Matthew Sweet

"Spot the deliberate fiction on this list: Queen Victoria had a Nigerian god-daughter; William Gladstone once knocked back so much laudanum that he had to go to Baden Baden to recuperate; the flourishing Victorian porn industry was founded by a group of Chartists who wanted to use sexually explicit material to hasten the British Revolution; Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, negotiated a fifty-fifty box office split with his management team; Britain's first black professional footballer was Arthur Wharton, who played in goal for Preston North End and Rotherham in the 1880s and 90s; Sarah Grand, the author of the phenomenal 1890s bestseller The Heavenly Twins, fronted a publicity campaign for Sanatogen; sexually, Oscar Wilde was a pretty regular Victorian guy." "As this radical myth-busting reassessment of the Victorians and their world demonstrates, the answer is: none of the above."--BOOK JACKET.

Inventing the Victorians

Wilkie Collins

The mysterious appearance of a woman dressed in white leads to the discovery of a complicated plot involving a stolen inheritance and an escape from a mental institution.

The Woman in White

The Ritz, the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridge's - during the Second World War they teemed with spies, con-artists, deposed royals and the exiled governments of Europe. And now, Matthew Sweet's West End Front is just as teeming with the incredible cast of characters from this unique period of London's history.Meet the girl from MI5 who had the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas; the barman who was appointed the keeper of Winston Churchill's private bottle of whisky; the East End Communist who marched with his comrades into the air-raid shelter of the Savoy; the throneless prince born in a suite at Claridge's declared Yugoslav territory for one night only. Matthew Sweet has interviewed them all for this account of the extraordinary events that unfolded under the reinforced ceilings of London's grand hotels.Using the memories of first-hand witnesses, the contents of newly declassified government files and a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs and photographs, he has reconstructed a lost world of scandal, intrigue and fortitude.

The Wartime Secrets of London's Grand Hotels

The West End Front

Peter Anghelides

Beverly Sanford

Jac Rayner

Mike Tucker

Mark Wright

Everything you think you know...is a lie. The Doctor and the Master; their conflict of light and dark has spanned many times and faces across the universe. This collection - of five short stories and a novella - explores the depths of darkness in the Master’s hearts; the arch-schemer’s secrets and sinister ambitions revealed through brand new adventures and encounters. Join six incarnations of evil for undreamed of adventures: a quest to free alien warlords... a dangerous mission to save a vital ally... a meeting with Bram Stoker... a shattering of lives on a distant world... a trial of wits to gain untold power... and drop in on the Master’s latest incarnation during his 77 years of imprisonment on Earth.

Legends of the Renegade Time Lord

Doctor Who: I Am The Master

Revises and reevaluates the many concepts and images surrounding the Victorians, a society that was responsible for spin-doctoring, lavish publicity stunts, hardcore pornography, theme parks, crime novels, and scandalous journalism.

What We Think We Know About Them and Why We're Wrong

Steve Cole

Jenny Colgan

Terrance Dicks

Simon Guerrier

Colin Baker

We're all stories in the end... In this exciting collection you'll find all-new stories spinning off from some of your favourite Doctor Who moments across the history of the series. Learn what happened next, what went on before, and what occurred off-screen in an inventive selection of sequels, side-trips, foreshadowings and first-hand accounts - and look forward too, with a brand new adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor. Each story expands in thrilling ways upon aspects of Doctor Who's enduring legend. With contributions from show luminaries past and present - including Colin Baker, Matthew Waterhouse, Vinay Patel, Joy Wilkinson and Terrance Dicks - The Target Storybook is a once-in-a-lifetime tour around the wonders of the Whoniverse.

Doctor Who: Target Oct 2019

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Orphan Ellinor Arden is called from her secluded Paris home to London for the hearing of her estranged uncle’s will. To her surprise, she is named as the inheritor of his fortune, on condition that she marry his adopted son. Encouraged by her lawyer and guardian, the dashing Horace Margrave, she attaches herself irreversibly to this perfect stranger, but it soon becomes clear that her trust in a dead man’s wishes has been misplaced. Suspense-ridden sensation fiction from a master of the art, The Lawyer’s Secret and the counterpart piece presented here, "Mystery at Fernwood," are particularly valuable for affording a rare female take on an art form still dominated by the male viewpoint.

The Lawyer's Secret

An untold Cold War story: how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of U.S. military deserters, a tale that leads from a bizarre political cult to the heart of the Washington establishment Stockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They’re young, they’re radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like pop stars—but the CIA is determined to stop all that. It’s a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies—agents who know how to infiltrate organizations and destroy them from inside. Within months, the GIs have turned their fire on one another. Then the interrogations begin—to discover who among them has been brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate-style, to assassinate their leaders. When Matthew Sweet began investigating this story, he thought the madness was over. He was wrong. Instead, he became the confidant of an eccentric and traumatized group of survivors—each with his own theory about the traitors in their midst. All Sweet has to do is find out the truth. And stay sane. Which may be difficult when one of his interviewees accuses him of being a CIA agent and another suspects that he’s part of a secret plot by the British royal family to start World War III. By that time, he’s deep in the labyrinth of truths and half-truths, wondering where reality ends and delusion begins.

The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves

Operation Chaos

The Ritz, the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridge's - during the Second World War they teemed with spies, con-artists, deposed royals and the exiled governments of Europe. Meet the girl from MI5 who had the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas; the barman who was appointed the keeper of Churchill's private bottle of whisky; the East End Communist who marched with his comrades into the air-raid shelter of the Savoy; the throneless prince born in a suite at Claridge's declared Yugoslav territory for one night only. Matthew Sweet has interviewed them all for this account of the extraordinary events that unfolded under the reinforced ceilings of London's grand hotels. Using the memories of first-hand witnesses, the contents of newly declassified government files and a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs and photographs, he has reconstructed a lost world of scandal, intrigue and fortitude.

A history of British movies which includes the scandals, the suicides, the immolations and the contract killings. It is the product of thousands of conversations with veteran film-makers.

The Lost Worlds of British Cinema

Shepperton Babylon

Una McCormack

Matthew Waterhouse

George Mann

Jacqueline Rayner

Joy Wilkinson

Vinay Patel

Susie Day

We’re all stories in the end... In this exciting collection you’ll find all-new stories spinning off from some of your favourite Doctor Who moments across the history of the series. Learn what happened next, what went on before, and what occurred off-screen in an inventive selection of sequels, side-trips, foreshadowings and first-hand accounts – and look forward too, with a brand new adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor. Each story expands in thrilling ways upon aspects of Doctor Who’s enduring legend. With contributions from show luminaries past and present – including Colin Baker, Matthew Waterhouse, Vinay Patel, Joy Wilkinson and Terrance Dicks – The Target Storybook is a once-in-a-lifetime tour around the wonders of the Whoniverse.

Matthew Sweet

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