12 Best Great Britain, Biography & Autobiography Books
Great Britain, Biography & Autobiography is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Great Britain, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 12 Great Britain, Biography & Autobiography audiobooks below.
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The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Vol. 2
- By: William Manchester
- Narrator: Richard Brown
- Length: 36 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 1990
- Language: English
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4.37(3 ratings)
4.37(3 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0039.95 USDThis second volume in William Manchester’s three-volume biography of Winston Churchill challenges the assumption that Churchill’s finest hour was as a wartime leader. During the years 1932–1940, he was tested as few men are.This second volume in William Manchester’s three-volume biography of Winston Churchill challenges the assumption that Churchill’s finest hour was as a wartime leader. During the years 1932–1940, he was tested as few men are. Pursued by creditors (at one point he had to put up his home for sale), he remained solvent only by writing an extraordinary number of books and magazine articles. He was disowned by his own party, dismissed by the BBC and Fleet Street and the social and political establishments as a warmonger, and twice nearly lost his seat in Parliament. Churchill stood almost alone against Nazi aggression and the British and French pusillanimous policy of appeasement.
Manchester tracks with new insights this complex, fascinating history without ever losing sight of Churchill the man, a man whose vision was global and whose courage was boundless.
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Peacerunner
- By: Penn Rhodeen
- Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 8 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4(14 ratings)
4(14 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThis is the true story of an unknown American politician who played a critical role in ending centuries of conflict in Northern Ireland. Without the president’s permission, and breaking every conventional rule about how to deal withThis is the true story of an unknown American politician who played a critical role in ending centuries of conflict in Northern Ireland. Without the president’s permission, and breaking every conventional rule about how to deal with terrorists, former congressman Bruce Morrison helped end a conflict that most observers thought would continue indefinitely.
This is the inside story of how centuries of warfare finally ended, thanks to one inspired politician.
Warfare, ranging from active hostilities to seething tension, was the norm between the Irish and the English since the 1100s. During the thirty years from the start of the Troubles to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, over 3,000 Irish and British nationals were killed. Many celebrated the famous Good Friday Agreement that put an end to one of the longest-standing conflicts in the world, but just a handful knew the full story of one American and the crucial role he played in winning peace–and none knew it better than Penn Rhodeen.
In a narrative that grips the listener from the beginning, Rhodeen recounts Bruce Morrison’s heroic peacemaking efforts in lively prose and rigorous detail. A natural storyteller, Rhodeen offers listeners the chance to step into modern political history for an up-close look at Morrison’s remarkable journey. Follow Morrison as he persuades Clinton to create a positive political climate in America and makes the connections necessary in Ireland and Britain to help win the IRA ceasefire and enact a solid, lasting peace.
With an introduction by President Bill Clinton and cameos from Tony Blair, George Mitchell, Gerry Adams, Jean Kennedy Smith, John Major, and other larger-than-life figures, Rhodeen dramatizes events that have somehow receded into the past without getting their due. Peacerunner is the story of how one man changed world history and the modern political landscape.
Bruce Morrison’s story is one of unlikely optimism in the face of seemingly hopeless conflict. Peacerunner has the power to inspire readers from all walks of life and spark new dialogue about how best to lend aid in countries afflicted by unending war.
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Coasting
- By: Jonathan Raban
- Narrator: James Langton
- Length: 11 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.98(409 ratings)
3.98(409 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDPut Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, two-thousand-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, thePut Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, two-thousand-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage–which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982–into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.
Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can read Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always reads it with pleasure.
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Notorious Royal Marriages
- By: Leslie Carroll
- Narrator: Leslie Carroll
- Length: 23 hours 23 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.94(1284 ratings)
3.94(1284 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDFrom the author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry comes a funny and delightful history of the royal weddings and marriages of Europe’s most famous–and infamous–monarchs. Since time immemorial,From the author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry comes a funny and delightful history of the royal weddings and marriages of Europe’s most famous–and infamous–monarchs.
Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love–and almost everything to do with diplomacy and dynasty. Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony to form such infamous couples as Russia’s Peter II and Catherine the Great, and France’s Henri II and Catherine de Medici–all with the purpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high and silverware flying, kings like England’s Henry II have fled to the beds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine have plotted their revenge …
Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs, this book chronicles the love-hate marriages of the crowned heads of Europe–from the Angevins to Charles and Di–and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.
