history

Christina Lamb's The Africa House is the bestselling account of an English gentleman and his African dream. In the last decades of the British Empire, Stewart Gore-Brown build himself a...

Spanning cultures across the 20th century, this volume explores how marriage, especially in the West, was disestablished as the primary institution organizing social life. In the developing world, the economic,...

The Enlightenment was a time of monetary turmoil and transformation in Europe. Change began with a riot of experimentation, including novel ideas about human agency and capacity to promote economic...

Contrary to popular belief, fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the world was round. The idea of the world as a sphere...

In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in South Kensington. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising, but...

A compelling new biography of the legendary mistress of King Louis XV of France with dramatic insights into the life of one of the most enchanting, powerful and feared women...

When separate worlds collide..."I was 19 years old when I came face to face with Nelson Mandela. He was 60. Until that day I had never heard of him, or...

_________________'Something close to divine inspiration' - The TimesWhen Christopher Somerville, author of the The January Man ('a truly wonderful, uplifting book, bursting with life' - Nicholas Crane), set out to...

"How could I allow my soldiers to sail on this disloyal and cruel sea?" These words, attributed to the most powerful caliph of medieval Islam, Umar Ibn al-Khattab (634-644), have...

Theodosius II (AD 408-450) was the longest reigning Roman emperor. Ever since Edward Gibbon, he has been dismissed as mediocre and ineffectual. Yet Theodosius ruled an empire which retained its...

In 1992, MI6 exfiltrated Vasili Mitrokhin, the most senior activist in the KGB, who had been responsible for running the KGB archives. He had noted thousands of documents, described by...

The second sensational volume of 'One of the biggest intelligence coups in recent years' (The Times)When Vasili Mitrokhin revealed his archive of Russian intelligence material to the world it caused...

'One of the biggest intelligence coups in recent years' The TimesFor years KGB operative Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life hiding top-secret material from Russian secret service archives beneath his family...

'The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled ... unrivalled' Max Hastings, Sunday Times'Captivating, insightful and masterly' Edward Lucas, The TimesThe history of espionage is far older than any of today's...

The vast crescent of British-ruled territories from India down to Singapore appeared in the early stages of the Second World War a massive asset in the war with Germany, providing...

This extraordinary book is a vivid, highly original account of the creation of a new Asia after the Second World War - an unstoppable wave of nationalism that swept the...

An acclaimed expert on violence and seasoned peacebuilder explains the five reasons why conflict (rarely) blooms into war, and how to interrupt that deadly process. It's easy to overlook the...

This wide-ranging introduction to medieval Europe has been updated and revised. In his popular survey Brooke explores the variety of human experience in the period. He looks at society, economy,...

The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed, careful, and comprehensive analysis to date of the descent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews into mass murder: the...

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 is a compelling account of a country that played a pivotal role in...

The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher ClarkFINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014SUNDAY TIMES and...

What is the meaning of love and death in a remote, forgotten, impossibly conflicted part of the world? In "Rebel Land" the acclaimed author and journalist Christopher de Bellaigue journeys...

**A SUNDAY TIMES, SPECTATOR and iNEWS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022**'Every bit as gripping as Wolf Hall' The TimesAn immersive reconstruction of the life of the most feared and powerful...

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE AND THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION'Endlessly fascinating and enjoyable' Neil MacGregor'A marvellous book' David Attenborough'Full of delights' Tom StoppardAn extraordinary exploration of the...

Russian populism, the belief that the peasantry embodied authentic Russian identity and once liberated from their poverty would lead the country to a brighter future, has animated Russian thought across...

Fat. Such a little word evokes big responses. While "fat" describes the size and shape of bodies--their appearance--our negative reactions to corpulence also depend on something tangible and tactile. As...

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S JOHN K. FAIRBANK PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 2017'This is the finest single-volume history of Vietnam in English. It challenges myths, and raises...

A unique history covering every major aspect of British life, with full coverage of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland; contributions from 60 major scholars; an 840-entry biographical Who's Who; and...

This is a fresh and surprising account of Japan's culture from the 'opening up' of the country in the mid-nineteenth century to the present.'How much I admired it, what a...

This social as well as a military history recreates the scenes of civil war in England, between 1642 and 1649, and is enlivened by character sketches not only of the...

In 1837, Victoria came to the throne at the age of 18, a pretty girl, not five feet tall, to preside over what was, perhaps, the most momentous period in...

Christopher Hibbert's acclaimed biography of Queen Victoria is as impressive and authoritative as the great woman herself. In 1837 an eighteen-year-old girl, raised by a German mother, inherited the throne...

At its height Renaissance Florence was a centre of enormous wealth, power and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by...

Waterloo was the climax of almost twenty years of war in Europe. It dramatically ended Napoleon's dream of a lasting empire. Through the skillful use of original source material, noted...

A bestseller in hardback, this is a highly-praised and much-needed biography of the first Duke of Wellington, concentrating on the personal life of the victor of Waterloo, and based on...

In this, the last book published during his lifetime, renowned historian of the English Revolution Christopher Hill uses the literary culture of the seventeenth century to explore the immense social...

The Berlin Olympic Games, more than 70 years on, remain the most controversial ever held. This book creates a vivid account of the disputes, the personalities, and the events which...

'A good liar must have a good memory: Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.' Christopher HitchensChristopher Hitchens goes straight for the jugular in The Trial of Henry...

Attila the Hun - godless barbarian and near-mythical warrior king - has become a byword for mindless ferocity. His brutal attacks smashed through the frontiers of the Roman empire in...

The Roman Empire was a remarkable achievement. It had a population of sixty million people spread across lands encircling the Mediterranean and stretching from drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked...

This book represents the most startling series of discoveries about ancient history. In their earlier work, "Civlization One", Knight and Butler presented evidence of a prehistoric measuring system that indicated...

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual...

"One of the country's greatest post-war statesmen" Sir John MajorLord Carrington was Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary when the Argentinians invaded the Falklands in 1982. Absent in Israel on the eve...

"The Swan King" is the biography of one of the most enigmatic figures of the 19th century, described by Verlaine as 'the only true king of his century'. A man...

Mirages have long astonished travellers and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Chinese and Japanese poetry and images depicted mirages as the exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources related them to the `thirst...