Adam Henson presents Countryfile, often from his 650-hectare farm in the Cotswolds. Having studied Agriculture at college, Adam took over Bemborough Farm from his father, Joe. The farm now grows wheat, spring barley and oilseed rape, runs a flock of 400 commercial ewes and has the UK's leading collection of rare breeds, many of which are in demand for film sets and advertisements. Cotswold Farm Park (www.cotswoldfarmpark.co.uk) offers a total countryside experience for all the family, welcoming more than 100,000 visitors each year. 
 
Adam presented Lambing Live with Kate Humble, writes for Countryfile magazine and has appeared on Radio 4's On Your Farm and Farming Today. He is the author of three previous books, Adam’s Farm: My Life on the Land, the Sunday Times bestseller, Like Farmer, Like Son and A Farmer and His Dog.

Adam Henson

Adam Henson is perhaps the best-known farmer in the UK, presenting on BBC's Countryfile to millions of viewers each Sunday evening. He's also appeared on Lambing Live, Secret Britain, Coast and Inside Out. Adam also runs the award-winning Cotswold Farm Park in Gloucestershire, which welcomes family visitors all year round and is home to many rare breeds. He has a monthly column in Countryfile magazine, as well as the Cotswold Life magazine. He has written several books including the Sunday Times bestseller Like Farmer, Like Son. This is his first children's book and it is the perfect introduction to the farm.

Adam Higginbotham writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, Businessweek, Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, and The Atavist. He began his career in magazines and newspapers in London, where he was the editor-­in-chief of The Face and a contributing editor at The Sunday Telegraph. The author of Midnight in Chernobyl, he lives in New York City.

Adam Higginbotham

Adam Hills is an internationally recognised comedian and host of award-winning Channel 4 show The Last Leg. His collection of stories from a life in comedy, Best Foot Forward, was a Times bestseller.

Adam Hills

Adam Howling

Adam J. Kurtz

Adam Jacot de Boinod

ADAM JOHNSON won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013 for his second novel, the New York Times bestseller The Orphan Master’s Son (‘Excavates the very meaning of life’ New York Times). His short story 'Nirvana' won the prestigious Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award. He is the author of acclaimed story collections, Fortune Smiles and Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us. He teaches creative writing at Stanford University and lives with his family in San Francisco.

Adam Johnson

Adam Kay is a former doctor who has written five million books and sold seven copies. No, hang on – he’s written seven books and sold five million copies. His debut book, This is Going to Hurt, is a literary sensation: a Sunday Times number one bestseller for over a year, winning a record-breaking four National Book Awards and selling over 3 million copies. Kay adapted This is Going to Hurt as a BAFTA-winning comedy-drama series for the BBC. Adam Kay’s children’s books have been translated into 32 languages and sold over 1 million copies, making him one of the UK’s bestselling children’s authors. Kay’s Anatomy became the fastest-selling children’s general non-fiction hardback of the decade. His first picture book, Amy Gets Eaten, was published in 2023, and his first children’s novel, Dexter Procter the Ten-Year-Old Doctor, was published in September 2024.

Adam Kay

Adam studied illustration and animation, and received a BA followed by an MA from the Edinburgh College of Art. As a student he won a competition to create a short film for MOMI and Channel 4, and once his career producing animated commercials was under way, he became an illustrator as well. He has regular columns in the UK and the US.

Adam Larkum

Adam Lashinsky

Adam Macqueen

Adam Mars-Jones

Adam O'Riordan was born in Manchester in 1982, where he currently lives. In 2008 he became the youngest Poet-in-Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, the Centre for British Romanticism. His first collection In the Flesh (2010) win a Somerset Maugham Award. He is the Academic Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Adam O'Riordan

Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently On Giving Up, On Wanting to Change, Attention Seeking, In Writing, Unforbidden Pleasures and Missing Out. He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations, and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

Adam Phillips

Adam Rackley

Adam Richardson is the UK's top trending health and fitness coach with a rapidly growing audience across both TikTok and Instagram. Adam is passionate about removing barriers to exercise and movement, a philosophy that is key to his work as a Personal Trainer in which he strives to help his clients feel more confident, as well as more fit and healthy.

