History

Beginning in 1946, when Victor Gregg was demobbed after the end of the Second World War and deposited in London Paddington, Soldier, Spy is the story of a soldier returning...

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach; across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. Goodwin tells the...

'Expertly researched, zestfully written, acutely intelligent in its historical judgements, this masterly biography finally does justice to a forgotten Tudor princess' John GuySometime heir to the English throne, courtier in...

'Expertly researched, zestfully written, acutely intelligent in its historical judgements, this masterly biography finally does justice to a forgotten Tudor princess' John GuySometime heir to the English throne, courtier in...

The extraordinary inside story of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in the years after 9/11. Following the attacks on the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden, the most wanted man...

Presenting more than 150 never-before-published photographs of the campaign, many taken by the soldiers themselves, together with unpublished written material from British, Anzac, French and Turkish, including eyewitness accounts of...

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother. In the late nineteenth century, Queen Victoria had over...

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother In the late nineteenth century, Queen Victoria had over...

Winner of the 2016 IACP Award: Literary Food WritingSet against the backdrop of the looming Himalayas and drenching monsoons, this is the story of how Darjeeling developed its tea industry...

As the Second World War neared its conclusion, Germany was a nation reduced to rubble: 3.6 million German homes had been destroyed leaving 7.5 million people homeless; an apocalyptic landscape...

John Fitzgerald Kennedy led the United States for barely a thousand days, and yet he is regarded as one of the great Presidents of all time for his brave decisions...

'Napoleon's legend is so persistent that it confounds the historical reality in the popular imagination. He himself contributed much towards the construction of his own myth, from his youth even...

Thomas Telford's name is familiar; his story less so. Born in 1757 in the Scottish Borders, his father died in his infancy, plunging the family into poverty. Telford's life soared...

Mecca is the heart of Islam. It is the birthplace of Muhammad, the direction towards which Muslims turn when they pray and the site of pilgrimage which annually draws some...

Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography PrizeWinner of the Eastern Eye Alchemy Festival award for LiteratureIn 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep...

The mud-filled, blood-soaked trenches of the Low Countries and North-Eastern Europe were essential battlegrounds during the First World War, but the war reached many other corners of the globe, and...

The mud-filled, blood-soaked trenches of the Low Countries and North-Eastern Europe were essential battlegrounds during the First World War, but the war reached many other corners of the globe, and...

In 1953, Winston Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In fact, Churchill was a professional writer before he was a politician, and published a stream of books and articles...

On 11 September 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile, Latin America's first democratically elected Marxist president, was deposed in a violent coup d'etat. Early that morning the phone lines to...

In 1940 a group of artists, sculptors, film makers, theatre designers and set painters came together to form the Camouflage Unit. Led by Major Geoffrey Barkas and including among their...

James, Duke of Monmouth, the adored illegitimate son of Charles II, was born in exile the year his grandfather was executed and the English monarchy abolished. Abducted from his mother...

A sparkling history of Italy from the post-war to the present by renowned historian John FootItaly emerged from the Second World War in ruins. Divided, invaded and economically broken, it...

Storiesof individual pirates in the Caribbean, from Blackbeard to Calico Jack, havebeen the stuff of legend since the eighteenth century, but in Spanish Goldpirate expert David Cordingly at last gives...

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, he intended to capture Leningrad before turning on Moscow. Soviet resistance forced him to change tactics: with his forward troops only...

In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops...

Born into a working-class family in London in 1919, Victor Gregg enlisted in the Rifle Brigade at nineteen, was sent to the Middle East and saw action in Palestine. Following...

Elizabeth I acceded to the throne in 1558, restoring the Protestant faith to England. At the heart of the new queen's court lay Elizabeth's bedchamber, closely guarded by the favoured...

It is often assumed that the national identity must be a matter of values and ideas. But in Robert Winder's brilliantly-written account it is a land built on a lucky...

In March of 1933, a disused factory surrounded by barbed wire held 223 prisoners in the town of Dachau. By the end of 1945, the SS concentration camp system had...

A brilliantly original history of the First World War, re-tracing the footsteps of the Indian Army's 1.5 million men who in 1914-18 served about the globe from Europe to Africa,...

In Forty Autumns, Nina Willner recounts the history of three generations of her family - mothers, sisters, daughters and cousins - separated by forty years of Soviet rule, and reunited...

Wentworth is in Yorkshire and was surrounded by seventy collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain and belonged to the...

On which day was history's shortest war waged and won (in roughly 40 minutes)? How was Napoleon bested by a group of rabbits in 1807? Why did a dispute about...

The Irish famine that began in 1845 was one of the nineteenth century's greatest disasters. By its end, the island's population of eight million had shrunk by a third through...

'Excellent, their advice is sound . . . liberal parents, in particular, should read it' Financial TimesThe New York Times bestsellerFinancial Times, TLS, Evening Standard, New Statesman books of the...

Ravensbruck Concentration Camp is the worst atrocity ever committed solely against women, but today the name of the camp is barely known. From Ravensbruck's earliest days, when Himmler offered his...

The Riviera Set is the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped and politicked at the Chateau de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of forty years...

To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces...

Born at the turn of the 20th century and raised in Vienna, Eric Hobsbawm, who was to become one of the most brilliant and original historians of our age, was...

The Battle of Culloden has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the...

Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women looking...

The First World War was too big to be grasped by its participants. In the retelling of their war in the competing memories of leaders and commanders, and the anguished...

During the darkest days of the Second World War, the Allies listened intently to the messages of the enemy. Every whisper built a picture of the threat to come -...

London, Paris and New York in the eighteenth century, as today, were places where political authority, commerce and money, art and intellectual life intersected. They straddled an Atlantic world where...

As a 19-year old Black Watch conscript Tom Renouf's war began with some of the most vicious fighting of the conflict - against Himmler's fanatical 'Hitler Youth' SS Division. It...

The seventies encompass strikes that brought down governments, shock general election results, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Edward Heath, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent...

Your Country Needs You! Edward the Abdicator and Peace for our Time - the latest volume of GREAT TALES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY enters the twentieth century with a flourish. Starting...