Bostridge Mark

The Fateful Year by Mark Bostridge is the story of England in 1914. War with Germany, so often imagined and predicted, finally broke out when people were least prepared for it. Here, among a crowded cast of unforgettable characters, are suffragettes, armed with axes, destroying works of art, schoolchildren going on strike in support of their teachers, and celebrity aviators thrilling spectators by looping the loop. A theatrical diva prepares to shock her audience, while an English poet in the making sets out on a midsummer railway journey that will result in the creation of a poem that remains loved and widely known to this day. With the coming of war, England is beset by rumour and foreboding. There is hysteria about German spies, fears of invasion, while patriotic women hand out white feathers to men who have failed to rush to their country's defence. In the book's final pages, a bomb falls from the air onto British soil for the first time, and people live in expectation of air raids. As 1914 fades out, England is preparing itself for the prospect of a war of long duration.Mark Bostridge won the Gladstone Memorial Prize at Oxford University. His first book Vera Brittain: A Life was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize, the NCR NonFiction Award, and the Fawcett Prize. His books also include the bestselling Letters from a Lost Generation; Lives for Sale, a collection of biographers' tales; Because You Died, a selection of Vera Brittain's First World War poetry and prose; and Florence Nightingale: The Woman and her Legend, which was named as a Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2008 and awarded the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. The Fateful Year was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2015.

Biography is well recognised as a peculiarly British vice. This new anthology is a collection of essays by some of the best biographers now writing in Britain. They tell of the ups and downs of life writing: of problems with families and friends of their subjects, of shocking new discoveries, and of bitter professional rivalries. Essays in favour of biography, others that describe disenchantment with an attempt to capture another human being in the pages of a book. First published in the autumn of 2004 - to coincide with the appearance of the most important British publishing enterprise of the new century to date, the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - this new in paperback edition of Lives For Sale is full of amusing anecdotes and fascinating experiences retold by some of the masters of the form, including Michael Holroyd, Claire Tomalin, Fiona MacCarthy, Graham Robb, Andrew Roberts, Hermione Lee, Margaret Forster, Jenny Uglow, Antonia Fraser, as well as contributions from the rising generation, and an essay by Beryl Bainbridge on 'Waiting for the Biographer'.