Most Popular Books by Diana Souhami

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Winner of the Polari Prize ''A book about love, identity, acceptance and the freedom to write, paint, compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters. To swear, kiss, publish and be damned. It is vastly entertaining and often moving... There isn''t a page without an entertaining vignette'' The Times. The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, Between the Wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around them in Paris. Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris. ''One of the best books I''ve read this year.'' James Bridle

Edith Cavell was born on 4th December 1865, daughter of the vicar of Swardeston in Norfolk, and shot in Brussels on 12th October 1915 by the Germans for sheltering British and French soldiers and helping them escape over the Belgian border. Following a traditional village childhood in 19th century England, Edith worked as a governess in the UK and abroad, before training as a nurse in London in 1895. To Edith, nursing was a duty, a vocation, but above all a service. By 1907, she had travelled most of Europe and become matron of her own hospital in Belgium, where, under her leadership, a ramshackle hospital with few staff and little organization became a model nursing school. When war broke out, Edith helped soldiers to escape the war by giving them jobs in her hospital, finding clothing and organizing safe passage into Holland. In all, she assisted over two hundred men. When her secret work was discovered, Edith was put on trial and sentenced to death by firing squad. She uttered only 130 words in her defense. A devout Christian, the evening before her death, she asked to be remembered as a nurse, not a hero or a martyr, and prayed to be fit for heaven. When news of Edith''s death reached Britain, army recruitment doubled. After the war, Edith''s body was returned to the UK by train and every station through which the coffin passed was crowded with mourners. Diana Souhami brings one of the Great War''s finest heroes to life in this biography of a hardworking, courageous and independent woman.

Diana Souhami’s critically acclaimed biography of lesbian painter Hannah Gluckstein—the woman, the artist, the legend To her family, Hannah Gluckstein was known as Hig. To Edith Shackleton Heald, the journalist with whom she lived for almost forty years, she was Dearest Grub. And to the art world, she was simply Gluck. She was born in 1895 into a life of privilege. Her family had founded J. Lyons & Co., a vast catering empire. From the beginning Gluck was a rebel. At a time when only men wore trousers, she scandalized society with her masculine clothing—though she always dressed with style and turned androgyny into high fashion. Her affairs with high-profile women shocked her conservative family, even while she achieved fame as an artist. During the 1920s and thirties, Gluck’s paintings—portraits, flowers, and landscapes, presented in frames designed and patented by her—were the toast of the town. At the height of her success, when wounded in love, her own obsessions caused her to fade for decades from the public eye, but then, at nearly eighty, her return to the spotlight ensured her immortality.

Winner of the Whitbread Biography Award: The true story of the shipwrecked Scottish buccaneer who inspired Daniel Defoe’s novel. This action-filled biography follows Alexander Selkirk, an eighteenth-century Scottish buccaneer who sailed the South Seas plundering for gold. But an ill-fated expedition in 1703 led to shipwreck on remote Juan Fernández Island off the coast of Chile. Selkirk, the ship’s master, was accused of inciting mutiny and abandoned on the uninhabited island with nothing but his clothing, his pistol, a knife, and a Bible. Each day he searched the sea for a ship that would rescue him and prayed for help that seemed never to come. In solitude and silence Selkirk gradually learned to adapt. He killed seals and goats for food and used their skin for clothing. He learned how to build a house, forage for food, create stores, plant seeds, light a fire, and tame cats. Then one day, a ship with wooden sails appeared on the horizon. The crew was greeted by a bearded savage, incoherent and fierce. Selkirk had been marooned for four years and four months. Now he was about to return to the world of men. The story of a verdant, mysterious archipelago and its famous castaway is both a parable about nature and a remarkable account of the survival of a man cut off from civilization.

A unique travelogue in which the author journeys to Pitcairn Island—of Mutiny on the Bounty fame—with detours to eighteenth-century Tahiti and beyond. It started with a coconut . . . In the early hours of April 27, 1789, Fletcher Christian, master’s mate on the HMS Bounty, took a coconut from a pile on the quarterdeck. This random, seemingly inconsequential act set in motion a snowballing series of events that culminated in a revolt. In this strikingly original book, equal parts travelogue, memoir, and time-travel adventure, Diana Souhami moves across time and place, from eighteenth-century Tahiti to modern-day Pitcairn Island, from Knightsbridge to Tauranga, Mangareva to Tubuai. Along with Fletcher Christian, the sprawling cast of characters includes the unforgettable Captain William Bligh, who is cast adrift in an open boat on ferocious seas with eighteen men and no maps or supplies. Along the way, Souhami also introduces us to Pitcairn Island sex offenders, the Native American crew of a seventeen-thousand-ton ship called the Tundra Princess, her own elderly mother, and a mysterious lesbian aristocrat known as Lady Myre. Weaving together history, destiny, and chaos theory, this captivating adventure is for anyone who has ever yearned to travel to an exotic, faraway place.

