This volume is a detailed history of the Dreyfus family and through them France's Jewish community, which spans six generations, from the French Revolution to World War II. At the centre of the book is the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s, one of the most chilling examples of persecution, and one of the most complex and controversial political and cultural events of the 20th century - a case which split the French nation and revealed the true extent of 19th-century anti-Semitism.

Today, Philip Henry Gosse is remembered, if at all, as the patriarch and tyrannical religious maniac in his son Edmund's memoir, Father and Son. This is a vivid reassessment of the life of Philip Henry Gosse, the renowned Victorian naturalist, author, illustrator and Christian fundamentalist, who as both friend and antagonist of Charles Darwin, was at the very heart of the Victorian conflict between science and religion. Thwaite shows that Gosse believed that "the gratification of scientific curiosity is worse than useless if we ignore God."--Publisher.

Although he died more than forty years ago this is the first full-scale biography of Matthew Smith, one of the most original English figurative painters of the century. He was in his lifetime frequently, but mistakenly, seen as an English Fauve or as a disciple of Matisse, but in fact he evolved his own distinctive style independently from anything he had seen in English art schools or the French galleries. Smith was the son of a rich and cultured Yorkshire manufacturer, but soon felt impelled to rebel against the Victorian taste of his father and his class. He failed to impress tutors at the Slade, went to France to see what the modern movements there had to offer, and then returned to mingle in the circles round Sickert and Fry. His grim experiences in World War 1 forced him to sort out his priorities both as a man and an artist. Eventually, a passionate love affair in middle age enabled him to establish his own uniquely turbulent style and subject matter of still-lifes, landscapes and uninhibited nudes. Augustus John and Epstein were close friends as were many other literary and artistic figures in Paris, Provence and London. He was shaken by personal tragedies, but well into old age he seemed able to attract the love of cultivated and attractive younger women. There have been several retrospective exhibitions since his death in 1959, notably at the Royal Academy and twice at the Barbican. Dr Yorke's detailed biography traces the life and reputation of this unassuming man who 'spoke like an intelligent moth' , but who produced pictures of such rich colour and extrovert handling that they have no parallels in the history of English painting.

Well past their prime, the ladies who rent rooms in Amy Doll's house indulge in genteel prostitution with their elderly gentlemen friends in order to pay the rent. How will Amy keep her daughter in ignorance of the scandalous goings-on? A tale poking fun at the English passion for respectability.

"The Evelyn Waugh who emerges from this fascinating and masterful account is a far different, and a far more complex, figure than the one most readers know. . . . Not only supersedes all earlier accounts of the writer but also is a model of the biographer's art." --Michael Gorra, New York Newsday