history

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone...

For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off -...

'It made me laugh so hard that I woke up my wife and had to give up reading the book in bed. If Bill Bryson had collaborated with W. G....

'It made me laugh so hard that I woke up my wife and had to give up reading the book in bed. If Bill Bryson had collaborated with W.G. Sebald...

A Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2019Shortlisted for The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award'No Briton has written better than Winder about Europe' Sunday TimesAt the...

A Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2019Shortlisted for The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award'No Briton has written better than Winder about Europe' Sunday TimesAt the...

'While Britain was losing an empire, it was finding itself...' The compelling opening words to this volume, The Fate of the Empire, set the tone and agenda for the final...

Bletchley Park was where one of the war's most famous - and crucial - achievements was made: the cracking of Germany's "Enigma" code in which its most important military communications...

Beginning on the bloody battlefield of Bosworth, when Henry Tudor seized the crown of England and ended the Wars of the Roses, The Tudors contains stories and characters that have...

Europe is, in world terms, a relatively minor peninsula attached to the Eurasian land mass, yet it became one of the most innovative regions on the planet, bearing restless adventurers...

A highly informed insider's account of some of the 'honest men' as they sought, by fair means or foul, to get Britain its way in the world.GETTING OUR WAY recounts...

K. J. Dover and three other classical scholars have collaborated in writing this new historical survey of Greek literature from B.C. 700 to 550 A.D. The book concentrates on the...

Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, told by a former British AmbassadorTwenty-five years ago, when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan after a gruelling nine-year occupation, they left a legacy obscured by...

Russia is the largest country in the world, with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Over a thousand years this multifaceted nation of shifting borders has been known as Rus,...

In the darkest days of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Anna-Maria van der Vaart sheltered Allied pilots, gave refuge to persecuted Jews and participated in audacious acts of sabotage....

Lenin's originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, Zizek argues in his new study and collection of original...

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, i ek shows why Lenin's thought is still important todayV. I. Lenin's originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated...

A SUNDAY TIMES AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR "Masterly and brilliant"-Simon Sebag Montefiore "A book of vast scope and stunning insight."-Anthony Sattin, Spectator "Commanding erudition and a swashbuckling style...

This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks...

This is an official tie-in edition of this eloquent and powerful memoir, to accompany Steve McQueen's major new film starring Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Chiwetel Ejiofor...

The shocking first-hand account of one man's remarkable fight for freedom; now an award-winning motion picture. 'Why had I not died in my young years - before God had given...

***BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE TIMES and SPECTATOR *** A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER***'A rousing tale of derring-do' The Times Book of the Week'A cracking story about an extraordinarily brave...

'A METICULOUS HISTORY THAT READS LIKE A THRILLER' BEN MACINTYRE, TEN BEST BOOKS TO READ ABOUT WORLD WAR II An astounding story of heroism, spycraft, resistance and personal triumph over...

The authors discovered 150,000 pages of transcriptions of secretly recorded conversations among German prisoners of war, of which approximately one third were made in P.O.W. camps in Britain, another cache...

Pirates and smugglers, ghost ships and sea-serpents, fishermen's prayers and sailors' rituals - the coastline of the British Isles plays host to an astonishingly rich variety of local legends, customs,...

Chocolate - 'the food of the Gods' - has had a long and eventful history. Its story is expertly told here by the doyen of Maya studies, Michael Coe, and...

Thomas, son of Henry Robekyn, died 1286 after cutting off his left foot and then his left hand in a frenzy.Henry Debordesle, died 1343. Long sick with diseases, smote himself...

How did the most wanted man in the country outwit the greatest manhunt in British history? In January 1649, King Charles I was beheaded in London outside his palace of...

1916, Russia. A 17-year-old Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale is working for his father, taking submarines from Vladivostok to St Petersburg for the Russian Imperial Navy. He takes a submarine out for...

'Lively and fascinating. I loved it' David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in your Ear? 'A history of the world in microcosm' Douglas Preston, author of The Lost...

Between the covers of this magnificent red Album with a gilded cover you will discover more than 600 of the Gentle Author's favourite pictures of London in print for the...

Published 60 years after the building of the Berlin Wall. 'An impressively clear and engaging biography of a fascinating city at the very centre of European history' Antony Beevor 'My...

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'Stands out for its judicious and unsparing look at events from a British perspective' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday TimesBetween January and August 1947 the conflicting political, religious and social...

Cleopatra's palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the...

'An oppressive, forensic, psychological thriller: J.K. Rowling meets Antony Beevor, Stephen King and Marina Warner ... Schiff's writing is to die for' THE TIMESIt began in 1692, over an exceptionally...