history

During the ferocious Normandy campaign of World War Two, 20-year-old Christopher Portway was taken prisoner, transported to Silesia and forced to work as a slave in a Polish coalmine. Escaping...

Ordinary Men has been admired all over the world and is now published in the UK for the first time. It takes as its basis the detailed records of one...

Step back in time to 1964, a year of cultural upheaval and political transformation. From the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the United States to the global phenomenon...

The story of how a group of warriors, driven by faith, greed and wanderlust, carved out new Christian-ruled states in the Middle East is one of the most extraordinary of...

A lively reimagining of how the distant medieval world of war functioned, drawing on the objects used and made by crusadersThroughout the Middle Ages crusading was justified by religious ideology,...

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New StatesmanThe world known as the 'Dark Ages', often seen as a time of barbarism, was...

In 1950, James Paul Donahue inherited a $15 million Woolworth's fortune and on the same day met the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. This book is the remarkable story of...

Bestselling author Christopher Winn explores Britain's royal past, unearthing a rich legacy of castles and palaces, cathedrals and country retreats, battlefields and monuments where kings and queens lived and died....

Phylloxera is an entertaining, revealing and frequently astonishing account of one of the earliest and most successful applications of science to an ecological disaster.

This is the first account of Russia's second revolution - the country's dramatic, wrenching transition from communist central planning to a market economy. Written by one of the finest writers...

Collecting the most incisive and influential writings of one of Rome's finest orators, Cicero's Selected Works is translated with an introduction by Michael Grant in Penguin Classics.Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and...

In wartime Berlin, Cioma Schonhaus discovered a way of turning his talent for graphic design to good use: he forged documents which helped save hundreds of Jewish lives. His first...

To maintain the pace at which he worked as a parliamentarian, cabinet minister, war leader, writer and painter, Churchill required a vast female staff of secretaries, typists and others. For...

To maintain the pace at which he worked as a parliamentarian, cabinet minister, war leader, writer and painter, Churchill required a vast female staff of secretaries, typists and others. For...

From the author of "The Embarrassment of Riches", this is a history of the French Revolution. At the heart of this account is the story of the transformation of "subjects"...

** A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK **'Fascinating . . . The history of the world through the eye of a needle . . . I recommend this book...

What was it like to be a dog or cat when the world was at war? When food was rationed and cities were bombed? Pets (on the whole) do not...

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK**WATERSTONES SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE MONTH**For the mothers of the disappeared in 1970s Argentina, protest was difficult. Every Thursday they marched in front...

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** **RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK** **WATERSTONES SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE MONTH**'An astonishing feat'Christina Patterson, Sunday Times'An inspiring and moving sideways look at history'Eithne Farry, Sunday Express...

'Deeply researched and written with verve... thoughtful as well as action packed' The Times'Gripping, moving and important' Simon Sebag Montefiore'Agent Zo is a triumph. Absolutely essential reading' Hallie RubenholdThis is...

'Deeply researched and written with verve... thoughtful as well as action packed' The Times'Gripping, moving and important' Simon Sebag Montefiore'Agent Zo is a triumph. Absolutely essential reading' Hallie RubenholdThis is...

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...

'Written in a lively, accessible style, The Waiting Game is full of insight' Suzannah Lipscomb, Literary ReviewEvery Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the...

This book bridges a gap between two traditional disciplines. Since the 1970s, there has been a remarkable outpouring of work on women in antiquity, but women in late antiquity (3rd-6th...

A contemporary look at Cecil Beaton's portraits of the Royal Family and how they helped create the public face of the House of Windsor. Cecil Beaton: The Royal Portraits looks...

Henry II conquered the largest empire of any English medieval king. Yet it is the people around him we remember: his wife Eleanor, whom he seduced from the French king;...

Winner of the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2014 A rich historical biography of 'those wild Wyndhams' - three cultured aristocratic sisters born into great privilege in late Victorian...

WINNER OF THE 2020 MICHEL DEON PRIZE'O'Clery takes us into the hidden heart of Soviet Russia... An arresting and evocative story' Keggie Carew, author of Dadland'A tour de force ......

At the end of World War I, Germany was demonized. The Treaty of Versailles contained a "war guilt" clause pinning the blame on the aggression of Germany and accusing her...

With an abundance of data and evidence, Move UP explores the societal and biological factors that determine whether cultures are able to ascend socially, economically and intellectually. This provocative, ambitious...

In his revealing biography of British politician and diplomat Malcolm MacDonald, Clyde Sanger gives a full account of MacDonald's central role in the decolonization of the British Empire. The son...

Who wore the first pants? Who painted the first masterpiece? Who first rode the horse? This madcap adventure across ancient history uses everything from modern genetics to archaeology to uncover...

There can be few more mesmerising historical narratives than the story of how the dazzlingly confident and secure monarchy Louis XIV, 'the Sun King', left to his successors in 1715...

Few buildings carry such a freight of historical symbolism as the Palace of Versailles. First built as a hunting lodge by Louis XIII in the early seventeenth century, then radically...