Kirjahaku

A fascinating and unique history of the launch of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service through the unusual life of its founder, Mansfield Cumming. Sir Mansfield Cumming, the founder of the British Secret Service and the original ‘C’, has until now been a shadowy figure. For this authorised biography, the Secret Intelligence Service has released to Alan Judd, Cumming’s voluminous diaries, which have never been seen outside the Service and will be put back into storage in perpetuity when Judd has used them.The result is likely to be the most sensational biography of the season, and the definitive account of how MI5 and MI6 – the models for all subsequent secret services all over the world – were set up.Cumming signed himself ‘C’, was referred to as such in Whitehall and always used green ink, traditions maintained to this day. His life not only makes riveting reading but casts fascinating light on the development of the Secret Service and its influence on the twentieth century.

Guardian Fiction Prize-winning and extraordinarily highly critically acclaimed, The Devil's Own Work is a subtle, compulsive hallucinatory tale of possession.

A satirical romp through the corridors of the Foreign Office as Patrick Stubbs is posted as third secretary in the British Embassy in Lower Africa. Mayhem awaits him - an absent-minded ambassador, a bullying first secretary with a dipsomaniac wife, and a crush on the police chief's wife.

A fictionalised account of the Kaiser Wilhelm's last years in Nazi-occupied Holland.

Ford Madox Ford is best known for two fictional masterpieces: The Good Soldier and the Great War tetralogy, Parade's End. Indeed, it was reading the former that first persuaded Alan Judd to write this superb biography. Graham Greene once strikingly pronounced, 'There is no novelist of this century more likely to live than Ford Madox Ford.' Even if that is debatable there is no denying his importance in the literary firmament of the first thirty years of the twentieth-century. He founded the English Review which can claim to have discovered D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis. In the 1920s he founded the Transatlantic Review which published work by James Joyce, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Gertrude Stein and Jean Rhys. Two of Ford Madox Ford's passions were conversation and women. It is often said he only seduced the latter to carry on the former!Alan Judd's biography is a brilliant rehabilitation of a literary figure who has still not been accorded his rightful place. On first publication it received dazzling reviews.'It is a marvellous book, intelligent, sympathetic, comprehensive, worthy of Ford.' Allan Massie, Sunday Telegraph'Mr Judd never bores. He is shrewd about the novel in general and Ford in particular.' Gore Vidal, Times Literary Supplement'Indulgent, energetic, and immensely readable.' Richard Holmes, The Times 'Alan Judd has been drawn into Ford's embattlement and defends him staunchly and imaginatively.' A. S. Byatt, Guardian'What Judd rightly emphasises is that Ford was a giver, believing that the preservation and furtherance of artistic talent was his permanent responsibility.' Frank Kermode, London Review of Books

THE STUNNING NEW FIRST WORLD WAR SPY THRILLER FROM THE MASTER OF THE GENRE

In April 1945 Hitler's bunker in Berlin was the last place Edith Mecklenburg wanted to be. But Edith had no choice: as secretary to Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress and -- for a few final, desperate hours -- his wife, Edith had to see it through to the bitter end. Edith was one of the lucky few. She not only got out alive but made a new life for herself in England. Sixty years on, now a widow and grandmother, the Bunker is almost forgotten. But the past has not forgotten her. Hans, a soldier she knew from those dark days, has written asking if he may visit. Obsessed with the war, he has spent the intervening decades tracking down all who were there, and who survived. In her reluctant raking-over of old coals, Edith finds embers that still burn, and in the act of remembrance a very current threat . . .

A penetrating new spy thriller from a master of the genre

A brilliant new spy thriller from a master of the genre: 'Judd infuses his writing with insider knowledge' New Statesman

A penetrating new spy thriller from a master of the genre

A penetrating new spy thriller from a master of the genre

A penetrating new war novella from a master of the genre

From the author of Legacy, now a major BBC Film, comes a brilliant new historical crime novella for fans of Antonia Hodgson and CJ Sansom.‘To Mr Thomas Combe my sword.’ These six words in Shakespeare’s will tell us that Shakespeare had a sword. Did he wear it? Did he use it? What sort was it? When and why did he get it? What happened to it? Might it – does it – still exist? These questions plague Simon Gold, an antiques dealer. He believes he has identified the sword as belonging to a customer, an unworthy owner indifferent to cultural icons and uninterested in history. Simon is desperate to acquire the sword, but how? How far is he prepared to go to get it? In alliance with Charlotte, his customer’s attractive and disaffected wife, Simon finds himself going farther than he had intended - and finds, too, that Charlotte is rather more than she appears.Praise for Alan Judd: 'Judd has an infallible grasp of intelligence' Spectator 'Wonderful. One of the best spy novels ever' Peter Hennessey on Legacy 'Plotting in the best le Carré tradition' Mail on Sunday 'Belongs to the classic tradition of spy writing' Guardian

A new edition, with new introduction, of Alan Judd's classic novel of army life.

A new edition of Alan Judd's classic novel of army life