Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. 
 
 
The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.

Ajay Chowdhury

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Jane Ridley

Queen Victoria inherited the throne at 18 and went on to become the longest-reigning female monarch in history, in a time of intense industrial, cultural, political, scientific and military change within the United Kingdom and great imperial expansion outside of it (she was made Empress of India in 1876). Overturning the established picture of the dour old lady, this is a fresh and engaging portrait from one of our most talented royal biographers.

Victoria (Penguin Monarchs)

Queen, Matriarch, Empress

Thomas Cogswell

James's reign marked one of the very rare major breaks in England's monarchy. Already James VI of Scotland and a highly experienced ruler who had established his authority over the Scottish Kirk, he marched south on Elizabeth I's death to become James I of England and Ireland, uniting the British Isles for the first time and founding the Stuart dynasty which would, with several lurches, reign for over a century. Indeed his descendant still occupies the throne. 
 
A complex, curious man and great survivor, James drastically changed court life in London and presided over such major projects as the Authorized Version of the Bible and the establishment of English settlements in Virginia, Massachusetts, Gujarat and the Caribbean. Although he failed to unite England and Scotland, he insisted that ambassadors acknowledge him as King of Great Britain and that vessels from both countries display a version of the current Union Flag. 
 
He was often accused of being too informal and insufficiently regal - but when his son, Charles I, decided to redress these criticisms in his own reign he was destroyed. How much of the roots of this disaster were to be found in James's reign is one of the many problems dramatized in Thomas Cogswell's brilliant and highly entertaining new book.

James I (Penguin Monarchs)

The Phoenix King

Jonathan Sumption

Edward III ruled England for fifty years. He was a paragon of kingship in the eyes of his contemporaries, the perfect king in those of later generations. Venerated as the victor of Sluys and Crécy and the founder of the Order of the Garter, he was regarded with awe even by his enemies. But he lived too long, and was ultimately condemned to see thirty years of conquests reversed in less than five. In this gripping new account of Edward III's rise and fall, Jonathan Sumption introduces us to a fêted king who ended his life a heroic failure. 
 
Jonathan Sumption is a former history fellow of Magdalen College Oxford. He is the author of Pilgrimage and The Albigensian Crusade, as well as the first four volumes in his celebrated history of the Hundred Years War, Trial by Battle, Trial by Fire, Divided Houses and Cursed Kings. He was awarded the 2009 Wolfson History Prize for Divided Houses.

Edward III (Penguin Monarchs)

A Heroic Failure

Stephen Alford

Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of nine and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of fifteen. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further their own ends, but who were also playing a long game - assuming that Edward would long outlive them and become as commanding a figure as his father had been. 
 
Stephen Alford's wonderful book gives full play to the murky, sinister nature of Edward's reign, but is also a poignant account of a boy learning to rule, learning to enjoy his growing power and to come out of the shadows of the great aristocrats around him. England's last child monarch, Edward would have led his country in a quite different direction to the catastrophic one caused by his death.

Edward VI (Penguin Monarchs)

The Last Boy King

Mark Kishlansky

The tragedy of Charles I dominates one of the most strange and painful periods in British history as the whole island tore itself apart over a deadly, entangled series of religious and political disputes.  In Mark Kishlansky's brilliant account it is never in doubt that Charles created his own catastrophe, but he was nonetheless opposed by men with far fewer scruples and less consistency who for often quite contradictory reasons conspired to destroy him.  This is a remarkable portrait of one of the most talented, thoughtful, loyal, moral, artistically alert and yet, somehow, disastrous of all this country's rulers.

Charles I (Penguin Monarchs)

An Abbreviated Life

Helen Castor

In the popular imagination, as in her portraits, Elizabeth I is the image of monarchical power. The Virgin Queen ruled over a Golden Age: the Spanish Armada was defeated; English explorers reached the ends of the earth; a new Church of England rose from the ashes of past conflict; the English Renaissance bloomed in the genius of Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney. But the image is also armour. 
 
In this illuminating account of Elizabeth's reign, Helen Castor shows how England's iconic queen was shaped by profound and enduring insecurity-an insecurity which was both a matter of practical political reality and personal psychology. From her precarious upbringing at the whim of a brutal, capricious father and her perilous accession after his death, to the religious division that marred her state and the failure to marry that threatened her line, Elizabeth lived under constant threat. But, facing down her enemies with a compellingly inscrutable public persona, the last and greatest of the Tudor monarchs would become a timeless, fearless queen.

Elizabeth I (Penguin Monarchs)

A Study in Insecurity

Anne Curry

Henry V's invasion of France, in August 1415, represented a huge gamble. As heir to the throne, he had been a failure, cast into the political wilderness amid rumours that he planned to depose his father. Despite a complete change of character as king - founding monasteries, persecuting heretics, and enforcing the law to its extremes - little had gone right since. He was insecure in his kingdom, his reputation low. On the eve of his departure for France, he uncovered a plot by some of his closest associates to remove him from power. 
 
Agincourt was a battle that Henry should not have won - but he did, and the rest is history. Within five years, he was heir to the throne of France. In this vivid new interpretation, Anne Curry explores how Henry's hyperactive efforts to expunge his past failures, and his experience of crisis - which threatened to ruin everything he had struggled to achieve - defined his kingship, and how his astonishing success at Agincourt transformed his standing in the eyes of his contemporaries, and of all generations to come.

