Лучшие книги Эндрю Нормана Уилсона

Английский прозаик Эндрю Норман Уилсон, член Королевского литературного общества, известен как автор веселых комедий, продолжатель традиций нравоописательного сатирического романа. Его произведения были не раз отмечены престижными литературными премиями.
"Love Unknown" (в настоящем переводе "Любовь в отсутствие любви", 1986), один из лучших романов писателя - умный, тонкий, смешной и трогательный. На русском языке публикуется впервые.

When Agatha Christie, the so-called "Queen of Crime", disappeared from her home in Sunningdale in Berkshire for eleven days on 3 December 1927, the whole nation held its breath. The following day, when her car was found abandoned fourteen miles away, a nationwide search was instigated. From a painstaking reconstruction of Agatha's movements and behaviour during those eleven days, Dr Andrew Norman is able to shed new light on what, in many ways, has remained a baffling mystery. Only now, fifty years after Agatha's death, is it possible to explain fully, in the light of scientific knowledge, her behaviour during that troubled time. By deciphering clues from her celebrated works, "Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait" sheds light on what is perhaps the greatest mystery of all to be associated with Britain's best-loved crime writer, namely that of the person herself.

In the early hours of 15 April 1912, after the majestic liner Titanic had split apart and the 1,500 men, women and children struggled to stay alive in the freezing Atlantic, the sea was alive with the sound of screaming. Then, as the ship sank to the ocean floor and the passengers slowly died from hypothermia, a deathly silence settled over the sea. Yet the echoes of that night reverberated through the lives of each of the 705 survivors. Shadow of the Titanic tells the extraordinary stories of some of those who survived.

Although we think we know the story of the Titanic - the famously unsinkable ship that hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to America in April 1912 - little has been written about what happened to the survivors after the tragedy. How did the loss of the ship shape the lives of the people who survived? How did those who were saved feel about those who perished? And how did they remember that terrible night, in effect a disaster that has been likened to the destruction of a small town?

Timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the sinking, Shadow of the Titanic sheds new light on this enduringly fascinating story, by showing how the disaster continued to shape the lives of a cross-section of passengers who escaped the sinking ship.

Александр Маккуин - прославленный модельер, который четыре раза, с 1996 по 2003 год, удостоился звания лучшего дизайнера Великобритании, а в 2003 году - лучшего дизайнера мира и в этом же году стал командором ордена Британской империи. Его называют человеком­легендой, человеком­загадкой, enfant terrible мира моды. Он не просто незаурядная личность, но ниспровергатель традиций и образец гения, выходящего за все дозволенные рамки. И это касается не только его шокирующего творчества, но и личной жизни, скандальной и драматичной, как страшная сказка.

Kui kuninganna Victoria 1901. aastal suri, oli ta olnud Inglismaa
troonil kuuskümmend neli aastat. Tal oli üheksa last, nelikümmend kaks
lapselast ja oma järeltulijate abielude kaudu oli temast saanud kogu kuningliku
Euroopa matriarh. Ta oli müüt, teda nähti kalgi ja kauge valitsejana,
elatanud ja jäiga lesena, ajaloo suurima impeeriumi ja säravate riigimeeste
juhitud kuningriigi käilakuju.
Andrew Norman Wilsoni põhjalik ja ammendav biograafia, mis paljuski põhineb
seni avaliku tähelepanuta jäänud allikatel, loob meile kuninganna Victoriast
sootuks teistsuguse pildi. Mälestusväärse ajastu kujunemise ja kulgemise
taustal avaneb põnev vaade Victoria isiklikku ellu. Juttu tuleb tema
iseäralikust ja eraklikust lapsepõlvest, kirglikust abielust ja prints Alberti
pöördelisest mõjust, keerulistest suhetest lastega, lesepõlvest ja
lähedasest suhtest lihtsat päritolu šotlase John Browniga. Pahatihti on
Victoriat kujutatud puise ja ülespuhutud isiksusena, ent tegelikult oli tegu
väga tundeküllase, väljendusrikka, ülemeeliku ja ebakonventsionaalse
naisega.
Andrew Norman Wilson (1950) on viljakas kirjanik ja kolumnist, kes on avaldanud
paarkümmend ilukirjandusteost ning üle kahekümne aja- ja elulooraamatu.

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, she had ruled for nearly sixty-four years. She was a mother of nine and grandmother of forty-two and the matriarch of royal Europe through her children’s marriages. To many, Queen Victoria is a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, an aging, stiff widow paraded as the figurehead to an all-male imperial enterprise. But in truth, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was one of the most passionate, expressive, humorous and unconventional women who ever lived, and the story of her life continues to fascinate.

A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources to show us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before. Wilson explores the curious set of circumstances that led to Victoria’s coronation, her strange and isolated childhood, her passionate marriage to Prince Albert and his pivotal influence even after death and her widowhood and subsequent intimate friendship with her Highland servant John Brown, all set against the backdrop of this momentous epoch in Britain’s history—and the world’s.

Born at the very moment of the expansion of British political and commercial power across the globe, Victoria went on to chart a unique course for her country even as she became the matriarch of nearly every great dynasty of Europe. Her destiny was thus interwoven with those of millions of people—not just in Europe but in the ever-expanding empire that Britain was becoming throughout the nineteenth century. The famed queen had a face that adorned postage stamps, banners, statues and busts all over the known world.

Wilson’s Victoria is a towering achievement, a masterpiece of biography by a writer at the height of his powers.

Financial Times:
“What to call [A. N. Wilson] now? “Eminent Victorianist” seems appropriate. Lytton Strachey, the acerbic author of Eminent Victorians as well as a biography of Victoria far less good than this, is never far away when Wilson writes about a period that, in several books, he has made very much his own... Wilson is an excellent history teacher. He orders and narrates the hugely complex socio-political events and party infighting of the 19th century with a rare clarity... Wilson sums up his feelings about Victoria in a single word: “Awe”. His own achievement, sustained by a lifetime’s scholarly fascination with the Victorian era, is also, in its way, awesome.”

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, there were many who proclaimed that a new Elizabethan Age had begun. Few could have any inkling, however, of the stupendous changes that were going to take place, in Britain and around the world. The collapse of British power in the world and the near-evaporation of its wealth were established facts, but few people had even begun to understand them.

In the third book in A.N. Wilson’s acclaimed histories, Our Times follows the beginnings of modern Britain from the 1950s with the Suez crisis, immigration, the Angry Young Men and Harold Macmillan, to the Sixties and changes in attitudes towards divorce and homosexuality, the rise of satire and the boom in pop music and fashion. Through the Seventies, with Vietnam and the Cold War looming large, and the Labour government that ushered in the Winter of Discontent, to the Thatcher government of the Eighties and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which signalled the end of a political era in Britain, up to the current period, Wilson argues, of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

John Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century; his collected poems sold more than two million copies. As poet laureate of England, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. The