History

WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY BOOK PRIZE 2016What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression,...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BEST NON-FICTION BOOK AT THE PARLIAMENTARY BOOK AWARDS'Fresh, gripping and vivid' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Exhaustively researched and scrupulously even-handed' David Starkey 'A portrait that chills you to...

Think that Ancient Egypt is just a load of old obelisks?Don't bet your afterlife on it.Ancient Egypt should be deader than most of our yesterdays. After all it was at...

The last untold story of the First World War: the fortunes and fates of 170,000 British soldiers captured by the enemy.On capture, British officers and men were routinely told by...

Named an "Outstanding Title" in University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2009America's Railroad Age was little more than a decade old when Ralph Waldo Emerson uttered these...

On the eve of World War II, several hundred persecuted Jews, mainly from Nazi-occupied Vienna, tried to escape to Northern Ireland. They had learned of a Stormont scheme to tackle...

One morning in October 2013, nineteen-year-old Ayan Juma and her sixteen-year-old sister Leila left their family home in Oslo. Later that day they sent an email to their parents. 'Peace,...

A fascinating insight into the complexity, history and unpredictability of Iraq from Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics on the Edge and host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.'Devastating'...

Plucked from every background, and led by an N.K.V.D. Major, the new recruits who boarded a train in Moscow on 16th October 1941 to go to war had much in...

A BBC documentary series, to be shown in autumn 2001, aims to recreate everyday life for soldiers in World War I. A group of volunteers has been recruited from the...

The definitive biography of Jackie Kennedy, by Britain's best royal biographer Jackie Kennedy was a twentieth-century icon of glamour, elegance and grace. As the beautiful young wife of President John...

'A powerful, eloquent and deeply affecting book. I loved it' EDMUND DE WAAL'Tender, evocative and deeply moving' JONATHAN FREEDLAND'Profound, elegiac and fascinating . . . I zipped through it' PHILIPPE...

Their own origins myths put them at the scene of the Crucifixion, deprived of a home of their own, doomed to a life of wandering, and granted by God the...

This is a story studded with extraordinary achievements and historic moments, from the building of the pyramids and the conquest of Nubia, through Akhenaten's religious revolution, the power and beauty...

Although some aspects of pre-Roman and pre-Christian beliefs remain shrouded in mystery, the author of this comprehensive, profusely illustrated volume contends that neither the Roman invasion of Britain nor the...

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction. In 1945...

'We felt an urge to document what we had witnessed. If we who had experienced it, I reasoned, did not reveal the bitter truth, people simply would not believe the...

The disastrous retreat and near disintegration of Sir John Moore's army on the road to Corunna in 1809 is traditionally regarded as the low point in the history of the...

How did we get from the Big Bang to today's staggering complexity, in which seven billion humans are connected into networks powerful enough to transform the planet? And why, in...

'Masterfully opens up a little explored realm: how the quest for religion and spirituality drives hundreds of millions of Chinese' Pankaj Mishra'A fascinating odyssey ... a nuanced group portrait of...

For over 50 years one family dominated England's high offices of state. William and Robert Cecil, father and son, held unparalleled power as statesmen, diplomats, counsellors and spymasters throughout Elizabeth's...

The Robert Harris novel/film ENIGMA has popularised the subject of code-breaking and military intelligence as never before. Yet the ULTRA secret -- the Allied 'breaking' of the German 'Enigma' code...

Arnhem by John Nichol and Tony Rennell is an absolutely gripping narrative packed with action and heroic tales of courage.'Riveting ... reveals the ice-cool courage of British troops trapped in...

Today it is known as Istanbul, the modern city which stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. For centuries past, it was Constantinople. But before that, it was Byzantium,...

According to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, 'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad...

For more than 2,000 years utopian visionaries have sought to create a blueprint of the ideal society: from Plato to HG Wells, from Cloud cuckoo land to Shangri-La, the utopian...

The inside story of the world's most notorious cults.The strange and sinister world of cults is a source of endless fascination. Their secrets, rituals and shadowy hierarchies make for some...

From its earliest origins to the present day, this award-winning, beautifully written book describes the endlessly changing character of Britain's countryside.'A classic' Richard MabeyExploring the natural and man-made features of...

A stonemason's story of the building of Britain: part archaeological history, part deeply personal insight into an ancient craft. In his thirty-year career, stonemason Andrew Ziminski has worked on many...

'Blistering' Sunday Times'Indispensable' Observer'Fascinating' The Times'Brilliant' Peter Frankopan'Revelatory' Lindsey HilsumA timely and unprecedented examination of how the modern Middle East unravelled, and why it started with the pivotal year of...

This book is a professional military-intelligence officer's and a controversial insider's view of some of the greatest intelligence blunders of recent history. It includes the serious developments in government misuse...

The romanticised American gangster of the Prohibition era has proved an enduringly popular figure. Even today, names like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano still resonate. Robb explores the histories of...

OFFICIAL TIE-IN TO THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE 12 STRONG, STARRING CHRIS HEMSWORTH'Spellbinding true-life story . . . Reminiscent of Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down' USA Today 12 Strong is the...

LIONEL 'BUSTER' CRABB was a drinker, a gambler, a womaniser and a lover of fast cars and gadgets. On top of all that, he was a spy, an acquaintance of...

In 1994, Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in Northern...

'A riveting and illuminating tour of how nations deal with crises - which might hopefully help humanity as a whole deal with our present global crisis' YUVAL NOAH HARARI, author...

As present-day political and military hostilities between Russia and the West threaten to escalate, The Cold War looks back at a global drama that positioned the world on the brink...

Tutankhamun puts the boy king's short life into context by describing and explaining the complexities of life in Ancient Egypt. Covering the work of earlier Egyptologists, it details the actual...

Alex Perry's lyrical exploration of the new Africa came about after a spell in jail, visits to numerous wars and, eventually, his resignation as a news correspondent. But this is...

'A compelling tale... a narrative that makes such a brave effort to see history as it evolves and not as it becomes.' SPECTATORSuffused with the tense atmosphere of the times,...