Adam Richardson

Adam Roberts is acknowledged as the senior scholar of international relations in the UK. He was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University 1986-2007, and President of the British Academy 2009-13 - the head of humanities in Britain. He was on the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2002-08), a member of the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board (2003-15) and is now on the Board of Advisers of the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at the United States Military Academy, West Point.

Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is the author of The Amateur Gourmet and Secrets of the Best Chefs, and coauthor of Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway. He started his food blog, The Amateur Gourmet, in 2004 and currently writes The Amateur Gourmet Newsletter on Substack. Roberts has also written for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and for film and television. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their dog, Winston. Food Person is his first novel.

Adam Robinson is based in the Middle East and is a regular contributor to newspapers in the Arab world and also to the British media. He is the author of numerous books on the region, including Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist.

Adam Robinson

Adam Ross

Adam Rutherford

Adam Rutherford is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and geneticist at University College London. His books include A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, The Book of Humans, and the Sunday Times bestseller How to Argue with a Racist. He has written and presented numerous documentaries for BBC radio and television, including Inside Science and The Cell. Adam has also worked as a science advisor on many films, including the Oscar-winning Ex Machina (2015) and Annihilation (2018).

Adam Smith

Adam Smyth runs the 39 Step Press, an experiment in printing, from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. He is also Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

Adam Smyth

Adam Sweeting

Adam Tandy

Adam Thirlwell was born in London in 1978. The author of three previous novels, his work has been translated into thirty languages. His essays appear in the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, and he is an advisory editor of the Paris Review. His awards include a Somerset Maugham Award and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has twice been selected by Granta as one of their Best of Young British Novelists.

Adam Thirlwell

Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956. His first novel, Ulverton, appeared in 1992 and he has published two books of stories and ten further novels, most recently Missing Fay (2017), and six poetry collections. 
 
 
www.adamthorpe.net

Adam Thorpe

Adam Tooze is the author of the highly praised Crashed, The Deluge and The Wages of Destruction, all published by Allen Lane. He has been the recipient of the Wolfson Prize for History, the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize and the Lionel Gelber Prize. Tooze has taught at Cambridge and Yale and is now Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University.

Adam Tooze

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Bart van Es

The last time Lien saw her parents was in the Hague, where she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own, but a falling out after the war put an end of to their relationship. What was her side of the story, Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - wondered? What really happened during the war, and after? So began an investigation that would consume and transform both Bart's life and Lien's. This is an astonishing portrait of a young girl's struggle to survive war, and her powerful, tumultuous and painful ties with her foster family.

The Cut Out Girl

A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found

Robert Dallek

Franklin D. Roosevelt is a towering figure in twentieth-century history. A masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the American industrial system and transformed an isolationist country into an international superpower, he ranks among the country's greatest presidents, and his ability to unite a divided nation and generate consensus remains unsurpassed. Robert Dallek's biography is a remarkable portrait of a man dedicated entirely to public affairs - a statesman who found politics a far more interesting and fulfilling pursuit than the management of family fortunes or the indulgence of personal pleasure, and who skilfully used his office to advance an extraordinary agenda. 
 
Dallek attributes Roosevelt's success to two remarkable political insights. First, unlike any other president, he understood that efficacy in the American political system depended on building a national consensus and commanding stable, long-term popular support. Second, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in modern America. In addressing the country's international and domestic problems, Roosevelt recognized the vital importance of remaining closely attentive to the full range of public sentiment around policy-making decisions - perhaps his most enduring lesson in leadership. Dallek brings to Roosevelt's life all the rigour and incisiveness of his bestselling biographies.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

A Political Life

Ta-Nehisi Coates

From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama's presidency was a watershed moment in American history. In those eight years, the political conversation around race, gender, class and wealth shifted drastically - inspiring hope but also attracting criticism and breeding discontent. That discontent ultimately led to a shocking backlash in the election of Donald Trump. 
 
