Juliet Gardiner

From the author of 'Wartime' and 'The Thirties'comes an outstanding history of the most prolonged and devastating attack ever endured by Britain's civilian population - the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new and terrible form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, widely feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war. Yet, compared with other great events of that war - Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, D-Day - the Blitz remains curiously overlooked; while the London Blitz has been much documented, there exists very little in the way of a comprehensive account of the Blitz experience as a whole - or of its social, political and cultural implications. In her new book, critically acclaimed historian Juliet Gardiner finally gives the Blitz the historical attention it deserves. Exploring this national story, she charts the impact of the nightly bombings on the entire country. And while loss and devastation affected the whole of Britain, the attacks also served to galvanise the nation: in the face of the terrifying Nazi onslaught, a new determination steadily emerged. Revealing, original and beautifully written, The Blitz is a much-needed re-examination of one of the most important aspects of Second World War history.

The British Under Attack

The Blitz

J.B. Priestley famously described the ′three Englands′ he saw in the 1930s; Old England, nineteenth-century England and the new, post-war England. Thirties Britain was, indeed, a world of contrasts, ultimately torn between the image of a nation rendered hopeless by the Depression, unemployment and international tensions, and that of a Britain of complacent suburban home-owners with a baby Austin in every garage. Now Juliet Gardiner, acclaimed author of the award-winning Wartime, provides a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade.

An Intimate History

The Thirties

Half the British Army never left Britain during the Second World War and became, with the civilian population, the Home Front. In 'Wartime' the danger, courage, deprivation, fear, exhaustion, and humour that the population endured for six years is vividly brought to life through the voices of those who lived through them.

Britain 1939-1945

Wartime

Thirties

The Edwardian Country House gives an insight into the romance and reality of Edwardian society and evokes the golden years before World War I. In this illustrated book, Juliet gardiner explores the key events in the social calendar of a wealthy Edwardian family - a fancy dress ball, a society dinner party, a village fete, a musical evening, a shooting party - from not only the points of view of the family, but also from that of the servants. Detailed descriptions of the day-to-day activities involved in running a country house are told through diary extracts, letters, advice manuals and recipes, while special craft features enable readers to create a range of authentic Edwardian delights for themselves.

The Edwardian Country House

Marghanita Laski

Sarah Russell

A short, hard-hitting 1946 novel, originally published under the pseudonym 'Sarah Russell', about sex in wartime London.

To Bed with Grand Music

"I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do anything one does. I lived on honeycomb." Oscar Wilde Although it is over 120 years since his infamous trial for indecency, Oscar Wilde has never held greater fascination for us. This packed illustrated biography tells the life of Oscar Wilde through his own words – private letters, poems, plays, stories and legendary witticisms. It includes his relationships with key artists and writers of the time, including John Ruskin, Charles Ricketts, and Lillie Langtry. It is illustrated throughout with paintings, engravings, contemporary photographs, cartoons and caricatures of Wilde and his social circle. With illustrations and paintings by Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Whistler and Max Beerbohm, it is a beautiful evocation of the glittering fin de siecle word by its most fascinating wordsmith and aesthete. The book details Wilde's ruin after the trial and its outcome. The profundity of his writing from prison and exile form an epitaph, not only to his own life, but also for the era that carelessly delighted in it.

A Life in Letters, Writings and Wit

The Illustrated letters of Oscar Wilde

Gabrielle Townsend

The road to Haworth - Tales of childhood - A suitable situation - The world without - Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell - Charlotte alone - Family and friends - In the footsteps of the Brontes.

The Brontës at Haworth : a Life in Letters, Diaries and Writings

The World Within

From Library Journal: In this lavishly illustrated volume, English historian and author Gardiner uses Wilde's own words to delineate his life and times. What emerges is a picture of a man whom William Butler Yeats described as "the greatest talker of all time." Gardiner highlights Wilde's advocacy of aestheticism, his "search after the signs of the beautiful," which led him to renounce his conventional lifestyle and become an active homosexual. The final third of the book focuses on Wilde's tumultuous relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and the scandal that resulted when "Bosie's" father, the Marquess of Queensbury, attacked Wilde's way of life. The volume is beset by a number of mechanical problems-quotations from original sources are awkwardly incorporated into the author's sentences, punctuation is at times faulty, and transitions not always smooth. Nonetheless, the book provides a good overview of Wilde's life; Gardiner acknowledges Richard Ellman's biography (Oscar Wilde, LJ 12/87) as the "fullest life possible." Suitable for public libraries with general literature collections.-Denise J. Stankovics.

Oscar Wilde

What is History Today--?

The Illustrated Letters of the Brontës is the story both of the real world of the Brontës at Haworth Parsonage, their home on the edge of the lonely Yorkshire moors, and of the imaginary worlds they spun for themselves in their novels and poetry. Wherever possible, their story is told using their own words – the letters they wrote to each other, Emily and Anne's secret diaries, and Charlotte's exchanges with luminaries of literary England – or those closest to them, such as their brother Branwell, their father Patrick Brontë, and their novelist friend Mrs Gaskell. The Brontës sketched and painted their worlds too, in delicate ink washes and watercolours of family and friends, animals and the English moors. These pictures illuminate the text as do the tiny drawings the Brontë children made to illustrate their imaginary worlds. In addition, there are facsimiles of their letters and diaries, paintings by artists of the day, and pictures of household life. It is a unique and privileged view of the real lives of three women, writers and sisters.

The letters, diaries and writings of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë

The Illustrated Letters of the Brontës

A biography of the nineteenth-century queen drawing on the journal that she kept from childhood, her letters, contemporary documents, and letters written to her and about her.

Queen Victoria

Drawing on novels and pamphlets, plays, songs, newspaper and magazine articles, diaries, letters and books, this is a collection of fiction and non-fiction writing by women in the period from 1880 to the end of the First World War. ('Fin de siècle').

Women's Voices, 1880-1918

The New Woman

Endorsed by the Imperial War Museum, this book provides the answers to many questions relating to the Britain at war experience, by using facsimiles of actual documents and memorabilia from the time: photos, paintings, propaganda, regulations, and witness accounts.

Experience Life in Britain During the Second World War

War on the Home Front

In a series of powerful accounts drawn from diaries, letters, sound archives and interviews recorded during the period of devastation, discovery and transformation that make the blitz such an outstanding event in Britain's recent past, "The Blitz" brings to life the intense experiences, as they happened all over Britain.

Juliet Gardiner

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