Imperial Statesman

Curzon

'A fast-moving, entertaining and finely written story' Simon Schama 
 
'Masterly ... a remarkable portrait of a brilliant complex and tragic genius' William Dalrymple, Los Angeles Times 
 
George Nathaniel Curzon's controversial life in public service stretched from the high noon of the British Empire to the traumatized years following the First World War. As Viceroy of India under Queen Victoria and Foreign Secretary under George V, the obsessive Lord Curzon left his unmistakable mark on the era. David Gilmour's lucid and elegant biography is a brilliant assessment of Curzon's character and achievements, offering a rich and dramatic account of the infamous vendettas, the turbulent friendships, and the passionate, reckless love affairs that complicated and enriched his life. 
 
'A magnificent work ... entirely convincing in its evocation of Curzon's extraordinary character ... It is, in short, the definitive life' David Cannadine, Observer 
 
'Exemplary biography ... meticulously researched and elegantly written' C.A.Bayly, The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'A superb new biography ... a tragic story, brilliantly told' Andrew Roberts, Literary Review 
 
'An absorbing, witty and intelligent biography ... David Gilmour's mix of erudition, hard analysis and quizzical amusement will give this volume a unique place on the ever more crowded shelves of political biography' Ben Pimlott, Independent on Sunday

It is a magnificent work ... entirely convincing in its evocation of Curzon's extraordinary character. It is, in short, the definitive life

A superb new biograpahy ... a tragic story, brilliantly told

Masterly ... a remarkable portrait of a brilliant, complex and tragic genius

David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. He is the author of The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize), The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj and the acclaimed The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience. His other works include The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, The Last Leopard, a biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Marsh Biography Award) as well as several books on the modern history of Spain and the Middle East. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Research Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling

The Long Recessional

'Superb, beautifully written, touching and occasionally very funny' Andrew Roberts 
 
David Gilmour's superb biography of Rudyard Kipling is the first to show how the life and work of the great writer mirrored the trajectory of the British Empire, from its zenith to its final decades. His famous poem 'Recessional' celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, but his last poems warned of the dangers of Nazism, and in those intervening years Kipling, himself an icon of the Empire, was transformed from an apostle of success to a prophet of national decline. As Gilmour makes clear, Kipling's mysterious stories and poetry deeply influenced the way his readers saw both themselves and the British Empire, and they continue to challenge us today. 
 
'A fine, fair and generous work ... Gilmour's celebrated life of Curzon demonstrated his mastery of imperial nuance and esoteric character, and he brings to this book just the right combination of empathy, distaste and 
fastidious detachment ... there is never a flaccid line, and never a hasty judgement' Jan Morris, New Statesman 
 
'Every now and again a book comes along that sheds new light on a life we thought we knew. David Gilmour's beautifully-written biography of Rudyard Kipling is just such a work ... This is literary biography at its very finest' George Rosie, Sunday Herald 
 
'An enthralling biography of a mind ... essential reading for anyone who cares about how a writer finds, and passionately lives, his subject' Ruth Padel, Daily Telegraph 
 
'The best Kipling biography yet written ... Gilmour's account of this driven man shines with intelligence' J. B. Pick, Scotsman

An enthralling biography of a mind ... essential reading for anyone who cares about how a writer finds, and passionately lives, his subject

The best Kipling biogaphy yet written ... Gilmour's account of this driven man shines with intelligence

A fine, fair and generous work ... Gilmour's celebrated life of Curzon demonstrated his mastery of imperial nuance and esoteric character, and he brings to this book just the right combination of empathy, distaste and fastidious detachment

David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. He is the author of Curzon: Imperial Statesman (Duff Cooper Prize), The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, and the acclaimed The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience. His other works include The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, The Last Leopard, a biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Marsh Biography Award) as well as several books on the modern history of Spain and the Middle East. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Research Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

Cities of Spain

By concentrating on its major cities - both past and present -David Gilmour has produced a unique and intimate history of Spain itself. 'The perfect companion piece for any traveller in Spain' Financial Times 'Gilmour's book simply asks to be taken out and . . read whenever you arrive in a particular city. He is always rewarding of the character o f a place ' Guardian. . .

