Pocket GIANTS

In a BBC poll in 2002, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was voted the second-greatest Briton of all time, only eclipsed by Churchill. It's often claimed that that through his ships, bridges, tunnels and railways Brunel played a critical role in creating the modern world. In the soaring ambitions of the Victorian age, nobody thought bigger than Brunel. Never tied to a dusty office, he crammed enough work, adventure and danger into a single year to last a lesser person a lifetime. He was also a brilliant showman, a flamboyant personality and charmer, who time and again succeeded in convincing investors to finance schemes, which seemed impossible. Brunel made plenty of mistakes, some of them ruinously expensive. But, he also designed and built several structures, which are still with us to this day. For these we have to thank a man, who was famously described as 'in love with the impossible'.

On Sunday 5 October 2014, the 75,000 strong crowd at Old Trafford for Manchester United's game against Everton joined in with an extended version of a chant which echoed around the stadium. 'We all live in a Georgie Best world,' it went. Eleven years after his death, forty years after he walked out of the club for the last time as a player, Best remains a Giant - extraordinary given that his star shone for such a brief time. He was at the top of the game for no more than half a dozen years. How did he do it?

The world was stunned when little-known Karol Wojtyla became the first non-Italian pope for 450 years. As Pope John Paul II, he continued to surprise, directly confronting Communist regimes, flying hundreds of thousands of miles to meet the faithful, and building bridges with other faiths. John Paul II became a bête noire in the eyes of liberals for his staunch refusal to accept contraception or the ordination of women. But for others he was a Churchillian figure who took on the forces of godlessness and moral relativism. He gained a stature that left secular statesmen in his shadow. Love him or loathe him, few could deny that he was a man of rare courage. He survived two assassination attempts, fought off cancer and waged a very public battle with Parkinson's disease. Seven years after his death he continues to exert a hold over the Church and to inspire an almost cult-like devotion.

At age 25, Elizabeth II became Britain's 40th monarch and vowed to dedicate her life to service and duty on behalf of her country. She is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states, head of the 53 member Commonwealth of Nations, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and head of the armed forces. Most notably, however, on September 9th, 2015, she became the longest reigning monarch in British history. She has consistently adapted in order to remain relevant, while devotedly upholding the age-old traditions of the monarchy. Although there have only been six British female monarchs, it cannot be argued that some of the most enlightened times in history have occurred during periods of queenship. Elizabeth I led the country through the Golden Age and Victoria ushered in the Industrial Revolution, but it is Elizabeth II who will leave the most illustrious and progressive legacy of all.

The President who 'freed' the slaves and held the Union together in the face of the slaveholding South's bid to create a separate Confederacy. The teller of ribald stories, and the author of the most sublime speeches in the English language. A clever, complex, secretive man who rose from frontier obscurity to become the central figure at the moment when the United States of America came close to disintegration. Was Lincoln the 'Great Emancipator', whose wartime leadership helped free four million enslaved people? Or was he a nationalist who jumped late on the antislavery bandwagon? Was his intransigence the cause of much bloodshed? Or was he a pragmatist whose leadership minimized the destruction of the war? This concise biography situates Lincoln in his time and place. A very human figure who, after his assassination by a leading Shakespearean actor, was turned into an icon.

In the space of less than twenty years, Napoleon turned Europe upside down. Rising from obscure origins to supreme power by a mixture of luck, audacity and military genius, he was able to harness the energies released by the French Revolution to resolve the internal problems which it had created, before turning his restless ambition to remodeling the political structure of the whole continent in a series of brilliant military victories. He was never able to finally subdue all his foreign enemies, and in the end they came together to bring him down; but by then it was impossible to restore what he had destroyed, or, in France, to destroy much of what he had created. The memory of his epic exploits, carefully refashioned during his last years in exile, haunted Europe for over a century, while the more distant effects of his career changed the whole destiny of the Americas and of the world.

Wellington is a giant because he was one of the greatest military commanders in British history, an important figure in the emergence of Britain as a great imperial power, a man who dominated British society and politics for 35 years. He was the only one of Napoleon's contemporaries who can be mentioned in the same breath as a general - a master of logistics, politics and coalition warfare as well as strategy, operations and tactics. The book's focus is on Wellington's military career, and it looks at all of these aspects, placing them in the context of the military and political developments of the time. It explores Wellington's personality – a key to understanding his success - and briefly examines his post-Waterloo career as a politician. It concludes that Wellington was not only a military genius, but an icon whose fame endures to our own time.

There's something about Jane... Jane Austen lived only just into her forties, never married, never had children, lived all her life in the south of England and rarely strayed far from the genteel and orthodox social circle into which she was born. She completed only six novels, and achieved little fame in her lifetime. Yet 200-years after her death, she remains one of our most revered writers, and one of the most regularly adapted for television and film. Her novels are beloved by readers all over the world who continue to be inspired, beguiled and delighted by her often comic, and always shrewd insights into the calculations, and complexities of human hearts and minds. This short biography aims to get to the heart of the enigmatic woman who was Jane Austen, and to the enduring qualities in her work which make it so universally loved and admired.

Edward Jenner is a giant of modern medicine. Throughout history, smallpox had plagued humanity with disfigurement, blindness, and death. It was an incurable blight, the suffering of which Jenner helped bring to an end. Surmising from the immunity of milkmaids that cowpox might be some defence against the ravages of smallpox, in 1793 he took some of the matter from a human case of cowpox and inserted it into the arms of a young boy. To test this, the first human-to-human vaccination, he subsequently inoculated the boy with smallpox itself, and found him to be immune from the disease. In 1979 smallpox was declared extinct. This is the story of Jenner's life, his medical vision, and his profound legacy. That legacy encompasses revolutions in medical experimentation, public health provision, and the prevention of other diseases, from anthrax to measles.

Why is King Arthur a giant? Because his story has had such strong influences on our understanding of the history of Europe and the English-speaking world. Because the debate about Arthur as a historical figure has been central to understanding the fall of Roman Britain and the formation of England for much of the last 1,300 years. Because Arthur is one of the best-known kings in world history, whose reign was viewed as a golden age, an epoch in which to centre tales of right and wrong, of faith and faithlessness, and of courage and falseness, the moral and spiritual values of which continue to resonate today not least among those who dismiss Arthur as a late literary construct. Because an understanding of Arthur and all the different things he has meant to scores of generations up to the present is fundamental to our understanding of our own past, our understanding of ourselves and the ways in which we can benefit from history.

Henry V is the best-known military hero in English history: better known than Marlborough or Wellington, or his grandfather, Edward III. He enjoyed more success against the French than any of them, coming tantalisingly close to conquering that vast country and imposing an English dynasty; this in a reign of just nine years, in only seven of which he was at war. Even before he died the heroic myth, later enshrined by Shakespeare, was being created. His victories have become the touchstone of English nationalism, English militarism and English imperialism. For good or ill, Henry V now signifies the one-time 'Greatness of England'. He was a military genius, yet his megalomania was not always in the best interests of his own kingdom, let alone the people of France who suffered at his hands. Behind the carefully constructed nationalist myth was a cold, calculating, ruthless ruler who, before his early death, revealed ominous tyrannical tendencies.

Why is Nelson a hero? Because he was a captain before he was 21, a man who shaped the course of history from the decks of his ships, hailed as a saviour of the nation, a hero killed in action at the moment of his greatest victory at the Battle of Trafalgar and immortalized ever since. What lies beneath the romantic legend of Horatio Nelson? What did he do before he became famous? Why did he fall from grace twice? Did he really put a telescope to his blind eye? Why did Victory's signal lieutenant change his 'England expects . . . .' signal at Trafalgar? What made his leadership special? This book traces Nelson's spectacular and often controversial career from a Norfolk parson's son who entered the Royal Navy at the age of twelve, through his youth as a difficult and ambitious naval subordinate, his rise to admiral and celebrity, his fighting career and his outstanding victories at the battles of the Nile, Copenhagen and ultimately Trafalgar.

Sigmund Freud is rightly called the godfather of psychoanalysis. He forever changed the way we view ourselves and developed our understanding of human nature. His concepts have become part of our psychological vocabulary: unconscious thoughts and feelings, conflict, the meaning of dreams, the sensuality of childhood. He dared to try new methods and treatments. Everyone knows the term Freudian slip and has a basic understanding of his theories, however, Freud gave us a great deal more. From education to critical theory he changed the way we think. His ideas and clinical practices offer psychological insights that bring help and healing. Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. He is the epitome of a pocket GIANT.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was the Shakespeare of opera, the composer of Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Aida and Otello. The chorus of Hebrew slaves from Nabucco (1842) is regarded in Italy as virtually an alternative national anthem - and the great tragedian rounded off his career fifty years later with a rousing comedy, Falstaff. When Verdi was born, much of northern Italy was under Napoleonic rule, and Verdi grew up dreaming of a time when the peninsula might be governed by Italians. When this was achieved, in 1861, he became a deputy in the first all-Italian parliament. While in his 20s, Verdi lost his two children and then his wife (many Verdi operas feature poignant parent-child relationships). Later, he retired, with his second wife, to his beloved farmlands, refusing for long stretches to return to composition. Verdi died in January 1901, universally mourned as the supreme embodiment of the nation he had helped create.

