The Riviera has inspired countless novelists and artists, attracted as much by its visitors as by its location (Somerset Maugham called it 'a sunny place for shady people'). But for the majority of the English, the Riviera was made famous by rumour and report: it was the scene of the romance of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson; and, post-war, became the vacation spot of Hollywood starlets.But the Côte d'Azur has a long history of attracting foreign celebrities and royalty, since the ...

From the Fall of France in June 1940 to Hitler's suicide in April 1945, the swastika flew from the peaks of the High Savoy in the western Alps to the passes above Ljubljana in the east. The Alps as much as Berlin were the heart of the Third Reich.'Yes,' Hitler declared of his headquarters in the Bavarian Alps, 'I have a close link to this mountain. Much was done there, came about and ended there; those were the best times of my life . . . My great plans were forged there.'W...

For English read British which is not to quibble with the title but, as Jim Ring himself explains, 'During the period on which this book focuses, it was the custom - in the words of a Scot - ''to let the part - the larger part - speak for the whole.'' Those countries which received them - France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and above all Switzerland - all talked of the English, and the presence of the English in the Alps was precisely so described. To use the term British would thus have been...

We Come Unseen, first published in 2001, follows the careers of six Royal Navy submariners from their graduation from Dartmouth's Britannia Royal Naval College in 1963, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Between these dates, it seemed that nuclear war was never far away - and Jim Ring explains not only the nuclear threat and its beginnings in the last days of the Second World War, but why the Polaris and Trident submarines ('capable of inf...

Verdun, the Somme, Tannenberg and Passchendaele. These epics of destruction and futility are such bywords for the First World War that – Jutland apart – we forget the role played by sea power in the war to end war. The great global conflict is too often narrowed to the fields of Flanders and the plains of Picardy. Now, award-winning biographer and naval historian Jim Ring has revisited the story to redress the balance. He emphasises how Great Britain, 'the great Amphibian in Churchills wor...

Interregnum offers an alternative history of the country’s—and Winston Churchill’s—finest hour.Britain is occupied by Nazi Germany. All seems lost—until the February Rising sees off Hitler. The Fuhrer’s death triggers a struggle for power among the Nazis, revolt across the Occupied Continent, and schism in the Oval Office in Washington.Caught in this maelstrom are the teenage princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. For Churchill, what price the lives of...

Interregnum offers an alternative history of the country’s—and Winston Churchill’s—finest hour.Britain is occupied by Nazi Germany. All seems lost—until the February Rising sees off Hitler. The Fuhrer’s death triggers a struggle for power among the Nazis, revolt across the Occupied Continent, and schism in the Oval Office in Washington.Caught in this maelstrom are the teenage princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. For Churchill, what price the lives of...

When BOAC Flight 480 disappears from the radar screens over the Mediterranean, passengers and crew are soon posted missing. Three months later what seems to be the same aircraft reappears and lands on an Ionian holiday island. Gathered there are the world's media, agog to discover what has happened to the Boeing.There are, though, more questions than answers from the captain and crew of the vanished flight; and the passengers are more interested in getting their money back from BOA...

Immortalized as the author of The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers led a life quite as enigmatic and adventurous as his classic novel.Childers was orphaned at an early age. Though he was brought up in County Wicklow, he received an English education that culminated in a clerkship to the House of Commons, voluntary service in the Boer War, and the writing of his great novel. Thus far he appeared patriotic, imperialist and largely conformist. But marriage to a strong-wi...

'Seek and ye shall find.'With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon's knowledge of hidden passageways and ancient secrets...

The streets of London flourish like possibly no other city on earth, with stories from its rich history, stories of death - fire - disease, of riots, and grisly murders, but also of tales of hope, happiness, determination and success. Behind every story and every street however, are the people who lived, worked, played, and even murdered there. Did you know for instance that when Great Scotland Yard was being built in 1890, that the dismembered body of a woman was discovered by workmen, du...

I had thought for some time that there must be something funny about Germany because, except for hard-drinking types at the Munich beer festival, I had never heard of anybody going there for a holiday. This was, in my view, the first of two advantages. There are travellers who, when abroad, are delighted to see a fellow countryman. Not I. There are quite enough Englishmen at home without my wanting to run into them abroad.So Edward Enfield sets off on this enjoyable cycling trip, ca...