Secondhand History Books

The Secret Annexe brings together (in their own words) the stories of the men and women who have endured wartime life. By turns horrific and comic, the entries retain the...

A biography of the poet and libertine the Earl of Rochester.Of the glittering, licentious court around King Charles II, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was the most notorious....

Many chaplains were not permitted to go near the Front in the First World War - others insisted on doing so, like Kenneth Best in the Gallipoli Campaign. Best had...

Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was the archbishop of Canterbury who guided England through the early Reformation--and Henry VIII through the minefields of divorce....

Imagine you woke up one morning to find everything created by engineers had disappeared. What would you see?No cars, no houses; no phones, bridges or roads. No tunnels under tidal...

The human head is exceptional. It accommodates four of our five senses, encases the brain, and boasts the most expressive set of muscles in the body. It is our most...

'The pampered, petulant, self-pitying Prince. A devastating book by Britain's top investigative author' Daily Mail 'Explosive new book delves inside the bizarre, ultra luxury world of Prince Charles' The Sun...

Royal Tudor blood ran in her veins. Her mother was a queen, her father an earl, and she herself was the granddaughter, niece, cousin and grandmother of monarchs. Some thought...

The richly varied lives of the Martin brothers reflected the many upheavals of Britain in the age of Industrial Revolution. Low-born and largely unschooled, they were part of a new...

When John Napier published his invention of logarithms in 1614 he was announcing one of the greatest advances in the history of mathematics, and log tables were used universally until...

This book is about history and morality in the twentieth century. It is about the psychology which made possible Hiroshima, the Nazi genocide, the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol...

`Just you think,' wrote one soldier to his family, `that while you were eating your turkey I was out talking with the very men I had been trying to kill...

An incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.Horace Greasley escaped over 200 times from a notorious German prison camp to see the...

Prisoners of Geography meets Bill Bryson: a funny, fascinating, beautifully illustrated - and timely - history of countries that, for myriad and often ludicrous reasons, no longer exist. 'Countries are...

A harrowing true story of the modern Ku Klux Klan and an act of grace that shook a community in the Deep South.The true events that inspired the film, with...

A gripping and shocking insight into the lives of Russia's most famous oligarchs from New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down the House. Once Upon...

The year was 1935: the twilight of the English aristocracy. It was a time of wealth and glamour; of lavish balls and evening gowns; of tiaras and a Coronation. As...

The story of the three Jerome sisters is one of love, glamour and money in equal measure. Their father, Leonard, was a profligate New York stockbroker whose beautiful wife, Clara...

A riveting double biography of Nazi Germany's most highly decorated women test pilots - Hitler's personal Valkyries.Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were talented, courageous and strikingly attractive women who...

Sir John Ure's collection provides an account of diplomatic life as seen by the diplomats themselves. Included are coups and disasters, gaffes of protocol and great moments of history -...

Catherine Merridale's book is the first to put the experience of the ordinary Russian soldier at the heart of a narrative of the war on the Eastern Front, displacing the...

One of the world's leading historians of Renaissance Italy brings to life here the vibrant - and violent - society of fifteenth-century Florence. His disturbing narrative opens up an entire...

The flowering of civilization, the rebirth of classical scholarship and the serendipitous coming together of some of the greatest artists the world has ever known: this is the traditional view...

The first ever officially sanctioned history of the SAS in World War IIA riveting history book that reads like a novel, STIRLING'S MEN investigates the story of the SAS from...

Jeremy Paxman's magnificent history of the First World War tells the entire story of the war in one gripping narrative from the point of view of the British people.'If there...

The Geographical Tradition presents the history of an essentially contested tradition. By examining a series of key episodes in geography's history since 1400, Livingstone argues that the messy contingencies of...

In January 2007, the young and optimistic soldiers of the 2-16, the American infantry battalion known as the Rangers, were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. Their job...

With The Warrior's Honor and Virtual War, Blood & Belonging forms part of the acclaimed trilogy by Michael Ignatieff on the face of modern conflict.In 1993 Michael Ignatieff set out...

For more than 70 years until his death on 9 April 2021, Prince Philip was the Queen's constant companion and support, but his vital role in the monarchy too often...

When the world's press published photographs of the Duchess of York in various compromising poses with her "financial adviser", John Bryan, her royal career was allegedly finished. But the affair...

In 1812 Napoleon's magnificent army invaded Russia. Among the half a million men who crossed the border was Albrecht Adam, a former baker, a soldier and, most importantly for us,...