Fascinating details from the lives of the great and the good, famous and infamous and infamous - their innermost thoughts revealed and preserved on paper.The Mammoth Book of Private Lives contains more than three hundred unforgettable missives from classical antiquity to the present day. All human life is recorded here, from Cicero's sigh of relief that dinner with Caesar passed off without mishap, to Elvis Presley offering his services to President Nixon as an FBI agent, and everything else in between. Here we have letters about love and life, triumph and disaster, artistic endeavour and spiritual awakening, bizarre requests and above all, gossip and scandal from the people who made history.

Nelson, Napoleon,Lincoln, raleigh, Cromwell. Pepys