History

Klop Ustinov was Britain's most ingenious secret agent, but he wasn't authorised to kill. Instead, he was authorised to tell tall tales, bemusing and beguiling his enemies into revealing their...

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...

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...

The true story behind the events depicted in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Bridge of Spies.On 10 February 1962, Gary Powers, the American pilot whose U2 spy plane was shot down in...

America's Secret MiG Squadrons is the story of a group of incredibly brave military pioneers who put their lives on the line to establish a training program that would prepare...

Ever since it was created in 1947, the CIA has been anxious about people wanting to tell its stories. Indeed, its effectiveness as an intelligence service hinges to a large...

Lady Constance Lytton (1869-1923) was the most unlikely of suffragettes. One of the elite, she was the daughter of a Viceroy of India and a lady in waiting to the...

We of this age behold with amazement the sweep and range of the great Victorians. - Morning Post, May 1921 Ever since the publication of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians in...

An elite battalion under Louis XVI, the 9th Light Infantry regiment were with Napoleon from almost the beginning, turning the field at Marengo and breaking the Austrians. They then spent...

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...

Hell Above Earth tells the unforgettable story of two World War Two American bomber pilots who forged an unexpected but enduring bond in the flak-filled skies over Nazi Germany. But...

Edith Cavell was born in 1865, daughter of a Norfolk vicar, and shot in Brussels on 12 October 1915 by the Germans for sheltering British and French soldiers and helping...

This follow-up to Tonight We Die As Men continues the story of the 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division as they dropped into Holland as part of...

On December 7, 1941, as the Japanese dived out of the clouds above Pearl Harbor, America's future was fundamentally altered. Ever since the first world conflict, the United States had...

His life is a remarkable story of perseverance, tragedy and triumph. From an insecure young man with a considerable stutter who grew up in a small town in eastern Maine,...

Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) are the backbone of the US Marine Corps. They execute orders and lead their fellow Marines into battle. NCOs are an important part of America's military heritage...

As the bombs began to fall in September 1940, as homes were flattened and people emerged from cramped shelters and sleepless nights into barely recognisable streets, something very British happened...

We have all heard about the great generals of military history, and those whose heroic deeds changed the course of war. This is not their book. Instead, this offbeat and...

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...

His grandfather was the bloodthirsty Mongol leader Genghis Khan, his mother a Christian princess. Groomed from childhood for a position of authority, Khubilai snatched the position of Great Khan, becoming...

This book brings an era to life with vivid stories and information from those who were there. During World War Two, 90% of the British population remained civilians. The War...

Special Forces Commander is the remarkable story of Peter Wand-Tetley's wartime service in the Army Commandos, the Long Range Desert Group, SAS, SOE and Parachute Regiment.Having initially joined the Wiltshire...

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...

Gunther Pluschow of the German Imperial Navy holds a unique place in history - during the First World War he was the only German prisoner of war ever to escape...

'Writing about Queen Victoria has been one of the most joyous experiences of my life. I have read thousands (literally) of letters never before published, and grown used to her...

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...

From calls to arms to demands for peace, and from cries of freedom to words of inspiration, this stirring anthology captures the voices of prophets and politicians, rebels and tyrants,...

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...

'One of the primary texts on Waterloo. It deserves to be on the bookshelf of any student of the campaign'. Journal of The Royal United Services Institution Charles Chesney's Waterloo...

In the early modern world three dominant cultures of war were shaped by a synergy of their internal and external interactions. One was Latin Christian western Europe. Another was Ottoman...

'A highly recommended work.' Military Illustrated 'As compelling and absorbing an account of the fighting that I have ever read.' The Journal of The Royal Artillery This spirited history of...

For all the romantic mythology surrounding the court of Queen Elizabeth I, the financial underpinning of the reign of 'Gloriana' was decidedly sordid. Elizabeth's policy of seizing foreign assets made...

From the early nineteenth century onwards, millions of people left their homes to cross the seas. Some, like the convicts transported from England to Australia, had no choice; others like...

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...

As the Red Army advanced across Poland in 1945, thousands of freed Allied POWs - viewed by the Soviets as cowards or potential spies - were abandoned to wander the...

A unique glimpse of the deadliest profession of the Second World War.In June 1941, Flight Sergeant Leslie Mann, a tail gunner in a British bomber, was shot down over Du?sseldorf...

A masterly and concise reinterpretation of one of the seminal events in modern history, by one of the world's foremost military historians. The battle on Sunday 18th June 1815, near...

This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized...

Wounded traces the journey made by a casualty from the battlefield to a hospital in Britain. It is a story told through the testimony of those who cared for him...

Not so long ago, our roads, buildings, gravestones and monuments were built from local rock, our cities were powered by coal from Welsh mines, and our lamps were lit with...

On the 2nd of August 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town. He has survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and the harrowing slave camps...

Epicentre of the Revolution of 1789, erstwhile bastion of the skilled working-class and centre of radical agitation, along with Pigalle and Montmartre a focus for popular and raffish night-life in...

The Sunday Times Top 10 BestsellerShortlisted for a British Book Industry Book of the Year Award 2016Ancient Rome matters.Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which...

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...