History

'History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.'One day in 1988, an enigmatic priest knocks on Pieter Waterdrinker's door with an unusual request: will he smuggle seven thousand bibles into the Soviet...

'Cooper is a phenomenon' Max Hastings, Sunday Times'You need to read this book' Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment**Based on the hit podcast with over 150 million streams**The world...

During the Second World War Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio.Left emotionally scarred and...

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer PrizeThe explosive, New York Times bestselling first-hand account of America's secret history in AfghanistanPrize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East,...

In the 1930s Tom Burns was a rising star of British publishing, whose friends and authors included G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, the artist Eric Gill and the...

At the end of 1918 one prescient American historian began to write a history of the Great War. "What will you call it?" he was asked. "The First World War,"...

The struggle between the fecund Stewarts and the barren Tudors is generally seen only in terms of the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. But...

JAMES PATTERSON'S NON-FICTION MASTERPIECE________________________________Kennedys were always taught to win at all costs. And they did - but the costs were unimaginable . . .Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have...

The Byzantine Empire lasted for 1123 years, a period longer than that which separates us from William the Conqueror. The third and final volume of the author's history of Byzantium,...

The history of the Normans began a long time before 1066. Originating from the 'Norsemen' they were one of the most successful warrior tribes of the Dark Ages that came...

'This is one of the most gripping accounts of an era spanning war defeat, humiliation and failed revolution in 1918 to the violence, intimidation and propaganda of the Nazis' rise...

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Winner of the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023 'Epic, moving and important' ROBERT HARRIS 'A modern classic'...

THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.The current financial crisis has only one parallel: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s, which crippled the future of an...

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...

With an extended new preface by the author.'One of the most important intellectuals alive' IndependentOne of Noam Chomsky's most important and renowed works, Fateful Triangle, is a devastating indictment of...

Dominic Sandbrook's magnificent account of the late 1970s in Britain The late 1970s were Britain's years of strife and the good life. They saw inflation, riots, the peak of trade...

In 2003, Sergeant Brian Turner was at the head of a convoy of 3,500 soldiers as they entered the Iraqi desert.Ten years later, he lies awake beside his sleeping wife,...

The Lightning Warfare that changed history foreverIf Hitler had failed in his invasion of Western Europe in 1940 he could well have been assassinated by a group of his senior...

Hailed as one of the finest books to emerge from the Vietnam War, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a fascinating insight into the lives of the soldiers...

In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American...

'Page-turning . . . a sizzling high-stakes tale' JAMES HOLLAND'This book might read like the screenplay of a gripping movie, yet every word is accurate and verified' ANDREW ROBERTS 'Giles...

The civil war that tore Spain apart between 1936 and 1939 and attracted liberals and socialists from across the world to support the cause against Franco was one of the...

'I cannot remember the last time I read a book so immediately absorbing and affecting. Michael Palin has never been better - which is, of course, saying a great deal.'...

'As page-turning as a novel' Joanna TrollopeOne summer of nearly a hundred years ago saw one of the high sunlit meadows of English history. A new king was crowned; audiences...

Moederland is a courageous and modern appraisal of what it means to be descended from the people who created the ultraracist apartheid system in South Africa. Illuminating its turbulent history...

Budapest has always been an important place. Almost at the centre of Europe, it is at the crossroads of geographical regions and of civilizations, at the intersection of ancient trade...

A Spectator Book of the Year'Sweeping . . . Poetic . . . Not only readable but also vital' Literary Review'A terrific storyteller' New York Times'Exceptional . . . tender...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2024**An instant Sunday Times bestseller, Radio 4 Book of the Week and Guardian Best Summer Read* Selected as a book to look out for...

'Sicily is the key to everything' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The author of the classic book on Venice turns his sights to Sicily in this beautiful book full of maps...

Humanity has always used symbols-material objects used to denote difficult, abstract concepts-to describe thoughts and feelings, or to protect secret truths from common knowledge. This concise A-Z guide is a...

Pharaoh.Icon.Enigma.Lost for three thousand years, misunderstood for a century.A hundred years ago, a team of archaeologists in the Valley of the Kings made a remarkable discovery: a near-complete royal burial,...

In a narrative beginning almost 1.5 million years ago with the emergence of Homo erectus, Frank Welsh takes the reader from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the Industrial...

'The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time.' John Le Carre 'Having read Dispatches, it is difficult to convey the impact of total experience...

'Fascinating, extraordinary, gripping' Jeremy PaxmanThe Storming of Berlin had been the Red Army's dream of vengeance ever since the German's invasion of Russia in the summer of 1941. Antony Beevor...

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor...

*A BBC RADIO 4 Book of the Week*'A fantastic achievement' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads'Bright, expansive, and iconoclastic, this deliciously witty book has the potential to upset the...

Discover the world's most significant events through a detailed, dynamic, book-long timeline of over 7 million years.When did Hannibal cross the Alps? What caused the War of Jenkins' Ear? Who...

Burke's seminal work was written during the early months of the French Revolution, and it predicted with uncanny accuracy many of its worst excesses, including the Reign of Terror. A...

By the time Stephen Matthews was six years old, he had been bombarded by the Luftwaffe and deported from Nazi-occupied Guernsey, along with his family, to a prison camp in...

This book is firstly a testament to those of many nationalities who found themselves imprisoned at Stalag Luft VII, Bankau (Luft 7 for short) in Upper Silesia, the Luftwaffe's last...

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...