In this essential book, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of Obama's eight years in power, brilliantly navigating the intersections of political, ideological and cultural perspectives. And he reflects on his own journey through these years, weaving the public with the private to create a startlingly intimate and piercingly relevant memoir.

We Were Eight Years in Power

Richard Abels

There is a long tradition of cheering on the major monarchs of England, generally warriors such as Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror and Richard the Lionheart. But there is an argument that the more interesting monarchs are the ones who through their own fault or through having to live through terrible times, show the limits of human action and the degree to which political life can go completely wrong. 
 
In his fascinating new book in the Penguin Monarchs series, Richard Abels examines the long and troubled reign of Aethelred II the 'Unraed', the 'Ill-Advised'. It is characteristic of Aethelred's reign that its greatest surviving work of literature, the poem The Battle of Maldon, should be a record of heroic defeat. Perhaps no ruler could have stemmed the encroachment of wave upon wave of Viking raiders, but Aethelred will always be associated with that failure.

Aethelred the Unready (Penguin Monarchs)

The Failed King

Stephen Kotkin

Stalin's life is one of the most extraordinary of the modern era and Stephen Kotkin's new biography is the first to do full justice, both to the man himself and to the world which he both dominated and ruined.  This second volume is the story of the 'mature' dictator - a figure who had no precedent in ability to shape the USSR and its people. It is the great achievement of this book that it places Stalin both in the context of his day-to-day life in the Kremlin and in the far wider Communist world of which he was the apex.  The terror state, the industrial state and the ideological state were all brought together by Stalin and no account of the inter-war world will be complete now without Kotkin's book.  It ends when the 'waiting for Hitler' finally came to an end, transforming the nature of the threat faced by both Stalin and the whole society he had shaped.

Stalin, Vol. II

Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941

Michael Asher

On 4 May 1980, seven terrorists holding twenty-one people captive in the Iranian Embassy in London's Prince's Gate, executed their first hostage. They threatened to kill another hostage every thirty minutes until their demands were met. Minutes later, armed men in black overalls and balaclavas shimmied down the roof on ropes and burst in through windows and doors. In seconds all but one of the terrorists had been shot dead, the other captured. 
 
 For most people, this was their first acquaintance with a unit that was soon to become the ideal of modern military excellence - the Special Air Service regiment. Few realized that the SAS had been in existence for almost forty years, playing a discreet, if not secret, role almost everywhere Britain had fought since World War II, and had been the prototype of all modern special forces units throughout the world. 
 
 In The Regiment, Michael Asher - a former soldier in 23 SAS Regiment - examines the evolution of the special forces idea and investigates the real story behind the greatest military legend of the late twentieth century.

The Regiment

The Definitive Story of the SAS

James Delbourgo

Hans Sloane was the greatest collector of his time, and one of the greatest of all time. His name is familiar today through the London streets and squares named after him, but the man himself, and his achievements, are almost forgotten. 
 
Born in the north of Ireland, Sloane made his fortune as a physician to London's wealthiest residents. In 1687 he travelled to Jamaica, then at the heart of Britain's commercial empire, to survey its natural history, and later organised a network of correspondents who sent him curiosities from across the world. He became one of the eighteenth century's preeminent natural historians and assembled an astonishing collection of specimens, artefacts and oddities - the most famous curiosity cabinet of the age. Shortly after his death, Sloane's vast collection was then acquired - as he had hoped - by the nation. It became the nucleus of the world's first national public museum, the British Museum. 
 
This is the first biography of Sloane in over sixty years and the first based on his surviving collections. Early modern science and collecting are shown to be global endeavours intertwined with empire and slavery but which nonetheless produced one of the great public institutions of the Enlightenment, as the cabinet of curiosities gave way to the encyclopaedic museum. Collecting the World describes this pivotal moment in the emergence of modern knowledge, and brings this totemic figure back to life.

Collecting the World

The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane

Jo Wheeler

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. 
 
Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women too could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation. 
 
The Hurricane Girls is the fascinating, moving and inspirational story of bravery, determination and remarkable women.

