History

'Lovely... delivers the warmest of glows' - Telegraph'Who wouldn't love this chocolate-box delight of insights and snapshots of The Queen...A treasure chest' - Good HousekeepingA sparkling celebration of our much-loved...

At the beginning of each decade for 200 years the national census has presented a self-portrait of the British Isles.The census has surveyed Britain from the Napoleonic wars to the...

'The extraordinary story of one of the most audacious escape attempts of the Second World War' Dan SnowIn Northern Poland in 1940, at the Nazi war camp Stalag XX-A, two...

Bletchley Park was where one of the war's most famous - and crucial - achievements was made: the cracking of Germany's "Enigma" code in which its most important military communications...

One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in train a course...

People, not abstract ideas, make history, and nowhere is this more revealed than in A. N. Wilson's superb portrait of the Victorians, in which hundreds of different lives have been...

Europe is, in world terms, a relatively minor peninsula attached to the Eurasian land mass, yet it became one of the most innovative regions on the planet, bearing restless adventurers...

A SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY EDITION TO COMMEMORATE 80 YEARS SINCE THE EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS OF 1943Sophie Scholl and the White Rose tells the gripping true story of five Munich university students who...

This book contains over 50 momentous and thought-provoking speeches from a wide range of historical eras and nations. "Speeches That Changed The World" includes biographies of each speaker, the history...

A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched documentary traces and biographical fragments, 1913 is an intimate cultural portrait of a world that is about to change forever.The stuffy...

The Battle of Britain, 1940, was one of the most famous air battles in the history of warfare and it is a story of ruthless organisation, brilliant control and command....

Imagine spending thirteen years fighting and travelling in disguise in the deserts of Inner Asia, then another thirteen years as an officer in the Sikh army. Suppose, too, that while...

From the Mongol Invasion of Persia, through the Siege of Leningrad, to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, in this brilliantly vivid, entertaining book, Derek Wilson picks the ten very worst...

In 1940, the defence of Great Britain rested with a handful of volunteer aircrew, Churchills few. Overshadowed in later folklore by the more famous Spitfire and Hurricane pilots, there were...

When Henry VII seized the throne after the Battle of Bosworth, his crown was far from secure. Yet for more than a hundred years his descendents ruled in England, surviving...

11:15 am, 3 September 1939. The nation gathers around their radios to hear Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain make the announcement they have feared for months: Britain is at war with...

On 6 June 1944, HMS Belfast supported troops in action on the beaches of Normandy in the campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany. HMS Belfast at D-Day recounts this...

In this new and forward-looking edition of Fighting with Allies, former British Ambassador to the US Robin Renwick describes the roller-coaster history of the 'special relationship' between Britain and the...

As part of the infamous Double Cross operation, Jewish double agent Renato Levi proved to be one of the Allies' most devastating weapons in World War Two. ln 1941, with...

One of our finest contemporary historians and a hugely respected academic and author, Peter Hennessy has a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw on and uses it to illuminate...

Strong men were the pop stars of their day, topping the bill before packed houses with their bizarre and often dangerous stunts. Their photographs sold in the millions and the...

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy knew it would need vital information from the Pacific. After a meeting and a handshake agreement with Chiang Kai-shek, the Sino-American...

In September 1939, the tanks of Panzer-Regiment 5 swept into Poland, a devastating part of the German blitzkrieg that opened World War II with a terrifying display of military force....

Books on the history of fortifications are plentiful. Medieval castles, the defensive systems of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the trenches and bunkers of the First World War, the...

The assassination of political, religious and military leaders, often dictators, is frequently seen as the short cut to solving a particular problem. The author takes issue with this argument. Examining...

The story of two men destined to face each other on the battlefields of Normandy is told in this programme. Michael Wittmann was a knight of the Nazi empire, a...

T. E. Lawrence was one of the most charismatic characters of the First World War; a young archaeologist who fought with the Arabs and wrote an epic and very personal...

T. E. Lawrence was one of the most charismatic characters of the First World War; a young archaeologist who fought with the Arabs and wrote an epic and very personal...

In 1485 the Battle of Bosworth marked an epoch in the lives of two great houses: the house of York fell to the ground when Richard III died on the...

The year 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the onset of the worst carnage to blight Europe since the reign of the Third Reich - the Bosnian War. A hurricane...

In the late 1640s, Andrea Stuart's earliest known maternal ancestor set sail from England, lured by the promise of the New World, to settle in Barbados where he fell by...

Erich von Manstein was one of the most successful German commanders of World War II. His military mind proved outstanding in many a conflict but perhaps his greatest triumph was...

Henry VIII changed the course of English life more completely than any monarch since the Conquest. In the portraits of Holbein, Henry Tudor stands proud as one of the most...

When we think of France we often evoke images of fine food and wine, the elegant boulevards of Paris, the chic beaches of St Tropez. Yet, as the largest country...

The history of the Freemasons has often been shrouded in mystery and suspicion. Since 1717, with the establishment of the Grand Lodge in London, the Freemasons have been a power...

For over 150 years, from 1314 to 1485, England fought an almost continuous war with its neighbours: the Campaign of the North when the armies of Robert the Bruce were...

The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the First World War. For years the myriad factors contributing to the loss...

In selecting my adventurers, I have had to find limits. The first has been to confine my selection to men and women who are (at least loosely) British and, even...

Conspiracies are everywhere. They are the lifeblood of politics, business and our daily lives. This truly international and all-embracing encyclopedia explains the details of the world's major popular conspiracies, listing...

Africa. The cradle of civilisation. From the dawn of human time in prehistoric Africa right through to the so-called 'Arab Spring' of 2011, Gordon Kerr offers a comprehensive introduction to...

This introduction to the years of the Napoleonic wars (1793 to 1815) tells the story of one of the keys to that great conflict, the Ship of the Line -...

This is a sparkling portrait of Naples, and the definitive companion for anyone seeking to delve beneath its surface.Naples is an Italian city like no other. Drama and darkness are...

Contains more than 30 tales of Norse mythology.

'You couldn't make these stories up: yet they're true, and Lewis does the memory of these extraordinary men full justice in a tale that is both heart-stopping and moving' Evening...