History

*A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK and GUARDIAN BEST PAPERBACK OF APRIL 2024*The first book to tell the story of day-to-day life on the nuclear home front -...

The Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), also known as the Algerian Revolution, was a messy and vicious conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front. Waged primarily in Algeria,...

A New York Times Notable Book Best Books of 2021: TIME, Smithsonian New York Times Book Review * Editors' Choice A radical reckoning with the racial inequality of America's past...

A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year'One of the most important books to be written about the Tudors in a generation.' Tracy BormanIn this groundbreaking history, Sarah Gristwood reveals...

War, revolution, treason and love - the thrilling tale of Sir John of Gaunt brought to life by medieval history's rising star.'The Red Prince announces Helen Carr as one of...

A History Book of the Year in The Times 'Cozzens is a master storyteller; his books weave a wealth of intricate detail into gripping historical narrative.' The Times'Marvellous... One of...

In 1920 an Arab revolt came perilously close to inflicting a shattering defeat upon the British Empire's forces occupying Iraq after the Great War. A huge peasant army besieged British...

The courageous pilots of the Royal Air Force who faced the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, affectionately known as 'the Few', are rightly hailed as heroes. Recently, efforts have...

It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have...

Captain Charles Johnson's celebrated A General History of the Pirates (1724) is the most famous book about pirates ever written. Buoyed by the volume's runaway success Johnson followed up with...

'Thrilling ... High-definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched' SUNDAY TIMES 'This book is a triumph' DAN SNOW 9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR....

'One of our very best writers on France.' Antony BeevorAfter publishing an acclaimed biography of Jean Moulin, leader of the French Resistance, Patrick Marnham received an anonymous letter from a...

The new Cabinet in January 1924 consisted, as governments had for generations, of twenty white, middle-aged men. But that is where the similarities with previous governments ended, for the election...

The International Bestseller The inspiration for Impeachment: American Crime Story The definitive account of the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandals, A Vast Conspiracy casts an insightful eye over the extraordinary ordeal that...

The Roman Baths at Bath is the best-preserved ancient baths and temple complex in northern Europe. It is here, at the heart of the World Heritage Site of Bath, that...

A bestseller in hardback, this is a highly-praised and much-needed biography of the first Duke of Wellington, concentrating on the personal life of the victor of Waterloo, and based on...

Health, disease and society in Europe 1500-1800 considers how the body was viewed by the medical profession from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, and challenges established ideas in the field...

How 19th-century soldier, adventurer and scholar Henry Rawlinson deciphered cuneiform, the world's earliest writing, and rediscovered Iraq's ancient civilisations. This is the exciting, true adventure story of Henry Rawlinson, a...

Not since the Roman Empire has any nation had as much economic, cultural, and military power as the United States does today. Yet, as has become all too evident through...

The devastating September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left us stunned, angry, and uncomprehending. As it became clear that these horrifying acts had been committed...

Nathan Haselbauer, President of the International High IQ Society, has painstakingly researched and designed this impressively varied collection of over 500 mind-bending puzzles to enable you to determine just how...

A grand and fascinating figure in Victorian politics, the charismatic Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) served as foreign secretary for fifteen years and prime minister for nine, engaged in struggles with everyone...

The end of the First World War saw Britain at the height of its power. Its fleet and air force were the largest in the world. Its armies had triumphed...

From an acclaimed British author, a sharply focused, riveting account - told from inside the White House - of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed,...

In the West's collective imagination, Vladimir Putin is a devious cartoon villain, constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe. But how did an undistinguished mid-level KGB...

'Powerful and poetic ... For anyone interested in the myth of Che Guevara ... this book is essential reading' Colm Toibin, Observer'We were an army of shadows, of ghosts, walking...

At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million...

From the bestselling author Simon Winchester, a human history of land around the world: who mapped it, owned it, stole it, cared for it, fought for it and gave it...

A brilliant history of the rise to dominance of the West, exploring the links between cultural values and military success. Instead of weighing up the West through its cultural and...

Situated off Ireland's southwest coast, inhospitable and uninhabited today, the Great Skellig or Skellig Michael fascinates all who visit it, and recently served as the magnificent backdrop for the final...

Many books have been written, and continue to be written, about the Second World War: military histories, histories of the Holocaust, the war in Asia, or collaboration and resistance in...

Britain in the nineteenth century saw a series of technological and social changes which continue to influence and direct us today. Its reactants were human genius, money and influence, its...

With a cast of swaggering swashbuckling characters, The Struggle for Sea Power charts the greatest war in the age of sail.In 1775 thirteen isolated colonies, without a navy or an...

The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause...

'Israel, six decades after its founding, remains a nation in thrall to an original martial impulse.' Born of idealism, under David Ben Gurion and his proteges, Dayan, Sharon and Peres,...

Engines of War tells the dramatic story of how the railways revolutionized the nature of warfare, ushering in an age of industrialized conflict in which wars were fought on a...

The birth of the railways and their rapid spread across the world triggered economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Tasmania to Turin,...

In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of ancient Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements around 5400 BC, to the eclipse of Babylon by the Persians in the sixth century BC....

The extraordinary and essential story of how China became the powerful country it is today.Even at the high noon of Europe's empires China managed to be one of the handful...

Europe in 1945 was prostrate. Much of the continent was devastated by war, mass slaughter, bombing and chaos. Large areas of Eastern Europe were falling under Soviet control, exchanging one...