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Entitled
Entitled
Sep 22, 2024 11:30 AM

Author:Chris Bryant

Entitled

"A proudly partisan history of the British aristocracy - which scores some shrewd hits against the upper class themselves, and the nostalgia of the rest of us for their less endearing eccentricities. A great antidote to Downton Abbey." (Mary Beard)

Exploring the extraordinary social and political dominance enjoyed by the British aristocracy over the centuries, Entitled seeks to explain how a tiny number of noble families rose to such a position in the first place. It reveals the often nefarious means they have employed to maintain their wealth, power and prestige and examines the greed, ambition, jealousy and rivalry which drove aristocratic families to guard their interests with such determination. In telling their history, Entitled introduces a cast of extraordinary characters: fierce warriors, rakish dandies, political dilettantes, charming eccentrics, arrogant snobs and criminals who quite literally got away with murder.

Reviews

You can't deal with today's injustices without knowing how we got here in the first place. If this parade of arrogant, snobbish and greedy toffs doesn't get you to demand change, nothing will. This is fascinating, authoritative and radical history at its best. It lays bare the politics of jealousy and the sense of entitlement that has meant so few have owned so much and lorded it over so many for so long. The duke of Westminster won't want you to read it, which is why you should.

—— Owen Jones

A proudly partisan history of the British aristocracy - which scores some shrewd hits against the upper class themselves, and the nostalgia of the rest of us for their less endearing eccentricities. A great antidote to Downton Abbey.

—— Mary Beard

A riveting, insightful, gripping and horrifying account of how the UK aristocracy gained and maintained power right up to today.

—— Charlie Falconer

Forget celebrity infidelity and drug abuse. Here is one of our greatest scandals – our class-ridden society. That's what should be exercising the Daily Mail.

—— Helena Kennedy

Entitled is an energetic and engaging response to Whig historians in the tradition of Marxist historians. It is annoying and readable in equal measure.

—— Jacob Rees-Mogg

Chris Bryant gives us a lively reminder of why we should "put not our trust in Princes" - or other landed knaves whose main achievement was to be born

—— Neil Kinnock

Crammed full of fascinating stories

—— BBC 2 Steve Wright

Untold stories from wartime Blitz

—— Woman's Weekly

Britain's forgotten army

—— Daily Express

Celebrates the lives of tough wartime matriarchs

—— ITV News

Formidable women

—— Take a Break

An amazing look into the erasure of her grandparents generation and their involvement in Nazi Germany . . . the reader really feels Krug's fear and the tension that builds as she must will herself to peel back the layers of history, and unearth a truth that she might not be ready for.

—— Gosh! Comics

Heimat is an astoundingly honest book that conducts a devastating - and irresistible - investigation into one family's struggle with the forces of history. I could not stop reading it and when I was done I could not stop thinking about it. By going so deeply into her family's history, Krug has in some ways written about us all

—— Sebastian Junger , author of The Perfect Storm

A page-turning scrapbook/collage of memory, meaning and accountability, Ms. Krug draws the reader through her family history with the directness of imagery, handwriting and, ultimately, a disquieting direness that has echoes in our American life, right now. Heimat is valuable, readable and, needless to say, highly recommended

—— Chris Ware , author of Building Stories

Heimat is a compelling and beautifully crafted graphic memoir. Holding this book, and leafing through its pages, rich with photographs, handwritten letters and exquisite drawings, you feel as if if the past is reaching out and grabbing you. It is an exploration of legacy and memory, the things we inherit, the stories we pass on and the strange power the past can hold over us. I loved it

—— Isabel Greenberg , author of The Encyclopedia of Early Earth

Nora Krug created something completely new by inventing a new medium. (...) And with every new form of visual representation she uses, she is able to gain a new perspective on herself and on her history.

—— Ijoma Mangold, literary critic at Die Zeit

Nora Krug has created a beautiful visual memoir of a horrific time in history. A time that torments us to this day. Asking questions and searching for the truth, she will not turn away from the legacy of her family and her country. She asks the question of how any of us survive our family history. Ultimately, the only course is not to veil the answers

—— Maira Kalman, American illustrator, artist and writer

To belong to a place is not to be able to choose what it takes from you. But we can choose what we take from it. Nora Krug takes from her German homeland, and then gives to us, a sense of what it is like to be German today, and a guide to how a reckoning with the past can begin

—— Timothy Snyder , author of On Tyranny and Black Earth

As the Jewish heir of grandparents who themselves had to flee the upsurge of fascism in their German homelands, I found granddaughter Nora Krug's heartrending investigation of her own family's painstakingly occluded history through those years especially moving. But as an American living through these, our very own years of a seemingly inexorable drift into one's still not quite sure what, I found Krug's achingly realized graphic memoir downright unsettling, for what will our own grandchildren one day make of us and our own everyday compromises and failures to attend?