The Hurricane Girls

The inspirational true story of the women who dared to fly

Tom Holland

The formation of England happened against the odds - the division of the country into rival kingdoms, the assaults of the Vikings, the precarious position of the island on the edge of the known world. But King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex, his son Eadweard expanded it, and his grandson Æthelstan finally united Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and became Rex totius Britanniae. 
 
Tom Holland recounts this extraordinarily exciting story with relish and drama. We meet the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Æthelflæd, 'Lady of the Mercians', who brought Æthelstan up at the Mercian court. At the end of the book we understand the often confusing history of the Anglo-Saxon kings better than ever before.

Athelstan (Penguin Monarchs)

The Making of England

Clare Jackson

Charles II has always been one of the most instantly recognisable British kings - both in his physical appearance, disseminated through endless portraits, prints and pub signs, and in his complicated mix of lasciviousness, cynicism and luxury. His father's execution and his own many years of exile made him a guarded, curious, unusually self-conscious ruler. He lived through some of the most striking events in the national history - from the Civil Wars to the Great Plague, from the Fire of London to the wars with the Dutch. 
 
Clare Jackson's marvellous book takes full advantage of its irrepressible subject.

Charles II (Penguin Monarchs)

The Star King

Andy King

Edward I (1272-1307) is one of the most commanding of all English rulers. He fought in southwest France, in Wales, In Scotland and in northern France, he ruled with ruthlessness and confidence, undoing the chaotic failure of his father, Henry III's reign. He reshaped England's legal system and came close to bringing the whole island of Great Britain under his rule. He promoted the idea of himself as the new King Arthur, his Round Table still hanging in Winchester Castle to this day. His greatest monuments are the extraordinary castles - Caernarfon, Beaumaris, Harlech and Conwy - built to ensure his rule of Wales and some of the largest of all medieval buildings. 
 
Andy King's brilliant short biography brings to life a strange, complex man whose triumphs raise all kinds of questions about the nature of kingship - how could someone who established so many key elements in England's unique legal and parliamentary system also have been such a harsh, militarily brutal warrior?

Edward I (Penguin Monarchs)

A New King Arthur?

Jonathan Sumption

Edward III ruled England for fifty years. He was a paragon of kingship in the eyes of his contemporaries, the perfect king in those of later generations. Venerated as the victor of Sluys and Crécy and the founder of the Order of the Garter, he was regarded with awe even by his enemies. But he lived too long, and was ultimately condemned to see thirty years of conquests reversed in less than five. In this gripping new account of Edward III's rise and fall, Jonathan Sumption introduces us to a fêted king who ended his life a heroic failure. 
 
Jonathan Sumption is a former history fellow of Magdalen College Oxford. He is the author of Pilgrimage and The Albigensian Crusade, as well as the first four volumes in his celebrated history of the Hundred Years War, Trial by Battle, Trial by Fire, Divided Houses and Cursed Kings. He was awarded the 2009 Wolfson History Prize for Divided Houses.

Edward III (Penguin Monarchs)

A Heroic Failure

Richard Davenport-Hines

Like his mother Queen Victoria, Edward VII defined an era. Both reflected the personalities of their central figures: hers grand, imperial and pretty stiff; his no less grand, but much more relaxed and enjoyable. This book conveys Edward's distinct personality and significant influences. To the despair of his parents, he rebelled as a young man, conducting many affairs and living a life of pleasure. But as king he made a distinct contribution to European diplomacy and - which is little known - to London, laying out the Mall and Admiralty Arch. 
 
Richard Davenport-Hines's book is as enjoyable as its subject and the age he made.

Edward VII (Penguin Monarchs)

The Cosmopolitan King

Piers Brendon

'After my death', George V said of his eldest son and heir, 'the boy will ruin himself in 12 months'. From the death of his father in 1936 to the constitutional crisis provoked by his proposal to the then-married American socialite Wallis Simpson and his subsequent abdication, Edward VIII reigned for less than year. In choosing the woman he loved over his royal birthright, Edward fulfilled his father's prophecy and instigated the monarchy's most significant upheaval of the twentieth century. Retitled 'Duke of Windsor' and essentially exiled, Edward has remained a controversial figure ever since. Through his correspondence with, amongst other confidants, Winston Churchill, Piers Brendon traces Edward's tumultuous life in this superb, pacey biography.

