donc le lecteur averti: la biographie de Richard Holmes lui fera plus souvent franchir le seuil d'un enfer dantesque qu'elle ne le ravira dans le bleu virginal de cieux éthérés. L'ange Ariel, si cher à André Maurois, retrouve ici son poids de chair et de sang, avec toutes les facettes et les tourments d'un humain qui ne fut, loin s'en faut, pas toujours pur, s'il fut certes épris de pureté. Mais là réside précisément la force singulière de cette biographie: car ce qu'elle nous donne à aimer bout du compte, ce n'est pas _ ce n'est plus _ cette image idéalisée, et quelque peu émasculée, qu'une postérité victorienne soucieuse de respectabilité a cherché à donner de lui, mais un homme que sa sensibilité à fleur de peau, sa soif de savoir en tous domaines, sa passion impétueuse et son caractère indomptable exposèrent parmi d'autres, mais plus que d'autres, aux difficultés, aux drames, aux aveuglements aussi, qui sont le lot de toute existence humaine. Si Shelley apparaît alors comme un héros, c'est comme un héros tragique; et s'il s'avère un génie, ce n'est plus le fruit d'une idolâtrie mais d'une juste reconnaissance. Du même coup, c'est l'oeuvre qui se trouve tout entière remise en perspective: Shelley n'est plus seulement le poète lyrique que l'on a voulu privilégier, il est un pamphlétaire, un polémiste, un traducteur, un penseur, un essayiste, qui s'indigne des injustices de son époque, et participe à ses combats en même temps qu'il essaie de la comprendre en profondeur par toutes les voies d'accès et dans tous les registres de l'écriture. C'est donc aussi tout un tableau de l'Angleterre à l'aube du XIXe siècle que nous offre Richard Holmes et, par là-même, des débats toujours actuels qui agitent la civilisation industrielle naissante, qu'il s'agisse de la religion, des tabous moraux, du mariage, de la pauvreté, des institutions politiques, où il devient peu à peu patent que Shelley, jusque dans ses errements, fut un extraordinaire précurseur de notre temps.

Le paradoxe n'est donc, on l'aura compris, qu'apparent: c'est en fait parce qu'elle est sans fard et sans complaisance que cette biographie révèle une figure autrement plus émouvante en définitive, et d'une vertu autrement plus cathartique, que bien des portraits certes charmants, mais rendus plats à force d'avoir trop voulu en épurer les ombres. C'est un acte d'amour vrai.
R.D.

Percy bysshe shelley

Lives that Never Grow Old

 Part of a radical series -edited by Richard Holmes - that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Johnson's book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.

 When he first came to London, young Samuel Johnson was befriended by the flamboyant poet, playwright and blackmailer, Richard Savage. Walking the backstreets at night, he learned Savage's extraordinary story - supposedly persecuted by a 'cruel mother', sentenced to death for a murder in a brothel, appointed Volunteer Poet Laureate to the Queen, and finally broken and outcast.

 With this moving and intimate account, Johnson created a brilliant black comedy of 18th-century Grub Street which revolutionised English biography by its psychological realism. Yet Savage's destructive charm and delusions of grandeur sometimes even threatened to entangle Johnson himself.

Johnson on Savage - The Life of Mr Richard Savage by Samuel Johnson

Part of the outstanding biographical series - edited by Richard Holmes - that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.

 In this pioneering series, Richard Holmes, the world's leading Romantic biographer, sets out to recover the great forgotten tradition of English biographical writing. 'I have had no time for dusty tomes, ' writes Holmes, 'I have looked for brevity, intelligence and style. Above all, I have sought out great biographical writers: biographers with passion, biographers who have found a way to the heart and soul of a memorable subject.'

 Jack Sheppard was an 18th-century Houdini - a handsome young escape artist who broke out of his cell on Newgate's grim Death Row three times. Jonathan Wild was the infamous Thief-Taker General who helped to recapture him and many other criminals, only to be tried and executed himself for racketeering, among scenes of mayhem at Tyburn.

 Daniel Defoe, the master of adventure fiction, was fascinated by 'True Confessions' and the workings of the criminal personality (including its daring, its stoicism and its humour). He was the first to retell these stories, based on personal interviews in Newgate, which also include a thrilling (sometimes hour by hour) reconstruction of events.

Wellington: the iron duke /anglais

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