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Agent M
- By: Henry Hemming
- Narrator: Henry Hemming
- Length: 11 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 09, 2017
- Language: English
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3.9(331 ratings)
3.9(331 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe fascinating, improbable true story of Maxwell Knight — the great MI5 spymaster and inspiration for the James Bond character M. Maxwell Knight was perhaps the greatest spymaster in history. He did more than anyone in his era to combat theThe fascinating, improbable true story of Maxwell Knight — the great MI5 spymaster and inspiration for the James Bond character M.
Maxwell Knight was perhaps the greatest spymaster in history. He did more than anyone in his era to combat the rising threat of fascism in Britain during World War II, in spite of his own history inside this movement. He was also truly eccentric — a thrice-married jazz aficionado who kept a menagerie of exotic pets — and almost totally unqualified for espionage.
Yet he had a gift for turning practically anyone into a fearless secret agent. Knight’s work revolutionized British intelligence, pioneering the use of female agents, among other accomplishments. In telling Knight’s remarkable story, Agent M also reveals for the first time in print the names and stories of some of the men and women recruited by Knight, on behalf of MI5, who were asked to infiltrate the country’s most dangerous political organizations.
Drawing on a vast array of original sources, Agent M reveals not only the story of one of the world’s greatest intelligence operators, but the sacrifices and courage required to confront fascism during a nation’s darkest time.
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The Women of the Cousins’ War
- By: Philippa Gregory
- Narrator: Bianca Amato
- Length: 9 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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3.82(2649 ratings)
3.82(2649 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.95 USD#1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory joins two eminent historians to explore the extraordinary true stories of three women largely forgotten by history: Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford; Elizabeth Woodville, queen of England; and#1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory joins two eminent historians to explore the extraordinary true stories of three women largely forgotten by history: Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford; Elizabeth Woodville, queen of England; and Margaret Beaufort, the founder of the Tudor dynasty.
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In her essay on Jacquetta, Philippa Gregory uses original documents, archaeology, and histories of myth and witchcraft to create the first-ever biography of the young duchess who survived two reigns and two wars to become the first lady at two rival courts. David Baldwin, established authority on the Wars of the Roses, tells the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the first commoner to marry a king of England for love. And Michael Jones, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, writes of Margaret Beaufort, the almost-unknown matriarch of the House of Tudor.
Beautifully illustrated throughout with rare portraits and source materials, The Women of the Cousins’ War offers fascinating insights into the inspirations behind Philippa Gregory’s fiction and will appeal to all with an interest in this epic period. -
Elizabeth
- By: Lisa Hilton
- Narrator: Kelly Birch
- Length: 14 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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3.72(209 ratings)
3.72(209 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDA new biographical portrait that casts the queen as she saw herself–not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her “weak and feebleA new biographical portrait that casts the queen as she saw herself–not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler
Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her “weak and feeble woman’s body” to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence of why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton’s fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince and used Machiavellian statecraft to secure that position.
A decade since the last major biography, this Elizabeth breaks new ground and depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most treatments claim. For readers of David Starkey and Alison Weir, it will provide a new, complex perspective on Elizabeth’s emotional and sexual life. It’s a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized, newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England’s first recognizably modern head of state.
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The Marriage Bureau
- By: Penrose Halson
- Narrator: Jane Copland
- Length: 7 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: May 02, 2017
- Language: English
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3.65(615 ratings)
3.65(615 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDA riveting glimpse of life and love during and after World War II–a heart-warming, touching, and thoroughly absorbing true story of a world gone by. In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determinedA riveting glimpse of life and love during and after World War II–a heart-warming, touching, and thoroughly absorbing true story of a world gone by.
In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined twenty-four-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London’s Bond Street and set about the delicate business of matchmaking. Drawing on the bureau’s extensive archives, Penrose Halson–who many years later found herself the proprietor of the bureau–tells their story, and those of their clients.
From shop girls to debutantes; widowers to war veterans, clients came in search of security, social acceptance, or simply love. And thanks to the meticulous organization and astute intuition of the Bureau’s matchmakers, most found what they were looking for.
Penrose Halson draws from newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements, and interviews with the proprietors themselves to bring the romance and heartbreak of matchmaking during wartime to vivid, often hilarious, life in this unforgettable story of a most unusual business.
