History

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE covers the history of British expansion overseas from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Narrative and analysis are interwoven with revealing eyewitness...

Winner of the Costa Biography AwardWhat makes a Stalin? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's bandit? Was he to blame for his wife's death? When did the killing start?...

'The Lancasters looked like enormous deadly black birds going off into the night; somehow they looked different when they came back. The planes carried from this field 117,000 pounds of...

Spring 1941 was a high point for the Axis war machine. Western Europe was conquered; southeastern Europe was falling, Great Britain on its heels; and Rommel's Afrika Korps was freshly...

A WATERSTONES, TIMES, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEARThe early sixties in Britain told as only David Kynaston ('the most entertaining historian alive' Spectator)...

An epic history of how the so-called 'barbarians of the steppes' shaped the modern world. 'A rollercoaster of historical narration' History Today'This is a history of epic scope that brings...

A TLS, TIMES, PROSPECT AND WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEARA groundbreaking examination of how the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn sent shockwaves across a continent and changed England...

This is a penetrating and up-to-date account of one of the dramatic aspects of 20th-century history. Published fifty years after Stalin's death, and fully revised and expanded, this second edition...

When Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, died in December 1861 the nation was paralysed with grief. He was only forty-two and official bulletins had, until the day before he died,...

THE CLASSIC HISTORY OF BRITAIN, FULLY UPDATEDRoy Strong has written an exemplary introduction to the history of Britain, as first designated by the Romans. It is a brilliant and balanced...

This book is a pictorial record of Dr. King's leadership in the nonviolent movement for racial equality and human dignity from the boycott of segregated busing in Montgomery, Alabama, in...

'Julie Summers has an amazing instinct for unearthing good stories and telling quotes.' Craig Brown, The Mail On Sunday. 'This is an enjoyable book, peppered with examples of under-reported wartime...

Find out who lived and who died in the incredible story of the founding father who made America modern and became the toast of Broadway. This richly illustrated biography portrays...

WINNER OF THE 2016 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE The Second World War was a German war like no other. The Nazi regime, having started the conflict, turned it into the most...

Robert Service's The Penguin History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century provides a superb panorama of Russia in the modern age. Russia's recent past has encompassed revolution,...

In the days when Columbus sailed the ocean and Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, a German banker named Jacob Fugger became the richest man in history. Fugger lived in...

The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society.'A magnificent book . . . at once touching, exquisite, devastating...

Today global communism seems just a terrible historical memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in World War I. Was it only just...

The writer Felix Hartlaub died in obscurity at just 31, vanishing from Berlin in 1945. He left behind a small oeuvre of private writings from the Second World War: fragments...

'An impressive revisionist biography' The TimesLooming out of the encroaching darkness of the February evening was London Bridge, still ornamented with the severed heads of Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham;...

'Marvellously engaging' The Times'Brisk, informative and eye-opening' Daily TelegraphIn the 1600s, vast numbers of people left England for the Americas. Crossing the Atlantic was a major undertaking, the voyage long...

_____________________________________THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE JQ WINGATE PRIZE 2015SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD'A gripping thriller, an unspeakable crime, an essential history.' JOHN LE CARRE_____________________________________Hanns Alexander was the son...

This illustrated pocket encyclopedia, which includes photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries, traces the history of the Indians from the voyage across the Bering Strait from Asia to...

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were...

At the end of the First World War more than 192,000 wives had lost their husbands, and nearly 400,000 children had lost their fathers. A further half a million children...

The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future....

Situated on Lake Mlaren on one of the worlds most beautiful harbours, Stockholm has set the benchmark for civilized city-living since the time of the Vikings. Its medieval regal period...

In this exciting book Mike Spick shows how the Luftwaffe's leading fighter pilots were able to outscore their allied counterparts so effectively and completely during WWII. When the records of...

I never witnessed a more gallant charge than that made just now by your regiment." This commendation from the Duke of Wellington after the 88th Regiment cleared the heights at...

"Napoleon and Russia" tells, for the first time, the full story of Napoleon and his crucial relationship with Russia, from the 1790s and Bonaparte's rise to power, through the period...

The present world will end on 22nd December 2012, so prophesized the Maya 5000 years ago in their inscriptions deep within the Central American rainforests. Who were the Maya? Where...

What would happen if someone were charged with a modern-day quest to find the Holy Grail? What mysteries would they uncover? Where would their journey lead them, and would they...

Brief Old Testament references to a former civilisation that was destroyed by the Flood have fascinated scholars for centuries, giving rise to exotic speculations ranging from the advanced technology of...

This classic study by Norman Daniel explores the political and religious considerations behind distorted western views of Islam, examining Christian-Muslim interaction from medieval times to the modern world. First published...

Cities, scripts, literature, the rule of law - all were born in Iraq. That so many see this ancient land as nothing more than a violent backwater steeped in chaos...

In the spring and summer of 1943, five young German students and one professor at the University of Munich crossed the threshold of toleration to enter the realms of resistance,...