David Gilmour’s highly acclaimed works of contemporary history include The Transformation of Spain: From Franco to the Constitutional Monarchy and Lebanon: The Fractured Country. He is also the author of a recent novel, The Hungry Generations, and The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, which won the Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award and the Nelson Hurst and Marsh Biography Award in 1989. He contributes to numerous publications including The TLS, the London Review of Books and the Spectator, and is currently working on a biography of Lord Curzon. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and four children.

Unlike France and England, Spain has not been dominated by its capital, and the focus of its history shifts from city to city over the centuries, illuminating different features of the country's past. Toledo, Cordoba, Seville and Madrid have at various times managed to establish a political and cultural supremacy, Cadiz and Barcelona dominated the economy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Salanca housed one of the great universities of medieval Europe while Santiago became the second religious centre of Christendom. In CITIES OF SPAIN David Gilmour takes us on a journey from Visigothic kingdom and the Cordoban caliphate to the Madrid of today. The portrait of these cities both now and in the heyday reveal both their spirit and their significance, and allowed the reader an intimate view of one of Europe's most fascinating and intriguing countries.

A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples

The Pursuit of Italy

David Gilmour's elegantly written book is full of impressive insights and can be recommended without hesitation as a stimulating, up-to-date and reliable guide to modern Italian history for the general reader. Gilmour's book displays deep knowledge of Italy and is scholarly but never dense.

A highly idiosyncratic meander through the peninsula's history led by a witty guide with an elegant prose style and a mind delightfully furnished with anecdotes and dictums, sensual impressions and conversations. This is a clever and erudite book.

David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. His previous books include The Last Leopard : A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (winner of the Marsh Biography Award) Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize) and Long Recessional:The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography).

The book that explains the whole extraordinary course of Italian history like no other in English 
 
The Pursuit of Italy traces the whole history of the Italian peninsula in a wonderfully readable style, full of well-chosen stories and observations from personal experience, and peopled by many of the great figures of the Italian past, from Cicero and Virgil to Dante and the Medici, from Cavour and Verdi to the controversial political figures of the twentieth century. The book gives a clear-eyed view of the Risorgimento, the pivotal event in modern Italian history, debunking the influential myths which have grown up around it. 
 
Gilmour shows that the glory of Italy has always lain in its regions, with their distinctive art, civic cultures, identities and cuisine and whose inhabitants identified themselves not as Italians, but as Tuscans and Venetians, Sicilians and Lombards, Neapolitans and Genoese. This is where the strength and culture of Italy still comes from, rather than from misconceived and mishandled concepts of nationalism and unity. This wise and enormously engaging book explains the course of Italian history in a manner and with a coherence which no one with an interest in the country could fail to enjoy. 
 
David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. His previous books include The Last Leopard : A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (winner of the Marsh Biography Award) Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize) and Long Recessional:The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography).

No School. No Work ... Just Three Films a Week

The Film Club

The touching, true story of what happens when a father tries to educate his chaotic teenage son through film

David Gilmour is an award-winning and highly respected film critic - both in print and on television - and a bestselling novelist. This is his first literary memoir. He lives in Canada.

Jesse didn't want to go to school anymore. After much deliberation, his father offers him an unconventional deal: he can drop out, sleep all day, not work, not pay rent, but on one condition - that he watches three films a week, of his father's choosing. 
 
What follows is an unusual journey as week by week, side by side, they watch the world's best (and occasionally worst) films - from True Romance to Chunking Express, A Hard Day's Night to Rosemary's Baby, and La Dolce Vita to Giant. The films get them talking: about girls, music, heartbreak, work, drugs, money, friendship - but they also open doors to a young man's interior life at a time when a parent is normally shut out. Gradually the father's initial worries are set aside as he watches his son morph from chaotic teenager to self-assured adult - who even starts to get up before noon. As the film club moves towards its poignant and inevitable conclusion, the young man makes a decision which surprises even his father... 
 
The Film Club is a book that goes straight to the heart. Honest, unsparing, and emotive, it follows one man's attempt to chart a course for his beloved son's rocky passage into adulthood.

Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj

The Ruling Caste

Acclaimed historian David Gilmour gives us a compelling account of the public and private lives of the Britons who ruled colonial India.

Beautifully written and endlessly diverting... Excellent

A book that is not only informative, but also lucid, witty, and extremely well-written

Based on stunningly exhaustive research in official archives and family papers, and written with tremendous wit, style and sense of pace, Gilmour's book is a masterful account of British life in India. If you have ever wondered what it would have been like to run the Raj, The Ruling Caste has all the answers.

Gilmour is the perfect companion to Victorian India - shrewd, funny, always a joy to read. He writes lean, elegant prose and wears his learning lightly... In David Gilmour, the British in India have at last found the historian they deserve. This is a marvellous book

Learned, thoughtful and beautifully written... it conveys brilliantly and vividly the strange quality of these individuals' lives

Evenhanded, carefully researched and elegantly written

Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

A treasure trove of information from the serious to the trivial

David Gilmour's books include award-winning biographies of Rudyard Kipling, Lord Curzon and the Italian writer, Giuseppe di Lampedusa. He is also the author of Cities of Spain and of several works on the politics of Spain and the Middle East. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, he is a contributor to the New York Review of Books.

In 1900 just over a thousand British civil servants ruled a population of nearly 300 million people spread over a territory now covered by India, Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh. In its time, the Indian Civil Service was regarded as efficient, benevolent and incorruptible, but revisionist historians have recently questioned its competence and derided its altruism. 
 
In this absorbing, extensively researched new book, David Gilmour traces the lives of its officials, from recruitment to retirement, from jungle to Government House, from a bungalow in Burma to a residency in Rajputana. He describes their work and their leisure, their intellectual and their private lives. The result is a portrait more varied and complicated than that painted by their old admirers, and yet fairer and subtler than those routinely produced by their post-colonial detractors.

David Gilmour

Hugely researched and elegantly written, sensitive to the ironies of the past and brimming with colourful details

Glorious, human, colourful, teeming and spicy. If you read just one book on imperial India, let it be this

An exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. ... David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provides the answers in a penetrating and vivid portrait of the British men and women who ran the show from the mid-18th century to 1947.

Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience

The British in this book lived in India from shortly after the reign of Elizabeth I until well into the reign of Elizabeth II. They were soldiers, officials, businessmen, doctors and missionaries of both sexes, planters, engineers and many others, together with children, wives and sisters. This book describes their lives, their work and their extraordinarily varied interactions with the native populations; it also records the very diverse roles they played in the three centuries of British-Indian history. Gilmour writes of people who have never been written about before, men and women who are presented here with humanity and often with humour. The result is a magnificent tapestry of life, an exceptional work of scholarly recovery which reads like a great nineteenth-century novel. It makes a highly original and engaging contribution to a long an important period of British and Indian history.

David Gilmour

Praise for The British in India

Hugely researched and elegantly written, sensitive to the ironies of the past and brimming with colourful details

Glorious, human, colourful, teeming and spicy. If you read just one book on imperial India, let it be this

An exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. ... David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provid ...

Hugely researched and elegantly written, sensitive to the ironies of the past and brimming with colourful details

Glorious, human, colourful, teeming and spicy. If you read just one book on imperial India, let it be this

An exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. ... David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provid ...

Hugely researched and elegantly written, sensitive to the ironies of the past and brimming with colourful details

Glorious, human, colourful, teeming and spicy. If you read just one book on imperial India, let it be this

An exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. ... David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provid ...

Books by David Gilmour

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter