History

From the Mongol Invasion of Persia, through the Siege of Leningrad, to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, in this brilliantly vivid, entertaining book, Derek Wilson picks the ten very worst...

In 1940, the defence of Great Britain rested with a handful of volunteer aircrew, Churchills few. Overshadowed in later folklore by the more famous Spitfire and Hurricane pilots, there were...

When Henry VII seized the throne after the Battle of Bosworth, his crown was far from secure. Yet for more than a hundred years his descendents ruled in England, surviving...

11:15 am, 3 September 1939. The nation gathers around their radios to hear Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain make the announcement they have feared for months: Britain is at war with...

On 6 June 1944, HMS Belfast supported troops in action on the beaches of Normandy in the campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany. HMS Belfast at D-Day recounts this...

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...

As part of the infamous Double Cross operation, Jewish double agent Renato Levi proved to be one of the Allies' most devastating weapons in World War Two. ln 1941, with...

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...

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...

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy knew it would need vital information from the Pacific. After a meeting and a handshake agreement with Chiang Kai-shek, the Sino-American...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In 1485 the Battle of Bosworth marked an epoch in the lives of two great houses: the house of York fell to the ground when Richard III died on the...

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...

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...

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...

Erich von Manstein was one of the most successful German commanders of World War II. His military mind proved outstanding in many a conflict but perhaps his greatest triumph was...

Henry VIII changed the course of English life more completely than any monarch since the Conquest. In the portraits of Holbein, Henry Tudor stands proud as one of the most...

When we think of France we often evoke images of fine food and wine, the elegant boulevards of Paris, the chic beaches of St Tropez. Yet, as the largest country...

The history of the Freemasons has often been shrouded in mystery and suspicion. Since 1717, with the establishment of the Grand Lodge in London, the Freemasons have been a power...

For over 150 years, from 1314 to 1485, England fought an almost continuous war with its neighbours: the Campaign of the North when the armies of Robert the Bruce were...

The United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, most commonly known as MI5, was founded in 1909 by Sir Vernon Kell KBE. Kell ('K' within the agency) not only founded...

The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the First World War. For years the myriad factors contributing to the loss...

In selecting my adventurers, I have had to find limits. The first has been to confine my selection to men and women who are (at least loosely) British and, even...

Conspiracies are everywhere. They are the lifeblood of politics, business and our daily lives. This truly international and all-embracing encyclopedia explains the details of the world's major popular conspiracies, listing...

Africa. The cradle of civilisation. From the dawn of human time in prehistoric Africa right through to the so-called 'Arab Spring' of 2011, Gordon Kerr offers a comprehensive introduction to...

This introduction to the years of the Napoleonic wars (1793 to 1815) tells the story of one of the keys to that great conflict, the Ship of the Line -...

This is a sparkling portrait of Naples, and the definitive companion for anyone seeking to delve beneath its surface.Naples is an Italian city like no other. Drama and darkness are...

Contains more than 30 tales of Norse mythology.

'You couldn't make these stories up: yet they're true, and Lewis does the memory of these extraordinary men full justice in a tale that is both heart-stopping and moving' Evening...

Una Kroll was eleven when she first met her father. They stopped for lunch on the way from Brighton to London and he took her outside to play with the...

Parkinson's disease is one of the most common forms of dementia, with 10,000 new cases each year in the UK alone, and yet few know anything about the man the...

Journeying along London's waterways on a canal boat called Pike, Helen Babbs puts down roots for two weeks at a time before moving on. From Walthamstow Marsh in the east...

July 1945. Eighteen young British, Australian and New Zealand special forces from a top-secret underwater warfare unit prepare to undertake three audacious missions against the Japanese.Using XE-craft midget submarines, the...

'Padre McShane says the reason I was not given a Brigade was for being so outspoken at Loos. He said that if that were so, I wear the invisible cross...

Edith Cavell was born on 4th December 1865, daughter of the vicar of Swardeston in Norfolk, and shot in Brussels on 12th October 1915 by the Germans for sheltering British...

During the Second World War, 156 RAF men successfully escaped from German PoW camps in Western Europe. A further 1,975 men evaded capture after having been shot down over this...

Despatches in this volume include the Despatch on air operations by the Allied Expeditionary Air Force in North West Europe between November 1943 and September 1944, the despatch on the...