Acclaimed British historian Anthony Everitt delivers a compelling account of the former orphan who became Roman emperor in A.D. 117 after the death of his guardian Trajan. Hadrian strengthened Rome by ending territorial expansion and fortifying existing borders. And - except for the uprising he triggered in Judea - his strength-based diplomacy brought peace to the realm after a century of warfare.
He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widelyread authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the mostfamous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own truestory has never been fully told. At last, the fascinating truth isrevealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer SelinaHastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personalcorrespondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his onlychild, Hastings portrays the secret loves, betrayals, integrity,and passion that inspired Maugham to create such classics as TheRazor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage. Hastings vividly presents Maugham’s lonely childhood spentwith unloving relatives after the death of his parents, a traumathat resulted in shyness, a stammer, and for the rest of his lifean urgent need for physical tenderness. Here, too, are his adulttriumphs on the stage and page, works that allowed him a glitteringsocial life in which he befriended and sometimes fell out with suchluminaries as Do
The first major biography of the author of SuiteFran?aise The posthumous publication of Suite Fran?aise won IrèneNémirovsky international acclaim and brought millions of readers toher work. But the story of her own life was no less dramatic andmoving than her most powerful fiction. With her family, she escaped Russia in 1919 and settled in Paris,where she met and married fellow Jewish émigré Michel Epstein. In1929 she published her highly acclaimed and controversial novelDavid Golder, the first of many successful books that establishedher stellar reputation. But when France fell to the Nazis, herrenown did her little good: without French citizenship, she wasforced to seek refuge in a small Burgundy village with her husbandand their two young daughters. And in July 1942 Némirovsky wasarrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died the followingmonth. Drawing on Némirovsky’s diaries, previously untapped archivalmaterial, and interviews, her biographers give us at once anintim
