{"title":"Books by Adam Zamoyski","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780007123742","title":"1812","description":"Adam Zamoyski’s bestselling account of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and his catastrophic retreat from Moscow, events that had a profound effect on European history.In 1812 the most powerful man in the world assembled the largest army in history and marched on Moscow with the intention of consolidating his dominion. But within months, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia – history’s first example of total war – had turned into an epic military disaster. Over 400,000 French and Allied troops perished and Napoleon was forced to retreat.Adam Zamoyski’s masterful work draws on the harrowing first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. The result takes the reader beyond the invasion of Russia to present both a poignant tale of the individual foot soldier and a sweeping history of a turbulent time.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201134559410,"sku":"9780007123742","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007123742.jpg?v=1785658827"},{"product_id":"9780007556212","title":"Poland","description":"Adam Zamoyski first wrote his history of Poland two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. This substantially revised and updated edition sets the Soviet era in the context of the rise, fall and remarkable rebirth of an indomitable nation.In 1797, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland among themselves, rewriting Polish history to show that they had brought much-needed civilisation to a primitive backwater. But the country they wiped off the map had been one of Europe’s largest and most richly varied, born of diverse cultural traditions and one of the boldest constitutional experiments ever attempted. Its destruction ultimately led to two world wars and the Cold War.Zamoyski’s fully revised history of Poland looks back over a thousand years of turmoil and triumph, chronicling how Poland has been restored at last to its rightful place in Europe.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201199276210,"sku":"9780007556212","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007556212.jpg?v=1785658723"},{"product_id":"9780007203062","title":"Rites of Peace","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from his epic ‘1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow’, bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the principle players included Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington and the French master of diplomacy Talleyrand, as well as Napoleon himself, the accepted view of the gathering of statesmen reordering the Continent in elegant salons is a false one. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on a wide range of first-hand sources in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries and first-hand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to fear, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. He has created a chilling account, full of menace as well as frivolity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43399657193650,"sku":"9780007203062","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007203062.jpg?v=1785658723"},{"product_id":"9780008521721","title":"Izabela the Valiant","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Spectator Best Book of the YearTrawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man’s world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer aristocratic position enmeshed her in high politics and close encounters with Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Joseph II, Marie-Antoinette and Tsar Alexander I, and earned her the enmity of Catherine the Great. She lived through revolution and no less than five wars, in which her cherished homes were devastated, her possessions looted and her children scattered. Caught up in tempestuous love affairs which led her to nervous breakdown and the brink of suicide, exploited by her lovers, she remained undaunted and liberated herself through education.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd, unusually for her time, she became a caring mother devoted to her children. She learned much by travelling extensively around Europe at a time of political and ideological change, and her observations, particularly on Georgian Britain, are remarkable. She gradually won the admiration of learned men and intellectual honours. She pioneered schooling for children of the poor and developed her own educational methods. Fascinated by the power of objects to kindle memories and arouse emotions, she was an avid collector of anything with a sensuous association and built two unique museums to act as teaching aids.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a story of triumph over adversity and betrayal. It was not achieved by her looks: ‘I have never been beautiful, but I have sometimes been pretty,’ she wrote. It was achieved by force of character and resilience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":55206163874165,"sku":"9780008521721","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57685707293045,"sku":"9780008521684","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780008521721_052f8c04-00e7-4a0f-91ce-03125958775f.jpg?v=1792598865"},{"product_id":"9781474615198","title":"The Last King Of Poland","description":"\u003cp\u003eA superb study of one of the most important, romantic and dynamic figures of European history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A fine book ... the web of political intrigue unfolds like an appetising detective novel' \u003ci\u003eScotsman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe last king of Poland owed his throne largely to his youthful romance with the future Catherine the Great of Russia. But Stanislaw Augustus was nobody's pawn. He was an ambitious, highly intelligent and complex character, a dashing figure in the finest eighteenth-century tradition. A great believer in art and education, he spent fortunes on cultural projects, and finding that he was blocked politically by Catherine, he put his energies into a programme of social and artistic regeneration. He transformed the mood of his country and brought it to a new phase of reform and independence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoland's neighbours, however, viewed this beacon of liberty in their midst with alarm, and as they invaded and partitioned it, Stanislaw saw the destruction of his life's work, and ultimately was forced to abdicate, a broken man, deceived and disillusioned.