—— Lawrence Weschler , author of Calamities of Exile and A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers

Nora Krug's book Heimat is a heart-wrenching, suspenseful and fascinating odyssey that straddles, and seeks to uncover, an uncharted, inaccessible, unfathomable past. It is a kaleidoscope of interrupted lives, leading inexorably to its ultimate conclusion. I couldn't stop reading it

—— Hava Beller, Director of 'The Restless Conscience'

The Butchering Art is medical history at its most visceral and vivid. It will make you forever grateful to Joseph Lister, the man who saved us from the horror of pre-antiseptic surgery, and to Lindsey Fitzharris, who brings to life the harrowing and deadly sights, smells, and sounds of a nineteenth-century hospital

—— Caitlin Doughty , bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity

Fascinating and shocking ... [Fitzharris] offers an important reminder that, while many regard science as the key to progress, it can only help in so far as people are willing to open their minds to embrace change

—— Kirkus (Starred Review)

The Butchering Art, with its attention to detail, its admiration for its subject and its unflinching sympathy for the suffering, proposes a causal chain - running through the history of human sickness and not yet at its end - in which Lister forms a strong and vital link

—— Sarah Perry , London Review of Books

An energetic, fascinating and deeply researched book… Miller’s skill is to address and capture the transient nature of Landon’s fame… to retrieve [Landon] from history’s doldrums, and demolish the mocking which continued for decades.

—— Catherine Taylor , Financial Times

A compelling book.

—— The Week, *Book of the Week*

Terrific… Miller expertly decodes the story of her life and loves from poems, and the book reads like a novel.

—— Jane Ridley , Tablet, *Summer reads of 2019*

Sensational material brought expertly to life; but Miller’s real gift to the reader is her patient reconstruction of the “lost literary generation” 1820s and 1830s.

—— Claire Lowdon , Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

A riveting, tantalisingly ambiguous portrait of a poet whose confessional voice makes her only more intriguing to modern readers.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Observer

A fascinating...deeply intelligent, witty and often moving exploration of race in modern Britain

—— Samira Ahmed , Mail on Sunday

Afua Hirsch's first book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was published to wide acclaim at the start of 2018. She looks at the many, multi-faceted questions that surround identity - both on a personal and societal scale - to pen a thought-provoking read.

—— Katie Berrington , Vogue

It is a life-shaping read.

—— Chine McDonald , Church Times, **Readers' Books of the Year**

Brit(ish) stands out from a crop of books on growing up mixed race in 70s Britain.

—— Gaby Hinsliff , Guardian, **Books of the Year**

Brit(ish) is an essential read for all. Hirsch's exploration of her identity brings to light the difficulties of growing up as mixed-race and black in Britain. She also challenges the British perception of race, and how our inability to confront our past has profoundly affected our ability to coherently understand and discuss race in our present. Brit(ish) is a call to action, if we genuinely want to progress as a society, we must change our discussions and understanding of race.

—— Louisa Hanton , Palantinate

A personal, political and challenging account of what it means to be British when you are racialised as Black. Hirsch is a brilliant and fearless intellect who deftly handles the complexity of the issues

—— Bernadine Evaristo, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER , Guardian

A beautifully written, poignantly honest memoir while also scrutinising modern history and popular culture. The breadth of Hirsch's focus is impressive... Her insights are numerous and profound, big and small, woven into the details of a personal life we can all learn from.

—— Jeffrey Boakye , Observer

A haunting investigation into family trauma and secrets from a forgotten England that turns out to lie closer to the surface than anyone suspected. Turning detective, she [Laura Cumming] interrogates old snapshots with the forensic skill of a professional art critic

—— Mark Mazower , New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

On Chapel Sands starts by seeming to be about one kind of mystery but soon starts being about another, much more profound one… the subtlety and suspense of the narrative lies in the way Cumming allows details about their relationship to emerge slowly, like a photograph socking in developing fluid

—— Bee Wilson , London Review of Books

With her critic’s eye, Cumming turns detective to investigate who took her mother and tell a pacy story about relationships, pride and the ramifications of what goes unsaid

—— Susannah Butter , Evening Standard, *Books of the Year*

In a year strong in ingenious memoir, Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands…stood out, not just for its great storytelling but for Cumming’s wonderful ability to bring to life a Lincolnshire coastal community…its moods, characters and toxic secret-harbouring machinery

—— Claire Harman , Evening Standard, *Books of the Year*

This beautifully written memoir of family mystery proved one of the surprise hits of 2019

—— James Marriot , The Times, *Books of the Year*

[A] twisting literary mystery that also serves as a deeply moving love letter

—— Claire Allfree , Metro, *Books of the Year*

A complex story of family secrets, beautifully written, and illustrated

—— Craig Brown , Mail on Sunday, *Books of the Year*

A beautiful, multi-layered story full of lost love, human motivation and tender secrets

—— SheerLuxe

[A] bewitching blend of history and mystery

—— Charlotte Heathcote , Daily Mirror

A scrupulous work of storytelling, radiant with empathy and filial affection

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Observer
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