History

James, Duke of Monmouth, the adored illegitimate son of Charles II, was born in exile the year his grandfather was executed and the English monarchy abolished. Abducted from his mother...

A sparkling history of Italy from the post-war to the present by renowned historian John FootItaly emerged from the Second World War in ruins. Divided, invaded and economically broken, it...

Storiesof individual pirates in the Caribbean, from Blackbeard to Calico Jack, havebeen the stuff of legend since the eighteenth century, but in Spanish Goldpirate expert David Cordingly at last gives...

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, he intended to capture Leningrad before turning on Moscow. Soviet resistance forced him to change tactics: with his forward troops only...

In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops...

Born into a working-class family in London in 1919, Victor Gregg enlisted in the Rifle Brigade at nineteen, was sent to the Middle East and saw action in Palestine. Following...

Elizabeth I acceded to the throne in 1558, restoring the Protestant faith to England. At the heart of the new queen's court lay Elizabeth's bedchamber, closely guarded by the favoured...

It is often assumed that the national identity must be a matter of values and ideas. But in Robert Winder's brilliantly-written account it is a land built on a lucky...

In March of 1933, a disused factory surrounded by barbed wire held 223 prisoners in the town of Dachau. By the end of 1945, the SS concentration camp system had...

A brilliantly original history of the First World War, re-tracing the footsteps of the Indian Army's 1.5 million men who in 1914-18 served about the globe from Europe to Africa,...

In Forty Autumns, Nina Willner recounts the history of three generations of her family - mothers, sisters, daughters and cousins - separated by forty years of Soviet rule, and reunited...

Wentworth is in Yorkshire and was surrounded by seventy collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain and belonged to the...

On which day was history's shortest war waged and won (in roughly 40 minutes)? How was Napoleon bested by a group of rabbits in 1807? Why did a dispute about...

- the expedition had been trapped for months in the ice, watched their ship being slowly crushed, walked in appalling conditions to the edge of the ice sheet and in...

The Irish famine that began in 1845 was one of the nineteenth century's greatest disasters. By its end, the island's population of eight million had shrunk by a third through...

'Excellent, their advice is sound . . . liberal parents, in particular, should read it' Financial TimesThe New York Times bestsellerFinancial Times, TLS, Evening Standard, New Statesman books of the...

Ravensbruck Concentration Camp is the worst atrocity ever committed solely against women, but today the name of the camp is barely known. From Ravensbruck's earliest days, when Himmler offered his...

In the summer of 2006, Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve and occupy a police compound in the town of Now Zad in Helmand. He was told to...

The Riviera Set is the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped and politicked at the Chateau de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of forty years...

To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces...

Born at the turn of the 20th century and raised in Vienna, Eric Hobsbawm, who was to become one of the most brilliant and original historians of our age, was...

The Battle of Culloden has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the...

Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women looking...

The First World War was too big to be grasped by its participants. In the retelling of their war in the competing memories of leaders and commanders, and the anguished...

During the darkest days of the Second World War, the Allies listened intently to the messages of the enemy. Every whisper built a picture of the threat to come -...

London, Paris and New York in the eighteenth century, as today, were places where political authority, commerce and money, art and intellectual life intersected. They straddled an Atlantic world where...

As a 19-year old Black Watch conscript Tom Renouf's war began with some of the most vicious fighting of the conflict - against Himmler's fanatical 'Hitler Youth' SS Division. It...

The seventies encompass strikes that brought down governments, shock general election results, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Edward Heath, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent...

Your Country Needs You! Edward the Abdicator and Peace for our Time - the latest volume of GREAT TALES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY enters the twentieth century with a flourish. Starting...

'Excellent.' Evening Standard'Unforgettable.' Observer'Magnificent.' Daily TelegraphA twist of fate meant Nicholas Rankin spent his childhood in colonial Kenya, a white boy growing up in black Africa as British rule was...

Freedom of expression, a fundamental right in any democracy, has often been denied to Americans whose beliefs challenge the status quo. "We Will Be Heard" features over 90 stirring portraits...

More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and...

'Deus Vult' - or 'God wills it' - were the words allegedly uttered by the crowd of people present when Pope Urban II's rousing speech caused the start of the...

Britain's defeat of Napoleon is one the great accomplishments in our history. And yet it was by no means certain that Britain itself would survive the revolutionary fervour of the...

Vera Brittain and the First World War tells the remarkable story of the author behind Testament of Youth whilst charting the book's ascent to become one of the most loved...

The Jewish people of Prague are under threat. So the Rabbi creates a golem - a giant clay man - to defend them. But the creature rampages out of control...

Here is an incomparably rich portrait of France in the years when the disparate elements that made up the fragmented kingdom of the ancien regime were forged into the modern...

'To the barricades!' - The cry conjures images of angry citizens, turmoil in the streets, and skirmishes fought behind hastily improvised cover. This definitive history of the barricade charts the...

'A learned, wise, wonderfully written single volume history of a civilisation that I knew I should know more about' Tom Holland 'Masterful and engrossing...well-paced, eminently readable and well-timed. A must-read...

"Henry VIII" focuses on the fluctuating, often fraught relationship between the king and his court, his Church and his people - and with the other powers of continental Europe, relations...

Why do we represent journeys as lines on maps? Maps do not show the world as it really is - they show us how the mapmakers see it, and they...