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301083722101,"sku":"9781474615198","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781474615198_baa0c452-32a6-40dd-b960-54946c0a8e91.jpg?v=1786020875"},{"product_id":"9780007282777","title":"Phantom Terror","description":"A magnificent and timely examination of an age of fear, subversion, suppression and espionage, Adam Zamoyski explores the attempts of the governments of Europe to police the world in a struggle against obscure forces, seemingly dedicated to the overthrow of civilisation.The advent of the French Revolution confirmed the worst fears of the rulers of Europe. They saw their states as storm-tossed vessels battered by terrible waves coming from every quarter and threatened by horrific monsters from the deep. Rulers' nerves were further unsettled by the voices of the Enlightenment, envisaging improvement only through a radical transformation of existing structures, with undeniable implications for the future role of the monarchy and the Church.Napoleon's arrival on the European stage intensified these fears, and the changes he wrought across Europe fully justified them. Yet he also brought some comfort to those rulers who managed to survive: he had tamed the revolution in France and the hegemony he exercised over Europe was a kind of guarantee against subversion. Once Napoleon was toppled, the monarchs of Europe took over this role for themselves.However, the nature of their attempts to impose order were not only ineffectual, they also managed to weaken the bases of that order. As counter-productive as anything, for example, was the use of force. Reliance on standing armies to maintain order only served to politicize the military and to give potential revolutionaries the opportunity to get their hands on a ready armed force.The wave of revolutions in 1848 might have embodied the climactic clash that many had come to expect, but it was no Armageddon, lacking the kind of mass support that rulers had dreaded and revealed the groundlessness of most of their fears. Interestingly, the sense of a great, ill-defined, subversive threat never went away, indeed it lingers on even today in the minds of world leaders.Adam Zamoyski's compelling history explores how the rulers and governments of the time really did envisage the future and how they meant to assure it.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301362053493,"sku":"9780007282777","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007282777_775a32bb-b816-4bb5-a8f7-91cae5714e7d.jpg?v=1785658694"},{"product_id":"9781474615211","title":"Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots And Revolutionaries 1776-1871","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom America's fight for independence to the Paris Commune - an exotic collection of fanatics, adventurers, poets and thinkers are brought vividly to life.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHoly Madness\u003c\/i\u003e probes into the psyche that was responsible for so many of the founding events of our modern world, and into the instincts that inspired its most generous and most murderous impulses. It explains how the Enlightenment dislodged Christianity from its central position in the life of European societies and how man's quest for ecstasy and transcendence flooded into areas such as the arts, spawning the Romantic movement.  This dramatic journey which begins in America in 1776 and goes right up to the last agony of the Paris Commune in 1871, takes in the French revolution, the Irish rebellion, the Polish risings, the war of Greek liberation, the Russian insurrection, the Hungarian struggles for freedom, the liberation of South America, and the Italian Risorgimento.\u003cb\u003e'An ambitious and in many ways brilliant book' Hilary Mantel\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301442957685,"sku":"9781474615211","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781474615211_d202b3cb-5002-4e8b-a70f-b5b5d2f7971e.jpg?v=1786020877"},{"product_id":"9781848841963","title":"The Forgotten Few","description":"By the beginning of 1941 there was a fully fledged Polish Air Force operating alongside the RAF.  With 14 Squadrons it was larger than any other of the Air Force from Nazi-occupied Europe that had joined the Allies.  Over 17,000 men and women passed through the ranks of the Polish Air Force while it was stationed in the UK.They shot down 745 enemy aircraft, with a further 175 unconfirmed.  They dropped thousands of bombs and laid hundreds of mines, flying 102,486 sorties notching up a total of 290,895 operation flying hours.  They achieved this at a cost of 1,973 killed and 1,388 wounded.  They won 342 British gallantry awards.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307925123445,"sku":"9781848841963","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781848841963_a8809e63-7899-4863-8a72-3098a4ea388b.jpg?v=1786034059"},{"product_id":"9781912568017","title":"Napoleon","description":"\u003cp\u003eBorn in Corsica, and a brilliant military leader during the French revolution, Napoleon became Emperor in 1804 and dominated European and indeed global affairs for the next ten years, leading France against a series of coalitions in what were later called the Napoleonic wars. His victories are the stuff of legend, as is his famous invasion of Russia in 1812, disastrous and shattering retreat from Moscow two years later, and final defeat by Britain and its allies at Waterloo in 1815. So how great a military leader was Napoleon?  And how skilled a political operator? Why are his relationships with women, and especially his Empress, Josephine, so famous? And what of his legacy – in particular, how important was the so-called Napoleonic Code? “The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on—were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon,” says Andrew Roberts. “To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empie.” Zamoyski assesses this verdict of Napoleon and gives his own view of the greatness and legacy of one of history’s most compelling figures.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309028061557,"sku":"9781912568017","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781912568017_c8548f98-1f5f-431d-bac4-1113c71b2409.jpg?v=1786030712"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-adam-zamoyski.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}