Henry V (Penguin Monarchs)

From Playboy Prince to Warrior King

Catherine Nall

When Henry IV seized the throne from his cousin Richard II, people saw it as a hopeful new beginning for England. The first monarch to have English as his mother tongue since the Norman conquest, Henry seemed to embody the ideals of chivalric kingship: mercy, piety, military prowess and learning. 
 
Yet deposing a crowned monarch was not a stable foundation on which to build a reign. Henry IV found himself challenged from all sides, plagued by conspiracies, rebellions, assassination attempts and crippling debts, while his tense relationships with Parliament and with his own son, Shakespeare's Prince Hal, saw his grip on power falter. Nevertheless, he was the first king and founder of a Lancastrian dynasty which would go on to shape England for centuries to come. 
 
In this lively study, Catherine Nall reappraises a monarch who weathered upheaval and uncertainty and held on to the throne through sheer force of will.

Henry IV (Penguin Monarchs)

The Afflicted King

John Guy

Henry VIII's reign transformed the physical and spiritual landscape of England. Magnificent, tyrannical, a strong ruler, a 'pillager of the commonwealth', this most notorious of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome; a talented, charismatic, imposing figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet people's eyes when he talked to them. In this revealing new account, John Guy explores how Henry himself understood the world and his place in it - from his sheltered and increasingly isolated upbringing and the blazing glory of his accession; to his desperate quest for recognition, fame and an heir, and the terrifying paranoia of his last, agonising, 54-inch-waisted years - and in doing so casts new light on his choice of wives and ministers, his impact on the European stage, and his extraordinary legacy.

Henry VIII (Penguin Monarchs)

The Quest for Fame

Piers Brendon

'After my death', George V said of his eldest son and heir, 'the boy will ruin himself in 12 months'. From the death of his father in 1936 to the constitutional crisis provoked by his proposal to the then-married American socialite Wallis Simpson and his subsequent abdication, Edward VIII reigned for less than year. In choosing the woman he loved over his royal birthright, Edward fulfilled his father's prophecy and instigated the monarchy's most significant upheaval of the twentieth century. Retitled 'Duke of Windsor' and essentially exiled, Edward has remained a controversial figure ever since. Through his correspondence with, amongst other confidants, Winston Churchill, Piers Brendon traces Edward's tumultuous life in this superb, pacey biography.

Edward VIII (Penguin Monarchs)

The Uncrowned King

Jonathan Keates

William III (1689-1702) &amp; Mary II (1689-94) (Britain's only ever 'joint monarchs') changed the course of the entire country's history, coming to power through a coup (which involved Mary betraying her own father), reestablishing parliament on a new footing and, through commiting Britain to fighting France, initiating an immensely long period of warfare and colonial expansion.  Jonathan Keates' wonderful book makes both monarchs vivid, the cold, shrewd 'Dutch' William and the shortlived Mary, whose life and death inspired Purcell to write some of his greatest music.

William III & Mary II (Penguin Monarchs)

Partners in Revolution

Richard Davenport-Hines

Like his mother Queen Victoria, Edward VII defined an era. Both reflected the personalities of their central figures: hers grand, imperial and pretty stiff; his no less grand, but much more relaxed and enjoyable. This book conveys Edward's distinct personality and significant influences. To the despair of his parents, he rebelled as a young man, conducting many affairs and living a life of pleasure. But as king he made a distinct contribution to European diplomacy and - which is little known - to London, laying out the Mall and Admiralty Arch. 
 
Richard Davenport-Hines's book is as enjoyable as its subject and the age he made.

Edward VII (Penguin Monarchs)

The Cosmopolitan King

A J Pollard

In 1461 Edward earl of March, an able, handsome, and charming eighteen-year old, usurped the English throne from his feeble Lancastrian predecessor Henry VI. Ten years on, following outbreaks of civil conflict that culminated in him losing, then regaining the crown, he had finally secured his kingdom. The years that followed witnessed a period of rule that has been described as a golden age: a time of peace and economic and industrial expansion, which saw the establishment of a style of monarchy that the Tudors would later develop. Yet, argues A. J. Pollard, Edward, who was drawn to a life of sexual and epicurean excess, was a man of limited vision, his reign remaining to the very end the narrow rule of a victorious faction in civil war. Ultimately, his failure was dynastic: barely two months after his death in April 1483, the throne was usurped by Edward's youngest brother, Richard III.

Edward IV (Penguin Monarchs)

The Summer King

Nicholas Vincent

King John ruled England for seventeen and a half years. For most of that time he enjoyed, if not popularity, then great wealth and power. Yet to posterity his entire reign has come to be embodied in a single image. Furious, outmanoeuvred, crippled with vice, the King sits at Runnymede sealing or more often (and anachronistically) signing Magna Carta. No matter whether we approach this event as reactionaries wishing that the King would assert himself, as conservatives delighted by the restoration of constitutional 'rights', or as radicals longing for liberty and revolution, Runnymede changes everything in our perception of King John. Seventeen years of history are reduced to a picnic on the banks of the Thames. John is exposed as villainous and pathetic. The people triumph. Tyranny is righted. 
 
 Nicholas Vincent's fascinating portrayal of a complex man unpicks the character behind one of England's most despised kings. Was he as evil as legend suggests? Or has he been unfairly misunderstood?

Showing results for: ‘Ajay Chowdhury’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter