Secondhand History Books

A long-overdue and dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians at work today. She was crowned Queen of Scotland at nine...

'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.'...

"The Sixties." The powerful images conveyed by those two words have become an enduring part of American cultural and political history. But where did Sixties radicalism come from? Who planted...

The British empire is long gone. Conventional wisdom has decreed it was A Bad Thing and that there's no more to be said. Darkest night has fallen over the empire...

'You can't really argue with much that John Simpson says - there is no foreign correspondent left on TV who has a fraction of his recognition and his credibility, a...

On 24 June 1948 the Soviet Union abruptly closed all land and water access to the Western Sectors of Berlin. Over 2 million civilians, dependent on the surrounding territory and...

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE'A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank' The...

On a midsummer day in 1937, Boris Bibikov kissed his two daughters goodbye and disappeared. One of those girls, Lyudmila, was to fall in love with a tall young foreigner...

This collection of first-hand experiences from the whole of history enables the reader to relive some of the world's greatest moments. Writers from Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch, to Tom Wolfe,...

In recent years, traditional views of a rapidly growing British economy between 1700 and 1850 have been overturned by convincing new research indicating that British economic growth was, in fact,...

'A deed of glory intimately involved in high strategy' - Winston Churchill St Nazaire, 1.34am March 28th, 1942 - the destroyer HMS Campbeltown , with her Oerlikons blazing at the...

The mountain paths are as treacherous as they are steep - the more so in the dark and in winter. Even for the fit the journey is a formidable challenge....

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER ON THE LAST DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH'Recounts, in harrowing detail and with formidable skill, the brutal death-throes of Hitler's Reich at the hands of the...

The account of the fateful bridge too far...'It was a bridge too far and perhaps the whole plan was doomed to failure from the start, but we had to try,...

The Battle of Trafalgar can claim to be one of the most known of the great human events. In Men of Honour, Adam Nicolson takes one of the greatest identifiable...

China's secret rulers are the elephant in the room. They are the largest political organisation in the world. They control every aspect of Chinese life. And no one discusses them....

The 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. Soviet soldiers had many accounts to...

The Valley of the Kings and the region of Luxor are home to some of the greatest Archaeological treasures not only in Egypt but in the whole world. This book...

In 1926, at the age of twenty, a trainee dentist called Bruno Langbehn joined the Nazi party. Growing up in a Germany that was impoverished and humiliated by the defeat...

In the history of warfare, an elite group of men have attained almost legendary status through their courage, ambition and unrivalled military genius. But many of these same men possessed...

The Europeans is a richly enthralling, panoramic cultural history of nineteenth-century Europe, told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable people: a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan...

The first state in history to be based explicitly on atheism, the Soviet Union endowed itself with the attributes of God. In this book, David Satter shows through individual stories...

From the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award John Guy, comes Thomas Becket, a lively and enlightening new study that brings a colossal figure...

"Rough Crossings" is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of...

Europe on Trial explores the history of collaboration, retribution, and resistance during World War II. These three themes are examined through the experiences of people and countries under German occupation,...

'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach...

In the early hours of New Year's Eve, 1994, Russian troops invaded the Republic of Chechnya, plunging the country into a prolonged and bloody conflict that continues to this day....

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years...

In this remarkable tale Nick Barratt delves into the shadows of the British and Soviet secret services to reveal the shocking story of his great uncle Ernest Holloway Oldham. After...

'A history of resilience ... sweeping, comprehensive ... it's a story that has been waiting to be told' Guardian'An account sorely needed ... a kaleidoscopic view of Native American history,...

Rageh Omaar reported from Iraq for six years prior to the conflict in 2003. He evaded the official minders to meet ordinary Iraqis, finding out how they lived under Saddam's...

The Pitkin Guide to Britain's Kings & Queens presents a concise, informative history, in words and pictures, of Britain's 56 sovereigns from Alfred the Great in the 9th century to...