New Releases by Victoria Glendinning

From Victoria Glendinning, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and (twice) the Whitbread Prize for Biography. ''It''s Succession in tailcoats and spats ... This is a vivid and eye-opening group biography, backgrounded by the rise of supermarket moguls from humble beginnings'' Sunday Times Who was John Lewis? What story lies behind the retail empire that bears his name? Behind the glass windows and displays of soft furnishing, this book reveals the family that founded the shops in all their eccentricities, and whose relationships became blighted by conflicts of epic proportions as their wealth bloomed. Born into poverty, John Lewis was orphaned at the age of seven when his father died in a Somerset workhouse. Dreaming of a better life, the young man travelled to London at the start of what would become a retail revolution. From early years as a draper''s apprentice, we see how Lewis''s first pokey little business opened on Oxford Street in 1864, and expanded as an emerging middle class embraced the department stores as a recreational experience. Prize-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning has had full access to the company and family archives to write this eye-opening story. She captures the toxic relationships that unfolded between Lewis and his two sons, Spedan and Oswald, as they collided over the future of their retail empire - their worst moments including emotional blackmail, face-slapping and a kidnapping - and much litigation between father and both sons. Yet the family never broke up and Spedan''s vision of a Partnership model to act as an ethical corrective and foster a community of happier, more productive workers was eventually realised and survives to this day. With riveting personal detail, this brilliant group biography captures a rags-to-riches story and a tempestuous family saga, all unfolding against the dramatic social and political worlds of nineteenth-century London. The book concludes with an assessment of the position John Lewis holds in British sensibilities, and whether John Lewis and institutions like it have a place in our future.

By the time of his death, Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was the founder of Singapore and Governor of Java, having left school in his early teens to become a clerk for the British East India Company. Charismatic and daring, Raffles forged an extraordinary path for himself in South East Asia - refusing to be satisfied with the trading posts available to the British, he defied Dutch governors and wrangled with warring local rulers to establish what is now a world city. An ardent linguist and zoologist, Raffles spoke fluent Malay and found time to write The History of Java, as well as naming several species of flora and fauna he discovered on his travels. He founded London Zoo and promoted the study of Malay alongside European languages in Southeast Asia.Raffles remains a controversial figure - a utopian imperialist, disobedient employee and knight of the realm who died deeply in debt, predeceased by all but one of his children. He built racial segregation into his urban planning, but was also a staunch abolitionist. Renowned biographer Victoria Glendinning charts Raffles'' prodigious rise in this new edition, specially updated for the bicentenary of the foundation of Singapore in 1819. His life was short, complicated and shot through with tragedy, but Raffles'' fame lives on.

A woman in Tudor England fends for herself after Henry VIII closes her abbey in this historical novel perfect for fans of Wolf Hall and Philippa Gregory. In 1535, England is hardly a wellspring of gender equality; it is a grim and oppressive age where women―even the privileged few who can read and write―have little independence. In The Butcher’s Daughter, it is this milieu that mandates Agnes Peppin, daughter of a simple country butcher, to leave her family home in disgrace and live out her days cloistered behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. But with her great intellect, she becomes the assistant to the Abbess and as a result integrates herself into the unstable royal landscape of King Henry VIII. As Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of her new life, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself the new head of the Church. Religious houses are being formally subjugated, monasteries dissolved, and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge. The cosseted world in which Agnes has carved out for herself a sliver of liberty is shattered. Now, free at last to be the master of her own fate, she descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive by any means necessary . . . The Butcher’s Daughter is the riveting story of a young woman facing head-on the obstacles carefully constructed against her sex. This dark and affecting novel by award-winning author Victoria Glendinning intricately depicts the lives of women in the sixteenth century in a world dominated by men. “A fresh perspective [of the Tudor Era]. . . . Glendinning’s research convincingly depicts the bustling and frequently ruthless world of Henry VIII’s England.” —Library Journal “Psychologically astute . . . and evincing deep knowledge of Tudor-era society. Glendinning thoughtfully explores womanhood’s many facets.” —Booklist “Unabashedly feminist . . . elegant, intelligent, compulsively entertaining. . . . [The Butcher’s Daughter] demonstrates the power of individuals with inner strength and determination to work for change when able to choose a life of their own design.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)

From the award-winning author of Electricity - an absorbing and finely-drawn tale of professional and personal romance in modern Europe. Martagon, a young and talented engineer and a loner by nature, has devoted his life to his career -- occasionally, and regretfully, sacrificing friendship and family for professional success. He accepts a position masterminding the construction of new, high-tech airport in France, applying his cutting-edge expertise to build it almost entirely of glass. The land and vineyards on which the airport will be built belonged to a feuding brother and sister. It is Marina, the beautiful, flamboyant, and completely irresistible sister, with whom Martagon falls in love for the first time in his life. The detached and rational engineer is thrown completely off balance, begins questioning the ambitions he once took for granted. He takes risks to be with Marina, compromises himself -- professionally and emotionally -- a mistake that could cost him everything he has struggled to achieve. Written with unusual urgency and perception about the relations between men and women, Victoria Glendinning''s Flight is a story of passionate love, morality, self-discovery, professional ethics -- of what happens when solid ground disappears from below, and the only options left are to either soar or fall.

Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was the charismatic and persuasive founder of Singapore and Governor of Java. An English adventurer, disobedient employee of the East India Company, utopian imperialist, linguist, zoologist and civil servant, he carved an extraordinary (though brief) life for himself in South East Asia. The tropical, disease-ridden settings of his story are as dramatic as his own trajectory - an obscure young man with no advantages other than talent and obsessive drive, who changed history by establishing - without authority - on the wretchedly unpromising island of Singapore, a settlement which has become a world city. After a turbulent time in the East Indies, Raffles returned to the UK and turned to his other great interests - botany and zoology. He founded London Zoo in 1826, the year of his death.Raffles remains a controversial figure, and in the first biography for over forty years, Victoria Glendinning charts his prodigious rise within the social and historical contexts of his world. His domestic and personal life was vivid and shot through with tragedy. His own end was sad, though his fame immortal.

Victoria Glendinning provides a woman''s view of Anthony Trollope, placing emphasis on family, particularly on his relationship with his mother. But it is Anthony as a husband and lover that intrigues her most. She looks at the nature of his love for his wife, Rose and at his love for Kate Field.

Publisher description

An exciting reissue of GLENDINNING''S most critically acclaimed novel

The Devil’s Pool is one of a group of pastoral novels inspired by the countryside of Nohant in Berry, where George Sand grew up. These novels are simple stories of country life, in which Sand records local customs and manners, depicting a timeless idyll, unaffected by the outside world and the political events of the time. With his wife dead and three young children to raise, ploughman Germaine decides that the time has come to marry again. He embarks on a journey to meet a rich widow, Catherine Leonard, in a match that has been approved by his father-in-law; however, he finds her proud and vain and surrounded by other suitors. Germaine prefers the company of Marie, a young shepherdess from his own village, but she is insistent that she wants a younger, more suitable husband. Influential French author George Sand is best known for two groups of novels: a series of romantic tales and a collection of country-life idylls.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is an inexhaustibly intriguing figure in literary and political history. He was an ordained clergyman whose enemies thought he did not believe in God. He became a legendary Dean of St. Patrick''s Cathedral in Dublin, and for four intoxicating years he was the intimate of Queen Anne''s chief ministers, acting as their publicist and propagandist. His private life was intense and enigmatic. Two younger women, whom he called Stella and Vanessa, moved to Ireland to be close to him. He made both of them unhappy. Poet, polemicist, pamphleteer, and wit, Swift was the master of shock. His furious satirical responses to the corruption and hypocrisy he saw around him in private and public life have every relevance for our own times. Like his Gulliver in the land of Lilliput, Swift is a problem in perspective and scale. In this entertaining biography, Glendinning takes a literary zoom lens to illuminate this proud and intractable man.

Biography of English writer Anthony Trollope concentrating on his relationships with his mother, other family members, and his wife.

Who killed Leo Ulm - was it in fact a murder? This novel is a portrait of Leo - academic, TV pundit and globe-trotter - who richly deserves his nemesis. The main theme of the book is Leo''s womanizing tendencies and the manner in which he lives off adoration, female dependence and love.

Celebrated novelist, acerbic critic, and journalist without peer, friend and lover of the great and gifted, social and sexual rebel, observer of modern history''s turning points, Rebecca West led one of the great lives of the twentieth century. In this first full-scale biography of Rebecca West, the widely admired biographer Victoria Glendinning captures that life in all its disturbing brilliance and haunting pain.

Sackville-West was an English author, poet and gardener. She was known for her exuberant aristocratic life, her affair with the novelist Virginia Woolf, and Sissinghurst Castle Garden, which she and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, created at their estate.

Freed from her unhappy homelife, Edith Sitwell set up home in a shabby London flat: she became one of the best-known 1920s pioneering poets. Victoria Glendinning presents a biography of a woman known for her eccentricity and gothic appearance.

Discusses the life of the Anglo-Irish novelist from her childhood to her Oxford years, from her achievements as a novelist to her conversations with literary friends. -- Dust jacket.

Biography of Winnie Seebohm.