Bøker av Nicholas Shakespeare

A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers. Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote.Ian's childhood with his gifted brother Peter and his extraordinary mother set the pattern for his ambition to be 'the complete man', and he would strive for the means to achieve this 'completeness' all his life. Only a thriller writer for his last twelve years, his dramatic personal life and impressive career in Naval Intelligence put him at the heart of critical moments in world history, while also providing rich inspiration for his fiction. Exceptionally well connected, and widely travelled, from the United States and Soviet Russia to his beloved Jamaica, Ian had access to the most powerful political figures at a time of profound change.Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the most gifted biographers working today. His talent for uncovering material that casts new light on his subjects is fully evident in this masterful, definitive biography. His unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers and his nose for a story make this a fresh and eye-opening picture of a man whose life was overshadowed by his famous creation.

A biography of Bruce Chatwin, based on private notebooks, diaries, letters and hundreds of interviews. It illuminates the many sides of Chatwin, from Sotheby's director, archaeologist, "Sunday Times" journalist and traveller to devoted husband and active gay, socialite and loner.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his late aunt, Priscilla, he was completely unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, photographs, and journals, surrounded by suitors and living the dangerous existence of a British woman in a country controlled by the enemy. He had heard rumors that Priscilla had fought in the Resistance, but the truth turned out to be far more complicated.As he investigated his aunt's life, dark secrets emerged, and Nicholas discovered the answers to the questions over which he'd been puzzling: What caused the breakdown of Priscilla's marriage to a French aristocrat? Why had she been interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, and how had she escaped? And who was the "Otto" with whom she was having a relationship as Paris was liberated?Piecing together fragments of one woman's remarkable and tragic life, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his glamorous, mysterious late aunt, Priscilla, he was completely unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. Piecing together fragments of one woman's remarkable and tragic life, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

This novel explores one of the most astonishing stories in the whole history of twentieth century terrorism. The Dancer Upstairs is a story reminiscent of Graham Greene and John le Carre - tense, intricate and heartbreaking.

London, early May 1940: Britain is on the brink of war and Neville Chamberlain's government is about to fall. It is hard for us to imagine the Second World War without Winston Churchill taking over at the helm, but in SIX MINUTES IN MAY Nicholas Shakespeare shows how easily events could have gone in a different direction.

Nicholas Shakespeare's collected stories take us around the globe and into the intimate lives of his characters and the dilemmas and temptations they face.

In the Amazon city of Belen, in the heart of the Peruvian jungle, three old men sit on a bench. One day a woman hurries past their bench whom all have reason to remember - Elena Silves, the girl with eyes as blue as the sky who once saw a vision and has been incarcerated by the Church authorities in a convent high in the Andes ever since.

For Priscilla, pre-war Paris was an exciting carousel of suitors, soirees and heartbreak, and eventually a lavish wedding to a French aristocrat. But the arrival of the Nazi tanks signalled the end of life as a Vicomtesse, and the beginning of a precarious existence under German Occupation.

Pressured to sign the register, little does he realise what effect that signature will have upon his life. The extraordinary story that follows tells of one man's failed love, the temptations of unanticipated wealth, the secrets of damaged families and the price of being true to oneself.

Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay.

In this fascinating history of two turbulent centuries in an apparently idyllic place, Shakespeare effortlessly weaves the history of this unique island with a kaleidoscope of stories featuring a cast of unlikely characters from Errol Flynn to the King of Iceland, a village full of Chatwins and, inevitably, a family of Shakespeares.

Thomas Wavery is the new Consul General at Abyla on the tip of North Africa. A career diplomat, Wavery was once a high flyer, but an affair with a younger woman has dashed his dreams of ambassadorship. He arrives in Abyla with his wife suing for divorce, his passport stolen by a Gibraltarian ape and precious little enthusiasm for the task ahead.

A young Englishman visits Cold War Leipzig with a group of students and falls for an East German girl who is only just beginning to wake up to the way her society is governed.