The Cliveden Set

The Cliveden Set PDF Author: Norman Rose
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446450392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Lloyd George once spoke of 'a very powerful combination - in its way the most powerful in the country'. Its proceedings were invariably conducted at Cliveden, the country estate of the fabulously wealthy Nancy and Waldorf Astor. Collectively dubbed 'God's Truth Ltd', the group included leading politicians, academics, writers and newspaper editors. Its pedigree impeccable, its social standing beyond reproach, its persuasive powers permeated the clubs and institutions of London, the senior common rooms of Oxbridge colleges, the quality press and the great country houses of England. Suddenly, in the late 1930s, the 'Cliveden Set' was catapulted into uncalled-for notoriety. It had been identified as a cabal that sought to manipulate, even determine, British foreign policy in order to uphold its narrow class interests. It would use any means, however devious - even negotiate a humiliating, dishonourable settlement with Nazi Germany - to maintain its privileges, those of a decaying ruling class. But was the 'Cliveden Set' a traitorous cabal, challenging 'the constitutional structures of British democracy', or simply an unstructured think-tank of harmless do-gooders? Norman Rose discerningly probes this fascinating tale, brilliantly disentangling fact from fiction, and setting this privileged clique in the wider perspective of its times.

The Cliveden Set

The Cliveden Set PDF Author: Norman Rose
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446450392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Lloyd George once spoke of 'a very powerful combination - in its way the most powerful in the country'. Its proceedings were invariably conducted at Cliveden, the country estate of the fabulously wealthy Nancy and Waldorf Astor. Collectively dubbed 'God's Truth Ltd', the group included leading politicians, academics, writers and newspaper editors. Its pedigree impeccable, its social standing beyond reproach, its persuasive powers permeated the clubs and institutions of London, the senior common rooms of Oxbridge colleges, the quality press and the great country houses of England. Suddenly, in the late 1930s, the 'Cliveden Set' was catapulted into uncalled-for notoriety. It had been identified as a cabal that sought to manipulate, even determine, British foreign policy in order to uphold its narrow class interests. It would use any means, however devious - even negotiate a humiliating, dishonourable settlement with Nazi Germany - to maintain its privileges, those of a decaying ruling class. But was the 'Cliveden Set' a traitorous cabal, challenging 'the constitutional structures of British democracy', or simply an unstructured think-tank of harmless do-gooders? Norman Rose discerningly probes this fascinating tale, brilliantly disentangling fact from fiction, and setting this privileged clique in the wider perspective of its times.

Five Sisters

Five Sisters PDF Author: James Fox
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743217004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The author of the bestseller White Mischief tells the story of the beautiful Langhorne sisters, who lived at the Pinnacle of high and powerful society from the end of the Civil War through the Second World War. Making their way across two continents, they left in their wakes rich husbands, fame, adoration, and scandal. Lizzie, Irene, Nancy, Phyllis, and Nora were born in Virginia to a family impoverished by the Civil War. Their father remade his fortune by collaborating with the Yankees and building rail-roads; the sisters became southern belles and northern debutantes. James Fox draws on unpublished correspondence between the sisters and their husbands, lovers, children, and the powerful and glamorous of their day to construct a plural topography with the scope of a grand novel and the pace of a historical thriller. At its center is the most famous sister, Nancy, who married Waldorf Astor, one of the richest men in the world. Heroic, hilarious, magnetically charming, and a bully, Lady Astor became Britain's first female MP, championing women's rights and the poor. The beautiful Irene married Charles Dana Gibson and was the model for the Gibson Girl. The author's grandmother, Phyllis, married a famous economist, one of the architects of modern Europe. Fox has written an absorbing and spirited, intimate and sweeping account of extraordinary women at the highest reaches of society, their adventures set against the background of a tumultuous century.

Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor

Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor PDF Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802037527
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This collection of nearly 250 letters between Shaw and Astor - as well as between Astor and Shaw's wife, Charlotte, and Shaw's secretary, Blanche Patch - illustrates the rewarding friendship the two shared and the numerous issues they debated.

Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the British Road to War

Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the British Road to War PDF Author: Frank McDonough
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719048326
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Drawing on a wide range of material, including primary sources, Frank McDonough re-examines the controversial policy of appeasement, and argues that appeasement was part of a broad consensus in British society at the time.

The Georgetown Set

The Georgetown Set PDF Author: Gregg Herken
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030745634X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
In the years after World War II, Georgetown’s leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of Cold Warriors who helped shape American strategy. This coterie of affluent, well-educated, and connected civilians guided the country, for better and worse, from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Watergate, and Vietnam. The Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of The Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the country’s premier political pundits; Frank Wisner, a driven, manic-depressive lawyer in charge of CIA covert operations; and a host of other diplomats, spies, and scholars. Gregg Herken gives us intimate portraits of these dedicated and talented, if deeply flawed, individuals, who navigated the Cold War years (often over cocktails and dinner) with very real consequences reaching into the present day. Throughout, he illuminates the drama and fascination of that noble, congenial, curious old world,” in Joe Alsop’s words, bringing this remarkable roster of men and women not only out into the open but vividly to life.

Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied

Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied PDF Author: Patrick Cockburn
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804290769
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The Extraordinary Life of a Revolutionary Journalist Radical journalist Claud Cockburn fought successfully against the political and media establishment, writing for publications as varied as The Times and Private Eye. To Graham Greene, he was the greatest journalist of the twentieth century. Born in China in 1904 and educated alongside Evelyn Waugh, Cockburn launched into a stellar career as a Times correspondent, first in Berlin, then New York, interviewing Al Capone in Chicago, and finally Washington. He resigned in 1932 to start The Week, an anti-Nazi and anti-establishment newsletter with an influence out of all proportion to its circulation. British officials were horrified by the scoops he published. These included stories on the political influence of German appeasers – the Cliveden Set – in the British elite and the previously suppressed news of Edward VIII’s abdication. Cockburn wrote dispatches while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, he helped W. H. Auden and clashed with George Orwell. Claud’s private life, too, was eventful. He was married three times, once to Jean Ross, the model for Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles. Patrick Cockburn, himself an international journalist, chronicles his father Claud’s lifelong dedication to a guerrilla campaign against the powerful on behalf of the powerless. It is a biography for today’s age, in which journalism is frequently suppressed, overshadowed, undervalued, and corrupted

Fellow Travellers of the Right

Fellow Travellers of the Right PDF Author: Richard Griffiths
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571310141
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
When reviewing the first edition in the Times Literary Supplement, Stephen Koss wrote that Fellow Travellers of the Right 'should be required reading for those who believe that ignorance under any circumstances can deter evil'. One can see why. So topsy-turvy had attitudes become in certain circles that the accusation of being 'unquestionably the biggest war-monger in the world today' was levelled at Churchill, not Hitler! In the author's words 'this book is an attempt to study the various forms of motivation which led to this phenomenon (pro-Nazi sympathies in Britain). It is also an attempt to assess the years in which approval for Nazi Germany became greater or less, and the possible reasons for these changes.' The author goes on to say, 'The pattern of British pro-Nazism is at first sight surprising. After a slow start in the 1933-35 period, it reached a high peak in the years 1936 and 1937, after which it gradually declined until, at the outbreak of the war, it was confined to extremist groups and isolated outcrops of specially motivated approval.' From misguided writers like Edmund Blunden and Henry Williamson to altogether more sinister figures like Lord Londonderry and Sir Arnold Wilson, the roll-call of 'fellow travellers of the Right' is disturbing. Richard Griffiths' acclaimed and much-sought-after book remains the best on the subject.

Garvin of the Observer

Garvin of the Observer PDF Author: David Ayerst
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317403908
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Originally published in 1985. One of the most distinguished editors in the history of British journalism, J. L. Garvin created the Sunday newspaper as we now know it. His career at the Observer spanned the golden age of the British press when newspapers had a powerful influence on political affairs. Like the other great editors of the first half of the twentieth century Garvin clashed with his proprietors. He liked to contrast ‘Responsible Editorship’ with ‘Austensible Editorship’ where the editor took his political orders from the owners. He passionately believed that the readers of any newspaper worth buying had a right to know what the editor himself thought about any important matter. This was the essence of an implied contract, the basis of trust between paper and the reader. It was Garvin’s energy and integrity which transformed the Observer into a major force in the British press so that long before his death most respectable middle class families would have hesitated to admit they had not seen the Observer. This first substantial biography of Garvin of the Observer will be of interest to all students of modern political history and of the press in contemporary society.

The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II

The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II PDF Author: Nicholas Wapshott
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
Before Pearl Harbor, before the Nazi invasion of Poland, America teetered between the desire for isolation and the threat of world war. May 1938. Franklin Delano Roosevelt—recently reelected to a second term as president—sat in the Oval Office and contemplated two possibilities: the rule of fascism overseas, and a third term. With Hitler's reach extending into Austria, and with the atrocities of World War I still fresh in the American memory, Roosevelt faced the question that would prove one of the most defining in American history: whether to once again go to war in Europe. In The Sphinx, Nicholas Wapshott recounts how an ambitious and resilient Roosevelt—nicknamed "the Sphinx" for his cunning, cryptic rapport with the press—devised and doggedly pursued a strategy to sway the American people to abandon isolationism and take up the mantle of the world's most powerful nation. Chief among Roosevelt’s antagonists was his friend Joseph P. Kennedy, a stock market magnate and the patriarch of what was to become one of the nation's most storied dynasties. Kennedy's financial, political, and personal interests aligned him with a war-weary American public, and he counted among his isolationist allies no less than Walt Disney, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Ford—prominent businessmen who believed America had no business in conflicts across the Atlantic. The ensuing battle—waged with fiery rhetoric, agile diplomacy, media sabotage, and petty political antics—would land US troops in Europe within three years, secure Roosevelt's legacy, and set a standard for American military strategy for years to come. With millions of lives—and a future paradigm of foreign intervention—hanging in the balance, The Sphinx captures a political giant at the height of his powers and an American identity crisis that continues to this day.

The Sins of the Father

The Sins of the Father PDF Author: Ronald Kessler
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 1455521876
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of 20 books about the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA comes the detailed account of the life and times of the ambitious, powerful, masterfully manipulative Joseph Patrick Kennedy. For all his wealth and power, Joe Kennedy was not a happy man. He also had no shame. What he cared about was having power. Through the political dynasty that he founded, he achieved that for generations to come. If he hurt and corrupted others in the process, no one had the courage to challenge him. The results are the myths that continue to enshrine the Kennedy family and maintain it as a national obsessions. This book explodes those myths. Utilizing extensive research and interviews with Kennedy family members and their intimates, speaking on record for the first time, Kessler reveals stunning details of Joseph Kennedy's enormous accomplishments and the terrible personal losses he suffered.