Edward VIII (Penguin Monarchs)

The Uncrowned King

Chris Patten

Most politicians write autobiographies to 'set the record straight'. This is a different sort of memoir. Following his life as a self-confessed 'wet European' from parliament to Hong Kong and beyond, Chris Patten creates a meditation on personal and political identity which, in an age of simplification, shows the complexities of both. 
 
'A defence of liberal conservatism ... If old-style centrism is to stage a comeback and reason to supplant stridency and authoritarianism, be it in west or east, the moderates can wave Patten's book on their way to their barricades' Jonathan Fenby, Financial Times 
 
'Vivid, very well-written, First Confession joins the highest tier of recent works by British politicians' Paschal Donohoe, Irish Times 
 
'Draws on his experience of four controversial institutions - the Tory party, the Vatican, the Chinese government and the BBC - to swell the tiny list of intelligent and cultured memoirs by front-line politicians' Mark Lawson, New Statesman, Books of the Year

First Confession

A Sort of Memoir

David Cannadine

For a man with such conventional tastes and views, George V had a revolutionary impact. Almost despite himself he marked a decisive break with his flamboyant predecessor Edward VII, inventing the modern monarchy, with its emphasis on frequent public appearances, family values and duty. George V was an effective war-leader and inventor of 'the House of Windsor'. In an era of ever greater media coverage - frequently filmed and initiating the British Empire Christmas broadcast - George became for 25 years a universally recognised figure. He was also the only British monarch to take his role as Emperor of India seriously. While his great rivals (Tsar Nicolas and Kaiser Wilhelm) ended their reigns in catastrophe, he plodded on. 
 
David Cannadine's sparkling account of his reign could not be more enjoyable, a masterclass in how to write about Monarchy, that central - if peculiar - pillar of British life.

George V (Penguin Monarchs)

The Unexpected King

Philip Ziegler

If Ethelred was notoriously 'Unready' and Alfred 'Great', King George VI should bear the designation of 'George the Dutiful'. Throughout his life he dedicated himself to the pursuit of what he thought he ought to be doing rather than what he wanted to do. Inarticulate and loathing any sort of public appearances, he accepted that it was his destiny to figure regularly and conspicuously in the public eye, gritted his teeth, largely conquered his crippling stammer and got on with it. He was not born to be king, but he made an admirable one, and was the figurehead of the nation at the time of its greatest trial, during the Second World War. This is a sparklingly brilliant and enjoyable book about him.

George VI (Penguin Monarchs)

The Dutiful King

Richard Barber

Henry II (1154-89) through a series of astonishing dynastic coups became the ruler of an enormous European empire.  One of the most dynamic, restless and clever men ever to rule England, he was brought down both by his catastrophic relationship with his archbishop Thomas Becket and his debilitating arguments with his sons, most importantly the future Richard I and King John.  His empire may have ultimately collapsed, but in Richard Barber's vivid and sympathetic account the reader can see why Henry II left such a compelling impression on his contemporaries.

Henry II (Penguin Monarchs)

A Prince Among Princes

Jane Ridley

Queen Victoria inherited the throne at 18 and went on to become the longest-reigning female monarch in history, in a time of intense industrial, cultural, political, scientific and military change within the United Kingdom and great imperial expansion outside of it (she was made Empress of India in 1876). Overturning the established picture of the dour old lady, this is a fresh and engaging portrait from one of our most talented royal biographers.

Victoria (Penguin Monarchs)

Queen, Matriarch, Empress

Marc Morris

On Christmas Day 1066, William duke of Normandy was crowned in Westminster, the first Norman king of England. The ceremony was a disaster: Norman soldiers, mishearing English shouts of acclamation as treachery, torched and looted the surrounding buildings. At the very moment God had been called upon to bless William's rule, all around were scenes of chaos and destruction. To chroniclers who wrote with the benefit of hindsight, it was an omen of the catastrophes to come. During the reign of William the Conqueror, England experienced greater and more seismic change than at any point before or since. The old ruling elites of England were swept away, while rebellion was met with overwhelming force, laying waste huge swathes of the country. Society was reordered, hundreds of castles constructed across the kingdom and every major abbey and cathedral torn down and rebuilt. The map of England itself was redrawn, giving greater power than ever before to the king. Towards the end of his reign, when William attempted to assess the scale of this transformation by launching a great survey, his subjects compared it to the last judgement of God: the Domesday Book.

