1833, Catherine Jane Hamilton returned from India to Edinburgh to seek a divorce from her husband, the physician Alexander Lesassier. The charge was adultery, and proof for it lay in a trunk containing her husband's personal papers. Catherine won her suit without difficulty and the trunk was deposited in the library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Alexander Lesassier died in 1839 during the First Afghan War; his trunk and its contents remained untouched for the next century and a half. It has now been opened and a remarkable tale, told in remarkable detail, has spilled forth. The life of Alexander Lesassier, as expertly reconstructed by Lisa Rosner, affords startling insight into the sensibilities of an era and of the man who, in his own eyes and those of the women who adored him, was its most perfect creation. Affable and self-absorbed, engaging and ignoble Lesassier was a physician, military surgeon, and novelist, who was also a shameless opportunist, charming scoundrel, seducer, and survivor. His is the story of a failed medical man who wanted to be something different and saw himself as entitled to more than he had; someone who can always be guaranteed to make the wrong choice, and then protest that he has done well. This fascinating and deeply absorbing book offers rare insights into Georgian, Regency, and early Victorian Britain through the fortunes and misfortunes, hopes and whims, of "the most beautiful man in existence."

When Andy Warhol cast Paul Swan (1883?1972) in three films in the mid-1960s, he knew that the octogenarian had once been internationally hailed as ?the most beautiful man in the world? and as ?Nijinsky?s successor.? Arthur Hammerstein had advertised Swan as ?a reincarnated Greek God,? and George and Ira Gershwin had celebrated his beauty in their musical Funny Face. What Warhol didn?t know was that Swan had also been called ?America?s Leonardo,? portrait artist of the famous and the infamous, including writer Willa Cather, aviator Charles Lindbergh, British Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, and dictator Benito Mussolini. This book is the first to tell Swan?s story, from his days as a world-famous dancer and artist, through his film career?which ran from silent pictures, including De Mille?s Ten Commandments (1923), to Warhol?s Camp, Paul Swan, and Paul Swan I-IV (1965)?to his portrait painting late in life when Nelson Rockefeller?s children, Malachy McCourt, and Pope Paul VI were among his subjects. With unprecedented access to Swan?s scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and an unpublished memoir that tells the story of a bisexual man trying to build a public life in perilous times, Janis and Richard Londraville reconstruct the intriguing life of this uniquely interesting figure, whose story, although widely glossed in the press, was until now never fully known.

Simone Weil is one of the greatest philosophical and spiritual writers of the 20th century and was hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times' This book is a classic - and controversial - for the way Weil argues that key themes that later defined Christian belief are first found in ancient Greek writers and philosophers Waiting for God, also by Weil and published in Routledge Classics in 2021, has sold almost 1,000 copies in just over a year Includes a new foreword by Christopher Hamilton