History

As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.Shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political History Book of the Year Award 2014.In August 1814 the United States' army is defeated...

In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's...

In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's...

Few people know that Ypres, centre of First World War remembrance, was once home to a thriving British community that played a heroic role in the Second World War. This...

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a turning-point in modern history. The destruction of the Iranian monarchy not only upset the political order in the Middle East and brought on...

Vera Brittain's bestselling TESTAMENT OF YOUTH was based on her own copious diaries, which have a much greater intimacy than the account written for publication. These are those diaries. They...

From the bustling bazaars of Tabriz to the mysterious island of Caldihe, Anthony Bale brings history alive, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world.'A joyful, erudite book ....

The 1916 Rising was about much, much more than the GPO. Around the city, many volunteers and British soldiers were killed and wounded fighting in vicious urban warfare. One of...

As the Afrika Korps withdrew after a bruising defeat at El Alamein, it became apparent that Axis forces would not be able to maintain their hold over Libya. Rommel pulled...

War is the story of individuals painted into a broader tapestry of overpowering events. While examining the wider historical perspective to lay the foundation, this book relates the individual stories...

The air battles of the Second World War were fought ferociously and with extraordinary skill and courage on both fronts. The fighter pilots of the Luftwaffe, the jagdfliegern, in fact...

Anglo-German naval rivalry before 1914 had been expected to culminate in a cataclysmic fleet action in the North Sea once war was declared, a battle upon which the outcome of...

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...

Who first thought of atoms? How much can you learn about archaeology from an oil lamp? Who came up with the theory of the 'wandering womb'?Oxford Classicist Jane Hood delves...

Among the military leaders of the Second World War, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz remains a deeply enigmatic figure. As chief of the German submarine fleet he earned Allied respect as...

The outbreak of the First World War was 'a drama never surpassed'.One hundred years later, the characters still seem larger than life: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, brooding heir to the Habsburg...

When Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess set off for Britain on a peace mission in May 1941, he launched one of the great mysteries of the Second World War. Had he...

Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history's legendary names. He played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that brought down the Nazi regime. He...

In 1927, Henry Ford, the founder of the famous motor company and the richest man in the world, bought a 5,000 square mile-tract of land in the Brazilian Amazon. There...

'A compelling 'whatdunnit'' The Times'Waller's book should interest both historians and scientists, while the general reader will enjoy his colourful depictions of medieval life.' BBC Focus MagazineThis is the true...

During the First World War three quarters of a million British people died - a figure so huge that it feels impossible to give it a human context. Consequently we...

Pirates and smugglers, ghost ships and sea-serpents, fishermen's prayers and sailors' rituals - the coastline of the British Isles plays host to an astonishingly rich variety of local legends, customs,...

In Centuries of Change bestselling historian Ian Mortimer takes you on a whirlwind tour of the last ten centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly...

Forever in the shadow of the war which followed, 1913 is usually seen as little more than the antechamber to apocalypse. Our perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that...

Over the past 250 years of momentous change and dramatic upheaval, China has proved itself to be a Restless Empire.Tracing China's course from the eighteenth-century Qing Dynasty to today's People's...

*Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize**Longlisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction**A Sunday Times Book of the Year**A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year* *A Times Book of the...

In this powerful narrative, Nick Bunker tells the story of the last three years of mutual embitterment that preceded the outbreak of America's war for independence in 1775. It was...

Christopher Duggan's new history of fascist Italy explores how the movement became embodied in the person of Benito Mussolini who occupied for many an almost divine status and gave millions...

From bestselling author and British astronaut Tim Peake, an inspirational human history of space travel, from the Apollo missions to our future forays to Mars. The Right Stuff for a...

The Enlightenment was an age of endeavours. From Johnson's Dictionary to campaigns for liberty to schemes for measuring the dimensions of the solar system, Britain was consumed by the impulse...

Also published as Empty Cradles. In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by...

Shortlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown Award 2023The history of a demonic tradition that was stolen from women - and then won back again.'Remarkable work... Extraordinary, meticulous detail' Literary Review'Deftly...

'The best book in English about one of the world's most brutal and under-reported conflicts ... fascinating' Christina Lamb, Sunday TimesIn the early hours of New Year's Eve 1994, Russian...

This accessible study traces the dramatic social, cultural and political tensions in Germany since 1918. It ranges from the self-destructive Weimar Republic, through the extremes of genocide and military aggression...

SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 BY THE GUARDIAN, DAILY MAIL, SUNDAY TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE 'A gripping, complex and sensational story, told with calm...

No leader of modern times was more unique and more uniquely national than Charles de Gaulle. As founder and first President of the Fifth Republic, General de Gaulle saw himself...

'With one's face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of Firedrops'A selection from Pepys' startlingly vivid and candid diary, including his famous account of the Great...

Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages, and also one of the most controversial. Having inherited a vast feudal domain stretching from the...

From the bestselling author of Normandy '44 and Sicily '43, a brilliant new history of the last days of the war'Seldom is war so vividly described...An assault on the senses...Painful...

'An astonishing record...There is no other wartime diary that can match the scope of these diaries' James Holland'An outstanding contribution to the literature of the Second World War'Professor Gary SheffieldFrom...

Today Italy is a land of beauty and prosperity but in 1944-45 it had become a place of nightmares, a land of violence, war, and destruction. James Holland's ground-breaking account...

Examines the beginning of the Christian movement during the first centuries AD, and the explosive force of its expansion throughout the Roman world

'...a thoroughly reliable and a highly attractive volume. Meiggs is to be congratulated on his success in combining preservation and adaptation so successfully.' - Hermathena '...a major overhaul by Russell...

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...

Swansong 1945 chronicles four significant days in the last three weeks of WWII: 20 April, Hitler's last birthday; 25 April, when American and Soviet troops first met at the Elbe;...