A dual biography that reveals the secret life and the extraordinary relationship of Hollywood''s legendary pair: Greta Garbo and Cecil Beaton, celebrated Hollywood photographer who immortalized her image.

This "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year tells the story of Violet Trefusis, lover of Vita Sackville-West, and her mother Alice Keppel, the married lover of Queen Victoria''s eldest son and great-grandmother to Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Wild Girls is the critically acclaimed true story of two wealthy American heiresses---one an artist, the other a writer---whose stormy, passionate love affair captivated Paris’s salon set between the wars. Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks were rich, American, eccentric, and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than fifty years, despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental differences. Romaine Brooks, a painter, was the product of an unhappy childhood and trusted no one but Natalie. Natalie Barney was passionate about life, sex, and love. Her Friday afternoon salons, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, were a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations. Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami, the award-winning author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women. “Epic romance . . . smartly sex-positive and so good-naturedly shocking.” ---The New York Times Book Review “Real tenderness and pathos . . . not only entertaining but affecting reading.” ---The Washington Post “Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale.” ---The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Diana Souhami’s Lambda Award–winning biography is a fascinating look at one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing lesbian literary figures. Born in 1880, Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall was a young unwanted child when her parents put an end to their tempestuous marriage by filing for divorce. She had already made tentative forays into lesbian love when her father died, leaving her an heiress at eighteen. Her income assured, Hall moved out of her mother’s house, renamed herself John in honor of her great-great-grandfather, and divided her time among hunting, traveling, and pursuing women. She began to write—songs, poetry, prose, and short stories—and achieved success as a novelist, but it was with the publication of The Well of Loneliness in 1928 that Radclyffe Hall became an internationally known figure. Dubbed the “bible of lesbianism,” the book caused a scandal on both sides of the Atlantic. Though moralistic in tone, because of its subject matter it was tried as obscene in America and in the United Kingdom, where it was censored under the Obscene Publications Act. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall is a fascinating, no-holds-barred account of the life of this controversial woman, including her torrid relationship with the married artist Una Troubridge, who was Hall’s devoted partner for twenty-eight years.

Dagmar, a gentle, eccentric spinster, was the embodiment of Austerity Britain''s prudence and thrift. Her murderer Harold Hagger, with his litany of petty crimes, abandoned wives, sloughed-off identities and army desertions, was its opposite. With their characters so indelibly marked, their tragic meeting seemed in some way destined. Featuring England''s first celebrity policeman, Fabian of the Yard, the celebrated forensic scientist, Keith Simpson, and history''s most famous and dedicated hangman, Albert Pierrepoint.

Natalie Barney,''the wild girl of Cincinnati'', and Romaine Brooks were both rich, American and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915 and their tempestuous affair lasted more than fifty years. By the end of their lives together, Natalie and Romaine had entertained, slept with, fallen in love with, tutored or tortured a range of figures including Gertrude Stein, Colette, Edith Sitwell, Gabriele d''Annunzio and the ballerina Ida Rubinstein. But among this tumult there was an enduring and loving relationship that supported a liberating spirit of culture, style and candour. In this vivid double biography, Souhami writes with complexity and skill, drawing the reader into a different world and capturing for ever her subjects'' extraordinary lives.

The story of their life together. From letters, memoirs and the published writings of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, this is the story of one of the most solid marriages of the century.

"A bold feat of imagination . . . . Intriguing and moving: a fictional recovery of the woman''s interior experience . . . and a powerful meditation upon the nature of creativity. Both an arresting interpretation of George Eliot''s work and a compelling fiction in its own right." —Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch In an astonishing unsent love letter, a 19th-century Englishwoman looks back at her formative years, when she fell in love with one man but married another—the richest bidder—to save her family Gwendolen Harleth, an exceptionally beautiful upper-class Englishwoman, is gambling boldly at a resort when she catches the eye of a handsome, pensive gentleman. His gaze unnerves her, and she loses her winnings. The next day, she learns that her widowed mother and younger sisters, for whom she is financially responsible, have lost their family''s fortune. As a young woman in the 1860s with only her looks to serve her, Gwendolen''s options are few, so when Henleigh Grandcourt, a wealthy aristocrat, proposes to her, she accepts, despite her discovery of an alarming secret about his past. During their marriage, Grandcourt is psychologically and physically brutal to her, shattering her confidence. Gwendolen begins to encounter the alluring gentleman from the resort—Daniel Deronda—in her social circles, but Grandcourt, cold and calculating, takes pains to isolate her from everything she loves. Gwendolen''s desperation nearly overcomes her, until an unexpected turn of events suddenly liberates her from Grandcourt''s tyranny and leaves her financially independent. Newly free, but riddled with insecurity and desire, Gwendolen must take painful steps to shape a life that has not gone according to plan. Gwendolen and her world, originally creations of George Eliot, are inhabited and brought to sympathetic and nuanced life in this irresistible debut novel by Diana Souhami, an award-winning British biographer.

Despite equal opportunities legislation, women still do all the low-paid, low-status work and are grossly under-represented in Parliament, the law and other positions of power. Yet the position of women in Britain is changing slowly but surely: a quiet revolution is taking place in every aspect of their lives... A Woman''s Place, based on an important British Council exhibition, illuminates in words and pictures just what British women have managed to achieve -and what an uphill task is still ahead of them. Separate chapters look at the courageous struggle for suffrage and other basic rights; the role of women in the two world wars; the jobs and professions now open to women for the first time; the alternative lifestyles that compete with traditional family life; women in education; and the campaigns of women fighting to overcome male dominance. Diana Souhami also considers the tired and offensive stereotypes of women that are constanstly offered by advertising and the media. Her book provides the ideal corrective: a wide-ranging picture of the sheer diversity of the lives of women in Britain today.-4e de couv.

Hannah Gluckstein was famous as a painter, particularly in the 1920s and 30s when her portraits of women, her flower paintings and landscapes attracted much publicity. Queen Mary, Cecil Beaton and Sir Francis Oppenheimer were among those who called at The Gluck Room of The Fine Art Society in London to see and acquire her paintings. passionate love affairs with society women. She was born into the family that founded the J.Lyons & Co catering empire, but her way of life shocked and pained her family, though the money they gave her let her live in style. conflation of troubles, not least disappointment in love, made her wilt as a person and painter. She lived in obscurity until when nearing 80 she came back into the limelight with a retrospective exhibition at The Fine Art Society in 1973. the pictures, people, events and feelings that made up her life. With reference to unpublished letters, diaries and manuscripts she reveals the loves, torments, ambitions and work of this woman.

A personal voyage to obscure Pitcairn Island, with profound modern echoes of the Bounty mutineers who settled there.

Abandonné sur une île déserte par un capitaine rageur au large des côtes chiliennes, Alexander Selkirk survivra quatre ans... À Londres, en 1712, on attend le retour de ce jeune Écossais de pied ferme : les chroniqueurs se disputent son histoire, le public s''extasie devant cette aventure dont Daniel Defoe fera un mythe fondateur et un succès commercial phénoménal, les femmes de sa vie convoitent le trésor du galion de Manille pris sauvagement aux Espagnols sur le chemin du retour... Quel destin étrange pour ce garçon un peu minable, pauvre et ombrageux, qui a alimenté les plus grands fantasmes de l''imaginaire occidental. Sources documentaires à l''appui, Diana Souhami dévoile les faits derrière la fiction. Dans une écriture à la fois rigoureuse et poétique, d''une grande force évocatrice, on retrouve les corsaires, la violence de la vie sur les mers, les faits de piraterie et de mutinerie, la faim, le rhum, le scorbut, les rats et les orgies des boucaniers, les mulâtresses et les Indiens tatoués... autant d''histoires et d''émotions qui nourrirent les grands textes de Melville, Conrad ou Stevenson. La grande force de l''histoire d''Alexander Selkirk, c''est aussi une affaire de désir : une société " attendait " son Robinson et le roman moderne.

Neste livro, a autora Diana Souhami - que esteve em Juan Fernandez, a "Ilha de Selkirk" - além de descrever sua geografia, flora e fauna, conta a extraordinária história do verdadeiro Robinson Crusoé, o homem que inspirou o famoso romance de Daniel Defo

Biografie van de Schotse zeeman Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) die van 1704-1709 alleen leefde op het onbewoonde eiland Juan Fernandez en die model stond voor de hoofdpersoon uit de roman Robinson Crusoe van Daniel Defoe.