A dazzling new biography of Vita Sackville-West, the 20th century aristocrat, literary celebrity, devoted wife, famous lover of Virginia Woolf, recluse, and iconoclast who defied categorization.In this stunning new biography of Vita Sackville-West, Matthew Dennison's Behind the Mask traces the triumph and contradictions of Vita's extraordinary life. His narrative charts a fascinating course from Vita's lonely childhood at Knole, through her affectionate but ‘open' marriage to Harold Nicolson (during which both husband and wife energetically pursued homosexual affairs, Vita most famously with Virginia Woolf), and through Vita's literary successes and disappointments, to the famous gardens the couple created at Sissinghurst. The book tells how, from her privileged world of the aristocracy, Sackville-West brought her penchant for costume, play-acting and rebellion to the artistic vanguard of modern Britain. Dennison is the acclaimed author of many books including a biography of Queen Victoria. Here, in the first biography to be written of Vita for thirty years, he reveals the whole story and gets behind ‘the beautiful mask' of Vita's public achievements to reveal an often troubled persona which heroically resisted compromise on every level. Drawing on wideranging sources and the extensive letters that sustained her marriage, this is a compelling story of love, loss and jealousy, of high-life and low points, of binding affection and illicit passion – a portrait of an extraordinary, 20th-century life.

Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West

Dennison, Matthew

William Collins

A fresh, witty, accessible life of Queen Victoria. Not since Lytton Strachey has the irony, contradictions and influence of this Queen been treated with such flourish or biographical insight.
"Queen Victoria had a very complicated and psychologically fascinating personality and only a very talented biographer could get to the key of her character. Fortunately in Matthew Dennison's pithy, well-researched, beautifully written and very accessible book, she has found one" - Andrew Roberts
Queen Victoria is Britain's queen of contradictions. In her combination of deep sentimentality and bombast; cultural imperialism and imperial compassion; fear of intellectualism and excitement at technology; romanticism and prudishness, she became a spirit of the age to which she gave her name.
Victoria embraced photography, railway travel and modern art; she resisted compulsory education for the working classes, recommended for a leading women's rights campaigner 'a good whipping' and detested smoking. She may or may not have been amused.
Meanwhile she reinvented the monarchy and wrestled with personal reinvention. She lived in the shadow of her mother and then under the tutelage of her husband; finally she embraced self-reliance during her long widowhood. Fresh, witty and accessible, Queen Victoria is a compelling assessment of Victoria's mercurial character and impact, written with the irony, flourish and insight that this Queen and her rule so richly deserve.

Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Queen Victoria is Britain's queen of contradictions. In her combination of deep sentimentality and bombast; cultural imperialism and imperial compassion; fear of intellectualism and excitement at technology; romanticism and prudishness, she became a spirit of the age to which she gave her name. Victoria embraced photography, railway travel and modern art; she resisted compulsory education for the working classes, recommended for a leading women's rights campaigner 'a good whipping' and detested smoking. She may or may not have been amused. Meanwhile she reinvented the monarchy and wrestled with personal reinvention. She lived in the shadow of her mother and then under the tutelage of her husband; finally she embraced self-reliance during her long widowhood. Fresh, witty and accessible, Matthew Dennison's "Queen Victoria" is a compelling assessment of Victoria's mercurial character and impact, written with the irony, flourish and insight that this Queen and her rule so richly deserve.

Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions 1St edition by Dennison, Matthew (2013) Hardcover

Harpercollins

First Iron Lady

fourth state uk

THE LAST PRINCESS. The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter.

Leaders & Notable People

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

An engrossing biography of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter that focuses on her relationship with her willful mother---a powerful and insightful look into two women of signi?cant importance and in?uence in world history.
Beatrice was the last child born to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Her father died when she was four and Victoria came to depend on her youngest daughter absolutely, and also demanded from her complete submission. Victoria was not above laying it down regally even with her own children. Beatrice succumbed to her mother’s obsessive love, so that by the time she was in her late teens she was her constant companion and running her mother’s of?ce, which meant that when Victoria died her daughter became literary executor, a role she conducted with Teutonic thoroughness. And although Victoria tried to prevent Beatrice even so much as thinking of love, her guard slipped when Beatrice met Prince Henry of Battenberg. Sadly, Beatrice inherited from her mother the hemophilia gene, which she passed on to two of her four sons and which her daughter Victoria Eugenia, in marrying Alfonso XIII of Spain, in turn passed on to the Spanish royal family. This new examination will restore her to her proper prominence---as Queen Victoria’s second consort.

The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter

Historical

St.Martin's Press

An engrossing biography of Queen Victoria's youngest daughter that focuses on her relationship with her willful mother―a powerful and insightful look at two women of significant importance and influence in world history
Beatrice was the last child born to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Her father died when she was four and Victoria came to depend on her youngest daughter absolutely, and also demanded from her complete submission. Beatrice succumbed to her mother's obsessive love, so that by the time she was in her late teens she was her constant companion. Although Victoria tried to prevent Beatrice from even so much as thinking of love, her guard slipped when Beatrice met Prince Henry of Battenberg. Sadly, Beatrice inherited the hemophilia gene from her mother, which she passed on to two of her four sons and which her daughter Victoria Eugenia, in marrying Alfonso XIII of Spain, in turn passed on to the Spanish royal family. This new examination will restore her to her proper prominence―as Queen Victoria's second consort.

St. Martin's: Griffin

Rome is a subject of endless fascination, and in this new biography of the infamous Empress Livia, Matthew Dennison brings to life a woman long believed to be one of the most feared villainesses of history.
Second wife of the emperor Augustus, mother of his successor Tiberius, grandmother of Claudius and great grandmother of Caligula, the empress Livia lived close to the center of Roman political power for eight turbulent decades. Her life spanned the years of Rome’s transformation from Republic to Empire, and witnessed both its triumphs under the rule of Augustus and its lapse into instability under his dysfunctional successor.
Livia was given the honorific title Augusta in her husband's will, and was posthumously deified by the emperor Claudius—but posterity would prove less respectful. The Roman historian Tacitus anathematized her as “malevolent” and a “feminine bully” and inspired Robert Graves's celebrated twentieth-century depiction of Livia in I, Claudius as the quintessence of the scheming matriarch, poisoning her relatives one by one to smooth her son’s path to the imperial throne.
Livia, Empress of Rome rescues the historical Livia from the crude caricature of popular myth to paint an elegant and richly textured portrait. In this rigorously researched biography, Dennison weighs the evidence found in contemporary sources to present a more nuanced assessment. Livia’s true “crime,” he reveals, was not murder but the exercise of power. The Livia who emerges here is a complex, courageous and gifted woman, and one of the most fascinating and perplexing figures of the ancient world.

Livia, Empress of Rome: A Biography

Livia has been vilified as the quintessence of the scheming Roman matriarch, poisoning her relatives to smooth her son's path to the throne. Matthew Dennison rescues the historical Livia from this crudely drawn caricature. He depicts a gifted, complex, and courageous woman whose true crime was not murder but the exercise of power.

Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia

Quercus Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dennison, Matthew. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dennison, Matthew

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dennison, Matthew. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West

Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions

Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions 1St edition by Dennison, Matthew (2013) Hardcover

First Iron Lady

THE LAST PRINCESS. The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter.

The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter

The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter

Livia, Empress of Rome: A Biography

The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter

Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia