The shocking true story of the Russian serial killer who brutally murdered more than fifty victims—and evaded capture for over a decade.By the time he was brought to trial in 1992, Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo had killed more than fifty women and children, often sexually abusing them and leaving their bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Although he was initially arrested in 1984, the police lacked enough evidence to pin the unsolved murders on him and he w...

In this riveting and extensively researched account, Peter Conradi the celebrated author of The Kings Speech, on which the Oscar award-winning film of the same name was based offers an uncompromising portrayal of Europes royals and reveals the scandals, excesses, conflicts and interests hidden behind the pomp of the ceremonial garb and the grandeur of official functions.At a time when Western society appears to be demanding more equality and democracy, peoples fascination with monarchies s...

John Fowles had gained great popularity as a contemporary novelist on both sides of the Atlantic. In this comprehensive study of his work, originally published in 1982, Peter Conradi relates his work to his life, his ideas and his place in contemporary English fiction at the time. Conradi sees him as both realist and experimental, and in detailed analyses of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman illuminates Fowles’s use of literary genres – the romance (in particula...

By the time he was brought to trial in 1992, Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo had killed more than fifty women and children, often sexually abusing them and leaving their bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Although he was initially arrested in 1984, the police lacked enough evidence to pin the unsolved murders on him and he was able to torture and kill dozens more before his eventual conviction. Compiling exclusive interviews and trial transcripts, journalist and editor at London's ...

Lionel Logue was a self-taught and almost unknown Australian speech therapist. Yet it was this outgoing, amiable man who almost single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain's greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love for Mrs Simpson.The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue's grandson and drawing exclu...

Tin Tin’s Snowy, Odysseus’s Argos, Darwin’s Polly, Mary Queen of Scots’s 22 lap-dogs, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Flush… Behind every great man or woman is a dog. A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs is a rich compendium of the world’s most significant and beloved dogs. Embracing the intriguing and the provocative, the essential and the trivial, Peter J. Conradi forays into history, literature and personal anecdotes to unearth a treasure trove of canine characters. Discover the ...

The broadcast that George VI made to the nation on the outbreak of war in September 1939 - which formed the climax of the multi Oscar-winning film The King's Speech - was the product of years of hard work with Lionel Logue, his iconoclastic Australian-born speech therapist. Yet the relationship between the two men did not end there. Far from it: in the years that followed, Logue was to play an even more important role at the monarch's side.The King's War follows t...

The broadcast that George VI made to the nation on the outbreak of war in September 1939 - which formed the climax of the multi Oscar-winning film The King's Speech - was the product of years of hard work with Lionel Logue, his iconoclastic Australian-born speech therapist. Yet the relationship between the two men did not end there. Far from it: in the years that followed, Logue was to play an even more important role at the monarch's side.The King's War follows t...

One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century - amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed 'The Quack who saved a King'.Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York ...

Published to coincide with his major biography of Iris Murdoch, Peter Conradi’s acclaimed critical appreciation of her work is reissued in a fully revised and updated edition, with a foreword by John Bayley.‘Peter Conradi is uniquely qualified to accompany the reader in a discovery of one of the 20th-century’s most remarkable novelists and thinkers.’ John BayleyIris Murdoch, who died in 1999, was the author of twenty-six novels, including ‘The Bell’, ‘A Fairly Honourable De...

An untold story of love, idealism and courage in the Second World War**'**A very moving account of the all-too-brief life of a warrior-poet' Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad***'***An elegy for a lost generation, and a fascinating social and political history of a peculiar period in our recent past ... it's impossible to put down Conradi's impressive and moving account of Thompson's life without a feeling of regret.'

How do you 'prepare' for bereavement? Religious faith can help, as can ritualised codes of dress and behaviour that recognise different stages of mourning. But many of us feel singularly unprepared when we lose someone. No one 'theory' can sooth the bereaved, precisely because grief so strips us naked and profoundly wounds us. Nothing pre-cooked helps. No quick fix, no one-shot deal.In this inspirational book, Peter J Conradi draws on literature, history and philosophy to ...