“A book full of charm and hilarity.”–Country Life
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Dinner with Churchill
- By: Cita Stelzer
- Narrator: Davina Porter
- Length: 5 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2014
- Language: English
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3.6(306 ratings)
3.6(306 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDA friend once said of Churchill: “He is a man of simple tastes; he is quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.” But dinners for Churchill were about more than good food, excellent champagnes, and Havana cigars.A friend once said of Churchill: “He is a man of simple tastes; he is quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.” But dinners for Churchill were about more than good food, excellent champagnes, and Havana cigars. “Everything” included the opportunity to use the dinner table both as a stage on which to display his brilliant conversational talents, and an intimate setting in which to glean gossip and diplomatic insights and to argue for the many policies he espoused over a long life.
In this riveting, informative, and entertaining book, Stelzer draws on previously untapped material, diaries of guests, and a wide variety of other sources to tell of some of the key dinners at which Churchill presided before, during, and after World War II.
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The Jamestown Brides
- By: Jennifer Potter
- Narrator: Charlotte Strevens
- Length: 10 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.52(279 ratings)
3.52(279 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDJamestown, England’s first real foothold in the New World, was fraught with danger—from starvation and disease to violent skirmishes between colonists and the native populations. Mortality rates were impossibly high: six out of sevenJamestown, England’s first real foothold in the New World, was fraught with danger—from starvation and disease to violent skirmishes between colonists and the native populations. Mortality rates were impossibly high: six out of seven settlers died within the first few years. How clear these and other perils were made to the fifty-six young women who left their homes and boarded ships in England in 1621, nearly fifteen years after Jamestown’s founding, is not known. But we do know who they were. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-eight, and they were deemed “young and uncorrupt.” Each had a bride price of 150 pounds of tobacco set by the Virginia Company, which funded their voyage. Though the women had all gone of their own free will, they were to be sold into marriage, generating a profit for investors and helping ensure the colony’s long-term viability.
Without letters or journals (young women from middling classes had not generally been taught to write), Jennifer Potter turned to the Virginia Company’s merchant lists—which were used as a kind of sales catalog for prospective husbands—as well as censuses, court records, the minutes of Virginia’s General Assemblies, letters to England from their male counterparts, and other such accounts of the everyday life of the early colonists. In The Jamestown Brides, she spins a fascinating tale of courage and survival, exploring the women’s lives in England before their departure and their experiences in Jamestown. Some were married before the ships left harbor. Some were killed in an attack by the native population only months after their arrival. A few never married at all. In telling the story of these “Maids for Virginia,” Potter sheds light on life for women in early modern England and in the New World.
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Craving London
- By: Jessica Stone
- Narrator: Jessica Stone
- Length: 5 hours 45 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.52(224 ratings)
3.52(224 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDStill single five years after a broken engagement, twenty-nine-year-old food lover Jessica Stone decides to leave New York City for a fresh start in London, hoping the change in scenery would finally usher in a new relationship. In thisStill single five years after a broken engagement, twenty-nine-year-old food lover Jessica Stone decides to leave New York City for a fresh start in London, hoping the change in scenery would finally usher in a new relationship. In this all-consuming memoir, she indulges in one culinary adventure after another while undergoing the trials and tribulations of trying to date in a different country. Would she finally find the winning recipe for lasting love?
Craving London is an intimate journey of the heart and palate. Those engaged in a life-long love affair with food and travel–as well as a hunger for self-improvement and a curiosity for foreign culture–will find many ingredients to sink their teeth into here.
Join Jessica as she reinvents her life from scratch, reminisces about her Cuban roots, shares her favorite recipes, and attempts to unravel the nature of relationships … one rapturous bite at a time.
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Heretic Queen
- By: Susan Ronald
- Narrator: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 11 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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3.5(356 ratings)
3.5(356 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDAcclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars of Religion–the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism that tore Europe apart in the sixteenth century. Elizabeth’sAcclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars of Religion–the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism that tore Europe apart in the sixteenth century.
Elizabeth’s 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only twenty-five years old, the young queen saw herself as the nation’s Protestant savior, aiming to provide new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary’s reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon.
Extravagant, witty, and hot tempered, Elizabeth was the ultimate tyrant. Yet at the outset, in religious matters, she was unfathomably tolerant for her day. “There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith,” Elizabeth once proclaimed. “All else is a dispute over trifles.” Heretic Queen is the highly personal, untold story of how Queen Elizabeth I secured the future of England as a world power. Susan Ronald paints the queen as a complex character whose apparent indecision was really a political tool that she wielded with great aplomb.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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