When Alexander McQueen committed suicide in February 2010, aged just 40, a shocked world mourned the loss of its most visionary fashion designer. McQueen had risen from humble beginnings as the youngest child of an East London taxi driver to scale the heights of fame, fortune and glamour. He designed clothes for the world's most beautiful women including Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. In business he created a multi-million pound luxury brand that became a favourite with both celebrities and royalty, most famously the Duchess of Cambridge who wore a McQueen dress on her wedding day. But behind the confident facade and bad-boy image, lay a sensitive soul who struggled to survive in the ruthless world of fashion. As the pressures of work intensified, so McQueen became increasingly dependent on the drugs that contributed to his tragic end. Meanwhile, in his private life, his failure to find lasting love with a string of boyfriends only added to his despair. And then there were the dark secrets that haunted his sleep... A modern-day fairy tale infused with the darkness of a Greek tragedy, this book will tell the sensational story of McQueen's rise from his hard East London upbringing to the hedonistic world of fashion. Those closest to the designer — his family, friends and lovers — have spoken for the first time about the man they knew, a fragmented and insecure individual, a lost boy who battled to gain entry into a world that ultimately destroyed him.

The aftereffects of the February 2014 Uprising in Ukraine are still reverberating around the world. The consequences of the popular rebellion and Russian President Putin's attempt to strangle it remain uncertain. In this book, Andrew Wilson combines a spellbinding, on-the-scene account of the Kiev Uprising with a deeply informed analysis of what precipitated the events, what has developed in subsequent months, and why the story is far from over. Wilson situates Ukraine's February insurgence within Russia's expansionist ambitions throughout the previous decade. He reveals how President Putin's extravagant spending to develop soft power in all parts of Europe was aided by wishful thinking in the EU and American diplomatic inattention, and how Putin's agenda continues to be widely misunderstood in the West. The author then examines events in the wake of the Uprising-the military coup in Crimea, the election of President Petro Poroshenko, the Malaysia Airlines tragedy, rising tensions among all of Russia's neighbors, both friend and foe, and more. Ukraine Crisis provides an important, accurate record of events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. It also rings a clear warning that the unresolved problems of the region have implications well beyond Ukrainian borders.

From an acclaimed biographer, a riveting account of what happened to the survivors of the Titanic — to be published in the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking. April 14, 2012 will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. While much has been written about the great ship, her shocking demise, and those who perished, very little has been devoted to the hundreds of survivors. In Shadow of the Titanic, Andrew Wilson offers a moving look at how their lives were affected by living through this catastrophic event. For the first time ever, those who lived to tell the tale reveal how they coped in the aftermath. Using archival research and interviews with family members, Wilson offers a unique take on this fascinating story. He shows how some survivors used their experience to propel themselves on to fame and how others were wracked with guilt and refused to acknowledge they had been there. Some reputations were destroyed, and some survivors were so psychologically damaged that they took their own lives years later. From the famous survivors like Bruce Ismay and Madeline Astor — who became a bride, a widow, and a mother all within a year — to lesser known survivors Dorothy Gibson and the Navartil brothers — who were traveling under assumed names because they were being abducted by their father — Shadow of the Titanic offers a host of astonishing stories that add an important new dimension to our understanding of this legendary disaster.