'Alfred is one of the most remarkable rulers of any time or place. This clear, readable and insightful book shows why.' - Michael Wood Why is Alfred the Great? A simple answer is that he has been seen as a man who saved England, invented English identity and pioneered English as a written language. He is the first Englishman for whom a biography survives so that we know more about Alfred and his ideals than we do for most people who lived over a thousand years ago. A slightly longer answer would say that things are a bit more complicated, and that one reason Alfred seems to be so 'great' was that he made sure we were told that he was. To get the measure of Alfred we need to look at what he actually managed to achieve. Can we resurrect the 'real' King Alfred? There may be limits, but even if we have to part company with some of the Victorian adulation, we are still left with a pretty impressive and surprising person.

From disastrous beginnings after he took the throne of Scotland, having murdered a powerful rival, Robert I became a military leader of consummate genius. Throwing away the rulebook of medieval warfare, which favoured the mounted knight, he remodelled the Scottish army as a disciplined, audacious band of brothers capable of surprising castles, raiding and extracting blackmail as far south as Yorkshire and even defeating a mighty English army in pitched battle. Ruthless, charismatic, indomitable and lucky, the 'Bruce' is a towering example of an underdog capable of turning disadvantage into advantage and winning the day through talent and sheer determination. The English turned the lessons they learnt from him to good effect in their Hundred Years war against France.

Why is Henry Ford a giant? Because he put the world on wheels. Henry Ford did not invent the motor car, nor for all the claims did he invent the assembly line or mass production. But more than anyone before or since he is remembered as the man who almost singlehandedly took an expensive contraption of doubtful utility and recast it as a machine which in a real and profound sense changed the world forever. In an industry with many giants –André Citroen, Louis Renault and Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat – Henry Ford stands tallest as the greatest ever motor mogul. A Michigan farmer's son who became a dollar billionaire, a ruthlessly single-minded autocrat who became a folk hero, a pacifist who went on to inspire Adolf Hitler - he was a boss who paid his workers twice as much as his competitors yet waged an unrelenting war on unions and badly abused the power he had worked so hard to attain. David Long has been an author and journalist for thirty years, and has regularly appeared in The Times, Sunday Times and many magazines, here and abroad. He is a celebrated author of over twenty titles and has ghostwritten many more.

John Lennon is a giant of popular music and culture. As one-quarter of the Beatles, he was in the vanguard of music, art, fashion and popular culture during the sixties. His music, humour and outspoken calls for peace inspired a generation. He stands as an iconic figure for those who lived through the sixties and seventies, as well as for those who grew up long after his untimely death in 1980. Above all, Lennon was one of the twentieth century's greatest and most important songwriters. Songs he wrote with Paul McCartney, such as 'She Loves You' and 'A Day in the Life', define an era. Others he wrote alone, such as 'God', 'Help!' and 'Revolution', betray an often complex, contradictory and troubled character. Lennon was never one to hide his love away, nor his anger, nor his convictions. In 2000 his anthem 'Imagine' was voted the song of the millennium. ROBERT WEBB is a managing editor in publishing and a freelance music writer. He grew up in Cambridge, lived in London and is now based in Norfolk. His reviews, features and regular columns have appeared in The Independent, Time Out, Mojo and BBC Music. His books include The 100 Greatest Cover Versions (McNidder & Grace 2012) and, as co-author, The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard (Penguin 2008). He has been listening to John Lennon's records since first hearing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' as a toddler.

Isaac Newton had an extraordinary idea. He believed the physical universe and everything in it could be described in exact detail using mathematical relationships. He formulated a law of gravity that explained why objects fall downwards, how the moon causes the tides, and why planets and comets orbit the sun. While Newton's work has been added to over the years, his basic approach remains at the heart of the scientific worldview. Yet Newton's own had little in common with that of a modern scientist. He believed the universe was created to a precise and rational design – a design that was fully understood by the earliest people. Over time this knowledge was lost, and Newton considered it his life's work to rediscover it, whether through applied mathematics or a painstaking study of the Bible and other ancient texts. In chasing his impossible goal, Newton managed to contribute more to our understanding of the universe than anyone else in history.