An end to promises: Sketch of a government, 1970-74

Hurd, Douglas

Collins

From the blackened, crumbling tenements of Glasgow come ugly rumours...\nAn army of separatist fanatics, recruited from the razor gangs of Europe's most violent city and funded and armed by an unknown power, are standing ready - waiting for the moment to strike.\nIs the Nationalist tide about to turn? Will Prime Minister Harvey avert catastrophe...?\nThe possibilities of a civil war in Britain have never been so graphically portrayed.

Scotch on the rocks

Literature & Fiction

Send Him Victorious

Osmond, Andrew

Elizabeth II is now the longest-serving monarch who ever sat on the English or British throne. Yet her personality and influence remain elusive. This book, by a senior politician who has spent significant periods of time in her company, and is also a distinguished historian, portrays her more credibly than any other yet published.

Elizabeth II: The Steadfast (Penguin Monarchs)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Allen Lane.

The acclaimed Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers - now in paperback Elizabeth II is the longest-serving monarch who ever sat on the English or British throne. Yet her personality and influence remain elusive. This book, by a senior politician who has spent significant periods of time in her company, and is also a distinguished historian, portrays her more credibly than any other yet published.
Douglas Hurd was a politician, biographer and novelist who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, as Minister for Europe (1979-83), Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984-85), Home Secretary (1985-89) and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1989-95). His previous books include his Memoirs, Robert Peel: A Biography and, with Edward Young, Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary - 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure.

Elizabeth II (Penguin Monarchs)

Penguin

Described as one of the 19th century’s most dynamic prime ministers, Robert Peel transformed Great Britain into a modern nation. He invented the police force; steered through legislation that allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament; reorganized the criminal justice system; and invented the Conservative Party as it exists today. Above all he tackled poverty by repealing the Corn Laws, and thanks to Peel Britain chose free trade and opened the door for globalization. For all his achievements, however, Peel was not all politics: he built two great houses, filled them with famous paintings, and was devoted to his beautiful wife. Yet he was widely regarded as stiff and strange, with Queen Victoria describing him as such a cold odd man” while Disraeli attacked him for dishonesty. But when in 1850 he was carried home after a fall from his horse, crowds primarily composed of working people gathered outside his house to read the medical bulletins. When he died a few days later, factories closed, flags flew at half mast, and thousands contributed small sums to memorials in his honor. Like Peel, Douglas Hurd served as Home Secretary and lived through a time of conflict in the Conservative Party. With one eye on the present, Douglas Hurd charts Peel's life and work through the dramas of 19th-century politics.

Robert Peel: A Biography

Orion Publishing

The argument between the noisy popular liberal interventionist approach and the more conservative diplomatic approach concentrating on cooperation between other nations has run for two centuries, and is at the heart of heated discussion on both sides of the Atlantic today. Hurd concentrates on personalities and circumstances. He begins with the dramatic antagonism after Waterloo between Canning and Castlereagh—the last occasion on which ministerial colleagues fought a duel. A generation later comes Palmerston vs Aberdeen, from which Palmerston, the noisy interventionist, emerged the victor. Salisbury and then Edward Grey wrestled with the same dilemma in the context of imperialism and the European balance of power. Finally Eden and Bevin, from wholly different backgrounds, combined with the Americans to create a post–war compromise, which served its purpose for half a century, but is coming apart today as the old questions resurface in new and savage forms in an era of terrorism and racial conflict.

Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary: 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure

History

World

Phoenix

The Palace of Enchantments

An ambitious Conservative Junior Minister, Edward Dunsford, seems to be doing all the right things in his bid to become Foreign Secretary. Until, that is, a moment's sentimental weakness precipitates his career into chaos, his party into crisis and his own marriage onto the rocks. 'So skilfully do Hurd and Lamport expose Whitehall's nerve-ends that their dissection reveals more of the system's internal workings than all the outpourings of the political researchers thick on the Westminster beat' - Sunday Times

The palace of enchantments

St.Martin's Press

(Douglas Hurd's fine political novel, set in the near future, eloquently conveys the sheer anarchic pressure of political life at the top - the way problems jostle for attention in the day, with the small ones prevailing because they are urgent, and the pressure slowly building until it distorts judgement and relationships. With the narrative momentum of a good thriller, THE SHAPE OF ICE reflects the way ominous events can develop from near-invisibility into momentous crises, like the slowly growing iceberg that finally sank the Titanic. PM Simon Russell's personal alarm clock is ticking away. Beyond No.10. prison riots, bombs in Ireland, corporate blackmail in China and civil unrest in Russia jostle for his attention. From the smallest details of the PM's office to the global significance of an international crisis, THE SHAPE OF ICE unfolds the political process with real authenticity)

The Shape of Ice

Contemporary

Little Brown & Co Canada Ltd

Hurd traces the search for peace back to the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, when Napoleon s attempt to create an imperial hegemony threatened the rest of Europe. He focuses on 4 key events -- the Congress of Vienna, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Yalta settlement of 1945, & the collapse of Communism -- to demonstrate how the diplomatic realism that kept Europe at peace for a century was destroyed by both American idealism at the end of the WW1 & the rise of Nazism, Fascism & Marxism. Civil war, with its undercurrents of political genocide & ethnic violence, is now the issue Western governments must confront. Made into a major BBC TV series. Illustrations.

Search for Peace

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Little. Brown and Company

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