A portrayal of the troubled countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, as the author travels through them by train and bus. The author shows daily lives lived against a backdrop of continued and seemingly endless political friction and conflicts, in places that exhibit the contradictions inherent in an area of which Porfirio Diaz said: Poor Mexico So far from God, so close to the United States. It is an observation that serves as an epigraph to the book, as a means of showing how fervent Catholicism can live side by side with extreme violence, how people can show alternating...

Despite his colourful claims, Diego Rivera was not actually raised by a magical nurse who let him roam the forest. After studying in Mexico, he became a key figure in the heyday of Montparnasse. This book follows him through the free love of Paris and into World War I.

The essential biography

Before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham: 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. These remarkable letters, which were inspired by Mary's great love story with Eric, were also the means by which the novelist found her voice.

Discover the truth behind one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of World War II. Who was the enigmatic Jean Moulin, a man as skilled in deception as he was in acts of heroism? The memory of this French Resistance hero, who was betrayed to the Gestapo and tortured by Klaus Barbie, the infamous ‘Butcher of Lyon’, is revered alongside that of other national icons. But Moulin’s story is full of unanswered questions and the truth of his life is far more complicated than the legend. Patrick Marnham, winner of the Marsh Prize for biography, thrillingly tells the epic story of France’s...