William I (Penguin Monarchs)

England's Conqueror

Maria Alyokhina

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in. 
 
'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 
 
'A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!' @MargaretAtwood 
 
'Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page' Marina Abramovic 
 
People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. 
 
That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere. 
 
When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. 
 
It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'. 
 
Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. 
 
This is the story about how I made a choice.

Riot Days

Richard Hillary

In 1918, the RAF was established as the world's first independent air force. To mark the 100th anniversary of its creation, Penguin are publishing the Centenary Collection, a series of six classic books highlighting the skill, heroism and esprit de corps that have characterised the Royal Air Force throughout its first century. 
 
The Last Enemy is Richard Hillary's extraordinary account of his experience as a Spitfire pilot in the Second World War. Hillary was shot down during the Battle of Britain, leading to months in hospital as part of Archibald McIndoe's 'Guinea Pig Club', undergoing pioneering plastic surgery to rebuild his face and hands. 
 
The Last Enemy was first published in 1942, just seven months before Hilary's untimely death in a second crash and has gone on to be hailed as one of the classic texts of World War II.

The Last Enemy

The Centenary Collection

Trevor White

Alfie Byrne was that rarest of things: a genuinely popular politician, and a genuine independent. He is still a figure of legend in Dublin, where he was elected Lord Mayor ten times. He was also a TD and a Senator; and only a backroom deal prevented him from becoming the first President of Ireland in 1938. Rising from inner city Dublin to become known as the 'Lord Mayor of Ireland', he was a truly remarkable figure. And yet there has never been a biography of Alfie Byrne - until now. 
 
Trevor White's sparkling book tells the story of a man of many parts and contradictions. He was an urbane man of the world who left left school at thirteen. He was a teetotal publican. He was a Parnellite who opposed violence, but he was sympathetic to the Easter rebels. His politics were fundamentally conservative, but he was deeply devoted to the poor of his native city. 
 
This is the story of an energetic young man who offered to lead his community and refused to stop governing for forty years. His ambition and charm won admirers in the great capitals of the world - and in the tenements of Ireland's capital. At his best, he represented and encouraged a broader understanding of what it means to be Irish. And, through it all, he was a great personality, an embodiment of all that is best about Dublin.

Alfie

The Life and Times of Alfie Byrne

Geoffrey Wansell

Pure Evil takes a close look at the country's deadliest criminals, from those who horrified the nation to those less famous but equally brutal, such as Jeremy Bamber, Joanna Dennehy and Ian Huntley. 
 
In this shocking, chilling and powerful book Geoffrey Wansell exposes killers' motivations and remorse, but also seeks out an answer to the vital question: should life always mean life? 
 
Having observed lifers over more than twenty years, often up close and very personal, Geoffrey Wansell's Pure Evil reveals more of the criminal mind than has ever before been seen.

Pure Evil

Inside the Minds and Crimes of Britain’s Worst Criminals

Erica Benner

'A ripping read ... fascinating, charming, enjoyably unorthodox' Daily Telegraph 
 
Was Niccolò Machiavelli really the cynical schemer of legend - or was he a profound ethical thinker, who tried to save the democratic freedom of Renaissance Florence as it was threatened by ruthless dynasties? This revelatory biography shows us a man of fox-like dissimulation: a master of disguise in dangerous times. 
 
'A gripping portrait of a brilliant political thinker, who understood the dangers of authoritarianism and looked for ways to curb them' The New Yorker 
 
'Compelling ... this unconventional biography questions whether the philosopher deserves his reputation as an advocate for tyranny' Julian Baggini, Financial Times

Be Like the Fox

Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom

Thomas Asbridge

Richard I's reign is both controversial and seemingly contradictory. One of England's most famous medieval monarchs and a potent symbol of national identity, he barely spent six months on English soil during a ten-year reign and spoke French as his first language. Contemporaries dubbed him the 'Lionheart', reflecting a carefully cultivated reputation for bravery, prowess and knightly virtue, but this supposed paragon of chivalry butchered close to 3,000 prisoners in cold blood on a single day. And, though revered as Christian Europe's greatest crusader, his grand campaign to the Holy Land failed to recover the city of Jerusalem from Islam. 
 
Seeking to reconcile this conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge's incisive reappraisal of Richard I's career questions whether the Lionheart really did neglect his kingdom, considers why he devoted himself to the cause of holy war and asks how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth. Richard emerges as a formidable warrior-king, possessed of martial genius and a cultured intellect, yet burdened by the legacy of his dysfunctional dynasty and obsessed with the pursuit of honour and renown.

Richard I (Penguin Monarchs)

The Crusader King

Harriet Harman

When Harriet Harman started her career, men-only job adverts and a 'women's rate' of pay were the norm, female MPs were a tiny minority - a woman couldn't even sign for a mortgage. But, she argues, we should never just be grateful that things are better now. There's still more to do. In A Woman's Work Harriet, Britain's longest-serving female MP, looks at her own life to see how far we've come, and where we should go next. This is an inspiring and refreshingly honest account of the part she has played (and the setbacks along the way) in the movement that transformed politics and women's lives.

A Woman's Work

Sara Suleri

Meatless Days is a searing memoir of life in the newly-created country of Pakistan. When sudden and shocking tragedies hit the author's family two years apart, her personal crisis spirals into a wider meditation on universal questions: about being a woman when you're too busy being a mother or a sister or a wife to consider your own womanhood; about how it feels to begin life in a new language; about how our lives are changed by the people that leave them. This is a heart-breaking, hopeful and profound book that will get under your skin.

Meatless Days

With an Introduction by Kamila Shamsie

Sayeeda Warsi

'The Muslims, or, more politely put, the Muslim communities, are described and most often referred to as a monolithic block. Well they - we - are not ... Most of us simply want to get on with our lives.' 
 
Sayeeda Warsi, peer of the realm, could be considered part of the Establishment. So why does she wonder over half a century after her grandfather came to the UK whether the UK will still be a home for her grandchildren? Tracking the changing currents in British attitudes and policy towards Islam and unpicking the challenges for Muslims with brutal honesty, The Enemy Within offers solutions to the big issues of our time with much-needed clarity and humour.

The Enemy Within

A Tale of Muslim Britain

Hilary Spurling

In this astounding book (winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year 2005) Hilary Spurling's fascinating exploration of Matisse's world uncovers the secret life of the artist, whose paintings shocked and infuriated his contemporaries while paving the way for modern art. This beautifully presented second volume tells the story of Matisse's growing artistic maturity and the relationship between his life and art from 1909 to 1954, his glory years.

Matisse the Master

A Life of Henri Matisse: 1909-1954

Black Lace Book Of Women Sexual Fantasies

Black Star Series

Blacklist

Set inside Blandings Castle, this comedy series follows Lord Emsworth and his pig Empress as they meet with his dysfunctional family and friends, and the havoc that follows.

Blandings

Blandings Castle

Blood City Rollers

Bloodlines

Blossom Street

Blue Ant

Bluey

Bodyguard

Bodyguard Series

Bollocks to Alton Towers

Book of Dust Series

Borderlands

Born Wicked

Boudica: the last defender of the Celtic culture; the only woman openly to have led her warriors into battle; the only British warrior to have stood against the might of Imperial Rome - and triumphed. 
 
This is her story.

Boudica

Boy Soldier

Brain Chemicals

Brave Bunnies

Bridge

Bridget Jones's Diary

Brief Encounters

Bright Young Things

Brotherband

Arthur Bryant and John May are Golden Age detectives living in the modern world. Together they head up the Peculiar Crimes Unit, ready to solve any of the weird and wonderful crimes that fall across their desks.

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