Tells the stories of those families powerful enough to have shaped British history during the past millennium. The Churchills, the Cavendishes and the Norfolks are represented, as well as several Scots and Irish clans, through to the "media barons" of the 20th and 21st centuries.
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and...