Books published by publisher Allen Lane

Winston Churchill dominates our view of the history of Britain in the twentieth century - the brash, brave and ambitious young aristocrat who sought out danger in late Victorian wars, the mercurial First Lord of the Admiralty who was responsible for the Dardanelles disaster in 1915, the Home Secretary who crushed the General Strike in 1926, the Colonial Secretary who rode with T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell at the Pyramids, the Chancellor who took the country back to the Gold Standard and then spent more than ten years in the political wilderness - and who, finally, was summoned to save his country in 1940. 'I felt that I was walking with destiny, and all my life had been but preparation for that hour.' Andrew Robert's titanic new biography interprets all these events, especially Churchill's leadership during the Second World War, which he sees through the prism of all Churchill's earlier life. He gives full visibility to Churchill's flaws, and brilliantly explains his genius. Roberts has used over forty collections of papers not available to Churchill's previous biographer Roy Jenkins (2001) and he is the first Churchill biographer to be granted access by the Queen to the private diaries of King George VI. This is the Churchill biography for our times and the next generation.

Shepherd's LifeTHE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER From James Rebanks, the Herdwick Shepherd, comes The Shepherd's Life, a story of the Lake District and its people which could redefine the literature of rural life Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. A Viking would understand their routines: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay

"Having It So Good" evokes Britain emerging from the shadow of war and the privations of austerity and rationing into growing affluence. Peter Hennessy takes his readers into the front-rooms where the Coronation was watched on television, to the classrooms and now coffee bars of 1950s Britain - and also into the secret Cabinet rooms in which decisions about the British nuclear bomb were taken and plans made for the catastrophe of nuclear war. He brings to life the ageing Churchill, in his last faltering spell as Prime Minister, the highly-strung Anthony Eden taking his country to war in the teeth of American opposition and world opinion, and the rise of 'Supermac' Harold Macmillan, gliding over problems with his Edwardian insouciance. Above all, "Having It So Good" captures the smell and the flavour of an extraordinary decade in which affluence and anxiety combined to produce their own winds of change.

The signs of climate change are unmistakable even today, but the real transformations have hardly begun. For a generation, we've been taught that warming was a problem of arctic melting and sea levels rising, but in fact it promises to be all-enveloping, driving dramatic changes at every level of our lives, from everyday matters like the supply of chocolate and coffee (likely to dry up) to public health (tens of millions likely to die from pollution) to climate migration (hundreds of millions fleeing unlivable, overheated homelands). We've been taught that warming would be slow-but, barring very dramatic action, each of these impacts is likely to arrive within the length of a new home mortgage signed this year. What will it be like to live on a planet pummeled in these ways? What will it do to our politics, our economy, our culture and sense of history? What will it mean for our collective appetite for climate action? And what explains the fact we have done so little to stop it? These are not abstract scientific questions but immediate and pressing human dramas, dilemmas and nightmares. In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells undertakes a new kind of storytelling and a new kind of social science to explore the era of human history on which we have just embarked.

Relive the extraordinary Presidency of Barack Obama through White House photographer Pete Souza's behind-the-scenes images and stories--some published here for the first time--with a foreword from the President himself.During Barack Obama's two terms, Pete Souza was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else--and he photographed them all. Souza captured nearly two million photographs of President Obama, in moments highly classified and disarmingly candid.Obama: An Intimate Portrait reproduces more than 300 of Souza's most iconic photographs with fine-art print quality in an oversize collectible format. Together they document the most consequential hours of the Presidency--including the historic image of President Obama and his advisors in the Situation Room during the bin Laden mission--alongside unguarded moments with the President's family, his encounters with children, interactions with world leaders and cultural figures, and more.Souza's photographs, with the behind-the-scenes captions and stories that accompany them, communicate the pace and power of our nation's highest office. They also reveal the spirit of the extraordinary man who became our President. We see President Obama lead our nation through monumental challenges, comfort us in calamity and loss, share in hard-won victories, and set a singular example to "be kind and be useful," as he would instruct his daughters.This book puts you in the White House with President Obama, and will be a treasured record of a landmark era in American history.

Taking us from the French Revolution to the Cold War and the Falklands, Andrew Roberts presents us with a bracingly honest and insightful look at nine major figures in modern history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Margaret Thatcher.Each of these leaders fundamentally shaped the outcome of the war their nation was embroiled in. How were they alike, and in what ways did they differ? Was their war leadership unique, or did these leaders have something in common, traits and techniques that transcend time and place and can be applied to the fundamental nature of conflict?Meticulously researched and compellingly written, Leadership in War presents readers with fresh, complex portraits of leaders who approached war with different tactics and different weapons, but with the common goal of success in the face of battle. Both inspiring and cautionary, these portraits offer important lessons on leadership in times of struggle. With his trademark verve and incisive observation, Roberts reveals the qualities that doom even the most promising leaders to failure, and the qualities that lead to victory.

Space elevators. Internet-enabled contact lenses. Cars that fly by floating on magnetic fields. This is the stuff of science fiction; its also daily life in the year 2100.Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next hundred years. He also considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the worlds top scientists working in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In Physics of the Future, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries leaps and bounds seem insignificant.