Should a man be free to kill his adulterous wife? This is the most notorious trial for the most notorious crime of the eighteenth century. Count Guido Franceschini is accused of murdering his beautiful young wife Pompilia, said to have eloped with a handsome young priest. But did they actually commit adultery? Half of Rome believes she did; the other half claims she is innocent. In this book the trial is reconstructed from contemporary court reports, and the gossip of the time. Pompilia: g...

The first new biography of Lachlan Macquarie in decades, this book draws on a wealth of sources, both in Australia and overseas, to paint a picture of the man and his times. It must be seen as one of the great ironies of Australian history that as far as the British Government was concerned he failed in his duty as Governor of New South Wales - as was clearly documented to official minds in the official report compiled by Commissioner John Bigge. This report concluded that while Governor Macq...

Imagined by one of the world's leading experts on Casanova, this fictionalized conversation presents the essential biography of history's most famous lover.A quiet chat with Casanova turns into a catalogue of racy encounters set in 18th-century Venice and other cities ... and we can even ask questions! You'll find out just how he got himself both in and out of some extremely sticky situations, from debt and imprisonment, to confrontations with jealous husbands and ...

Over the two centuries since his appointment, commentators have been as surprised at the choice of Arthur Phillip as some were at the time (the First Lord of the Admiralty, to mention only the most distinguished critic). But was it really so surprising? What did the Home Office and the Admiralty expect of a man who was to navigate a fleet to the antipodes, and when he got it there unload its cargo of unregenerate criminals and forge them into some sort of a working colony? Apart from the nece...

It would be difficult to write a dull book about the history of astrology: history is crammed with fascinating and amusing incidents, bizarre, stimulating, crazy, brilliant characters - from the astrologer who practically ruled the Roman Empire to the one who hid behind a curtain to spy on the birth of a Dauphin and the modern astrologer who successfully predicted the assassination attempt on Hitler, and died on his way to a death camp. Yet these are only the lighter incidents in the histo...

Lord Byron was born in poverty, and remained in poverty for most of his life: money-lenders and other debtors paid for his luxurious life-style and his incessant womanizing. Famous overnight on the publishing of his poem 'Childe Harold', he became notorious for his affair with his half-sister - and with several other well-known society women. Fleeing from the women and the debtors, he settled in Venice (where he claimed to make love to over 300 women in the first two years) and eventually ...

When King Charles II was dying, the name of only one of his many mistresses was in his mind and on his lips: that of Nell Gwyn. Born in extreme poverty, forced to become a child prostitute, she went on the stage and became the most popular actress of the time until Charles took her into his bed, where her beauty, wit and liveliness made her in the end preferable to his other many mistresses, who were either common prostitutes found for him in the bawdy-houses or on the streets by the royal...

Franz Liszt, the son of poor parents, became the sensational and enormously rich 'greatest pianist in the world'. Touring Europe unceasingly for seven years he was adored by the public - especially by women, who fainted at his good looks and flamboyant behaviour, collected his cigar butts and the dregs from his wineglasses, and competed for the honour of being taken to bed after his concerts. The lover of Lola Montez and the Lady of the Camellias, he was pursued by women even after he took...

John Opie, a young artist, falls under suspicion when a teen-age boy he has been using as a model disappears. But this is only the start of a story which involves him in murder and suspense as he and his girl-field Penny discover that young Jonny has been kidnapped by a world-wife paedophile ring run by a plump, amoral Englishman. They follow the trail to Athens, then to a remote village in the Peloponnese and the headquarters of the organisation. Opie, innocent of any knowledge of guns or...

John Donne rose from abject poverty to become Dean of St Pauls, and from being an unknown figure whose poetry was so erotic that it could only be circulated manuscript to being a distinguished man of the Church deeply uneasy to remember the sins of his youth. The confident of King James and King Charles, for the following two centuries and more following his death though his sermons (among the finest prose writing of the seventeenth century) were revered, his poetry was neglected. The twen...

What is it about Silversands? The fact that the sun seemed always to shine down on the secluded beach? – the water so warm that it caresses your body like a soft, kindly hand? – the silver sand that gives the bay its name – sand which seems positively to invite you to stretch out on it as on the softest bed? Whatever the magic is, it seems to work on everyone who comes here – certainly on the family who live in the house built overlooking the beach: Paul and Olivia, who find each other bod...

All sex is here.Poetry has nothing to learn from prose, as far as eroticism and pornography are concerned. A glance through this book will prove that there's no aspect of sex – straight, gay and anything in between - which isn't given full rein: from dressing to undressing, from seduction to near-rape, from foreplay to orgasm.Men and women have enjoyed fucking since humankind first stood on two legs – and very possibly even earlier than that. And even before the invention of ...