The Randlords: the men who made South Africa

Business & Money

GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT

Economics

Orion Publishing

<p>Has the most successful species in British political history finally become extinct? The Conservative party dominated British politics for 120 years from Disraeli's victory in 1874, culminating in an unprecedented eighteen-year spell in government after 1979. And yet at the very end of the century the Tories imploded so disastrously as to suggest the party might be doomed to follow the Liberals into oblivion. Geoffrey Wheatcroft has observed this extraordinary drama at close hand, interviewing all the key players on (and, more often, off) the record: from spirited exchanges with Margaret Thatcher to unprintable asides from Alan Clark. In this provocative and often acerbically funny book he first examines how the Tories came to enjoy their unlikely triumph: what was meant to be the century of the common man', with the unstoppable ascent of Labour, turned out to be the era of the Conservative, as the Tories reinvented themselves over and over again, not least entirely changing the party's class character. The Strange Death of Tory England demonstrates brilliantly how two profound truths explain the Conservatives' decline: that the Right had won politically, but the Left had won culturally; and that it was possible to win the battle, but lose the argument.</p>

The Strange Death of Tory England

History

Europe

A.Lane

A masterful and hugely entertaining history of the Tour de France's first hundred years. When Henri Desgrange began a new bicycle road race in 1903, he saw it as little more than a temporary publicity stunt to promote his newspaper. The sixty cyclists who left Paris to ride through the night to Lyons that first July had little idea they were pioneers of the most famous of all bike races, which would reach its centenary as one of the greatest sporting events on earth. The races of the early twentieth century -- as with the late -- were marred by cheating and chicanery, but before long the Tour became a national institution. Along the way the event opened a window both inwards upon French culture, inspiring a whole new kind of journalism, ruthless civic rivalries and any number of popular songs, and also outwards upon European politics. Geoffrey Wheatcroft's masterful history of the Tour de France's first hundred years is not just a hugely entertaining canter through some great Tour stories; nor is it merely a homage to the riders whose names -- Coppi, Simpson, Mercx, Armstrong -- are synonymous with the event's folly and glory; focusing too on the race's role in French cultural life it provides a unique and fascinating insight into Europe's twentieth century.

Le Tour : A history of the Tour de France

Simon&Schuster

Churchill's Shadow: An Astonishing Life and a Dangerous Legacy

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Vintage

Yo, Blair!: Tony Blair's Disastrous Premiership

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Politico's Publishing Ltd

The Controversy of Zion: How Zionism Tried to Resolve the Jewish Question

Middle East

Sinclair-Stevenson

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Books by GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT