Böcker av Katie Hickman

'Irresistible...history at its most human. Elegant and addictively readable.' William Dalrymple During the course of the 18th- and 19th-century a small group of women rose from impoverished obscurity to positions of great power, independence and wealth. In doing so they took control of their lives ? and those of other people ? and made the world do their will. Men ruined themselves in desperate attempts to gain and retain a courtesan's favours, but she was always courted for far more than sex. In an age in which women were generally not well educated she was often unusually literate and literary, courted for her conversation as well as her physical company. Courtesans were extremely accomplished, and exerted a powerful influence as leaders of fashion and society. They were not received at Court, but inhabited their own parallel world ? the demi-monde ? complete with its own hierarchies, etiquette and protocol. They were queens of fashion, linguists, musicians, accomplished at political intrigue and, of course, possessors of great erotic gifts. Even to be seen in public with one of the great courtesans was a much-envied achievement. In 'Courtesans' Katie Hickman, author of the bestselling 'Daughters of Britannia', focuses on the exceptional stories of five outstanding women. Sophia Baddeley, Elizabeth Armistead, Harriette Wilson, Cora Pearl and Catherine Walters may have had very different personalities and talents, but their lives exemplify the dazzling existence of the courtesan.

An authoritative and entertaining account by one of our most talented writers of the courageous and unusual women who have been the backbone of the British Empire and foreign service. 'English ambassadresses are usually on the dotty side and leaving their embassies drives them completely off their rockers' ? Nancy Mitford From the first exploratory expeditions into foreign lands, through the heyday of the British Empire and still today, the foreign service has been shaped and run behind the scenes by the wives of ambassadors and minor civil servants. Accompanying their spouses in the most extraordinary, tough, sometimes terrifying circumstances, they have struggled to bring their civilization with them. Their stories ? from ambassadresses downwards ? never before told, are a feast of eccentricity, genuine hardship and genuine heroism, and make for a hilarious, compelling and fascinating book.

"e;Myth and misunderstanding spring from the American frontier as readily as rye grass from sod, and - like the wiry grass - seem as difficult to weed out and discard."e;The true-life story of women's experiences in the 'Wild West' is more gripping, more heart-rending, and more stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends and ballads that popular imagination has been able to create.Whether they were the hard-drinking hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns, 'ordinary' wives and mothers walking two thousand miles across the prairies pulling their handcarts behind them, Chinese slave-brides working in laundries, or the Native American women displaced by the mass migration of the 'whites' to their lands, all have one trait in common: that of extreme resilience and courage in the face of the unknown. Reading the extraordinary accounts they have left behind them, their experiences seem as strange to us today as it must have been to have lived through them, perhaps even stranger. They were put to the test, in terms of sheer survival, in ways that we can only dimly imagine.Praise for Katie Hickman'Fascinating . . . I was swept along by Hickman's concise chapters and her crisp, wry style,' The Times 'Absolutely brilliant . . . remarkable women, until now almost unknown. I was so gripped I couldn't put it down' Antonia Fraser'Goes beneath the surface of imperial male history . . . a cast of extraordinary women. Wonderful' Anita Anand

An extraordinary and illuminating book that tells the incredible stories of the first British women to set foot in India - 250 years before the Raj.

_______________'A wonderful writer . An adventure hard to beat in terms of sheer exotic allure' - Guardian'Mexico will not have been portrayed more vividly since Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads ... Enchanting' - Daily Telegraph'Magic is at the heart of Hickman's narrative, not just in the fabulous illusions of the acts themselves or the superstitions of the circus people, but in the fantastic stories of the characters she presents' - Sunday Times_______________The delightfully beguiling account of novelist Katie Hickman's adventures with a Mexican circusKatie Hickman went to Mexico looking for magic. She found it in the circus - Big Top, clowns, elephants and all - where cheap, torn materials and tarnished sequins are transformed into nights of glittering illusion. Gradually adjusting to the harsh ways of the circus's nomadic lifestyle, she soon became absorbed into this hypnotic new world, at first as a foreigner but later as 'La Gringa Estrella', a performer in her own right. Travels with a Mexican Circus is an unforgettable account of a year-long journey through an extraordinary and bizarrely beautiful country._______________'A delight... The stories of the cirqueros themselves read like tales by Gabriel Garcia Marquez' - Harpers & Queen'The most ambitiously imaginative sort of travel writing' - Patrick Skene Catling

A tale of lust, greed, and danger set in seventeenth-century Venice, The Pindar Diamond is a gripping and superbly told historical novel.