Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

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Andrew Miller

Henry and Miriam were raised in East London, but their families had emigrated from Eastern Europe, and they were not to end their lives in the East End. From a market stall on Petticoat Lane, their story led - from forays into the West End to the success of Henry's underwear business and a remarkable friendship with his upper-class mentor Walter - to a life lived among Astors and Parker-Bowleses, a grand flat on Regent's Park, and a world of Court, club and charity balls. 
 
Andrew Miller's compelling family history tells, elegaically but without nostalgia, of London's many faces. It is a story of immigration and Anglicisation, of the significance of race and class and language and accent in our country, of how it has been possible for people in this country to change themselves and their lives.

The Earl Of Petticoat Lane

Joe Carter

A compelling true story of the reality of undercover police work 
 
For over 20 years, Joe Carter has worked for the police as an undercover cop. Travelling the globe on different passports, fraternising with thieves and international drugs and arms dealers, working alongside dangerous criminals, Carter always knew his life would come crashing down around him at any point. 
 
His story is a gripping account of the secret, solitary work of an undercover officer and the many ‘sticky’ situations he found himself in, as well as the moving confession of the difficulty in reconciling his two identities with his family life. 
 
This book explores the resilience needed to lead a double life, the thrilling challenge of working with the biggest criminals in Britain, and maintaining a sense of justice through the many adventures he encounters.

Undercover

Harry Bernstein

Harry Bernstein was born into a world of hardship and suffering in a northern mill town, in the shadow of the First World War. 
 
His brutish father spends what little he earns at the tailoring shop on drink, while his devoted mother survives on her dreams - that new shoes might secure Harry's admission to a fancy school, that her daughter might marry well, and that one day they might all escape this grinding poverty for the paradise of America. 
 
But as the years go by, life for the Bernsteins on their narrow cobbled street remains a daily struggle to make ends meet. For young Harry though, most distressing are his fears for his adored elder sister Lily, who is risking all by pursuing a forbidden love...

The Invisible Wall

James Patterson

JAMES PATTERSON'S NON-FICTION MASTERPIECE 
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Kennedys were always taught to win at all costs. And they did - but the price they paid was unimaginable . . . 
 
Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel. Their name is synonymous with American royalty. Their commitment to public service is legendary. But, for all the successes, the family has been blighted by assassinations, fatal accidents, drug and alcohol abuse and sex scandals. 
 
To this day, the Kennedys occupy a unique, contradictory place in the world's imagination: at once familiar and unknowable; charmed and cursed. The Kennedy Curse is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most famous family, as told by the world's most trusted storyteller. 
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Also published as The House of Kennedy in the US. 
 
'When I wrote my first novel after several non-fiction works about politics, James Patterson lovingly lambasted me for infringing on his thriller territory. Now I know how he feels as he crosses into non-fiction politics with this juicy and entertaining look at a political family that continues to wield power and influence. He's too good - it isn't fair!' JAKE TAPPER, CNN anchor and author of The Hellfire Club

The Kennedy Curse

The shocking true story of America’s most famous family

Charles Drazin

‘Patsy, what are you going to be when you grow up? Well?’ 
'A Royal Engineer, Daddy. A Royal Engineer!’ 
 
Charles Drazin knew little about his mother's father – only that he had been a military surveyor who mapped great swathes of the British Empire. But when his mother was told that she was dying, it prompted recollections of her early life that she had never confided before: of the village in the west of Ireland where she had grown up, and of her father, whose death changed the life of an eight-year-old girl for ever. 
 
Soon afterwards her own death left her son to go through alone the relics of her life. They included a box of old photographs, a battered suitcase stamped with the initials of the grandfather he had never known, and the service records of Patrick’s brothers, who, like him, had all enlisted in the Royal Engineers as the nineteenth century became the twentieth. So began an extraordinary journey of discovery that took him from the age of Queen Victoria to the battlefields of the Western Front. 
 
Mapping the Past is the story of five brothers who, mapping the world, lived up to the Royal Engineers’ motto of Everywhere. It is the story of Ireland, and of the Empire from which it broke away. It is the story of conflict, war and its aftermath. And, most of all, it is the story of memory, endlessly carrying the past, for better or worse, into our present and future. It is an imaginative, intimate and powerful work of history, by a writer of rare power.

Mapping the Past

A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

Michael Dobbs

From the bestselling author of One Minute to Midnight, this is the riveting story of the last six months of World War II, when the hopeful Allied situation inspired by the Yalta Conference descended into the open conflict that would lead to the Cold War. 
 
When FDR, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin gathered outside the Crimean city of Yalta in February 1945, they had Hitler's armies on the run, and victory was just a matter of time. Their mission was to forge the decisions that would shape the postwar world, and above all to divide up Europe between Soviet and Western influence. These men had been fighting side by side for nearly four years but the cracks in their alliance were emerging; even before the Second World War ended, another conflict was beginning. 
 
Six Months captures this turning point of the twentieth century, re-creating the steady breakdown in relations between powers. While the Berlin airlift and the Iron Curtain would not arrive for three years, by August 1945 the West and the Soviet Union were firmly on the path to a Cold War. Michael Dobbs brilliantly renders the personalities and geopolitics that drove this descent, illuminating the aims and frustrations of the key leaders. This is a vivid story of power, personalities, and national interests competing at a crucial moment in history.

Six Months in 1945

FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman – from World War to Cold War

On a narrow cobbled street in a northern mill town young Harry Bernstein and his family face a daily struggle to make ends meet. This is the true story of those harsh years, overshadowed by the First World War. 
 
Amidst the hardship and suffering, Harry's devoted mother clings to a dream - that one day they might escape this grinding poverty for the paradise of America. But the regular pleas to relatives in Chicago yield nothing, until one day, when Harry is twelve years old, the family looks on astonished as he opens a letter which contains the longed-for steamship tickets. 
 
But the better life of which they'd dreamed proves elusive. Deprivation follows them to Chicago - and for Harry, life becomes more difficult still as he finds himself torn between his responsibilities to his mother, and his first love...

The Dream

Diane Atkinson

When they met at a motorcycle club in 1912, Elsie Knocker was a thirty year-old motorcycling divorcee dressed in bottle-green Dunhill leathers, and Mairi Chisholm was a brilliant eighteen-year old mechanic, living at home and borrowing tools from her brother. Little did they know, theirs was to become one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War. 
 
In 1914, they roared off to London 'to do their bit', and within a month they were in the thick of things in Belgium driving ambulances to distant military hospitals. Frustrated by the number of men dying of shock in the back of their vehicles, they set up their own first-aid post on the front line in the village of Pervyse, near Ypres, risking their lives working under sniper fire and heavy bombardment for months at a time. 
 
As news of their courage and expertise spread, the 'Angels of Pervyse' became celebrities, visited by journalists and photographers as well as royals and VIPs. Glamorous and influential, they were having the time of their lives, and for four years, Elsie and Mairi and stayed in Pervyse until they were nearly killed by arsenic gas in the spring of 1918. But returning home and adjusting to peacetime life was to prove even more challenging than the war itself.

Elsie and Mairi Go to War

Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front

David Hughes

In one spring month of 1856 Archibald Campbell Tait (later to be Archbishop of Canterbury) and his wife Catharine suffered the loss of five daughters, aged between two and ten, in an epidemic of scarlet fever. In his diary Tait refers to these beloved children as 'the lent jewels'. The couple bore their bereavement with a fortitude that could be sustained only by faith. Without similar convictions, but in the hope of laying bare a comparable belief for himself, David Hughes explores the themes of love and loss, intermingling his own experience, both as child and father, with the story of another of Tait's contemporaries, someone with a different but nonetheless powerful focus on life, a man known only as 'Walter', author of the erotic memoir My Secret Life. At the same time Catharine was drowning her grief in words by writing a heartbreaking account of her children's deaths. All these presences, and more modern ones, haunt the chapters of this many-layered documentary. With a dexterity of style and abundance of sympathy that have made him so appealing a writer, Hughes now delves into two centuries of underlying attitudes to sex, dreams and mortality, in an effort to reconcile them in his own daily life. The result of his sometimes sad but always eager search is splendidly uplifting.

The Lent Jewels

Ray Jenkins

One of the last major untold stories of the war, this is the first-hand account of a conscientious objector born into a famous artistic family who, after the death of his brother on active service, decides to fight the Nazis and joins SOE. Barely 28 years of age he ends up as a leader of French resistance, set up by Jean Moulin, whose horrific death features in the story, and heads a massive underground movement of some 20,000 men. 
 
The book has been compiled by Ray Jenkins, a distinguished TV, film and radio dramatist from first-hand interviews, with the drama of raids, torture and sudden death ever present - at one point Francis Cammaerts is captured by the Gestapo. There is also an emotional theme as Francis's relationship with his wife, whom he has been able to tell nothing, suffers and he lives closely with the beautiful and legendary agent, Countess Krystina Skarbeck. 
 
A genuinely original contribution to the history of the resistance, Ray Jenkins's beautifully told story has been praised by the official historian of wartime intelligence, MRD Foot. 
 
Francis Cammaerts died in 2006 at the age of 90 after a distinguished career in education.

A Pacifist At War

The Silence of Francis Cammaerts

Timothy Knatchbull

Winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Award, and nominated for the PEN/JR Ackerley prize. 
 
The powerful memoir of a Mullaghmore bombing survivor 
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On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland, with many members of his family. 
 
By noon, an IRA bomb had destroyed the boat, leaving four dead. 
 
The author survived, but his grandparents, a family friend, and his 14-year-old twin brother did not. Lord Mountbatten, his grandfather - and uncle to the Duke of Edinburgh - was the target, and became one of the IRA's most high-profile assassinations. 
 
In telling this story for the first time, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy. It is a story of recovery, not just from physical wounds but deep emotional trauma. Knatchbull and his parents were too badly injured to attend the funerals of those killed, a sadness that intensified their profound sense of loss. 
 
Taking place in Ireland at the height of the Troubles, it gives a compelling insight into that period of Irish history. But more importantly it brings home that although tragedy can strike at any moment, the human spirit is able to forgive, to heal and to move on. It will resonate with readers the world over. 
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'One of the most intensely moving stories I have ever read, and I was gripped from the first page.' Barbara Taylor Bradford, bestselling author 
 
'From a Clear Blue Sky is a minute by minute story of what happened that day, and what happened afterwards. It is a proper four-hanky bawler, and the exactitude of the story is what makes it so moving ... He provides a convincing account of the extent to which he has been able to accept, forgive and move on. His narrative power is such that the reader can't always share his equanimity. It is a book that is as saddening as it is sad - but much more angering than it is angry' Daily Mail 
 
'This is an extremely moving book. Beyond providing a phenomenally detailed evocation of his own family's trauma, Knatchbull has lots of wise things to say about how we survive horrors - of all kinds - in our lives. He writes with great tenderness and an admirable lack of sentimentality' Zoe Heller 
 
'Affecting and intimate' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Testament to a remarkable, benevolent soul ... With this public love letter he has found a way to say goodbye' The Sunday Times

From A Clear Blue Sky

Surviving the Mountbatten bomb

Alex Kershaw

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The true story behind the hit NETFLIX drama 
 
From the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau, no World War II infantry unit in Europe saw more action or endured worse than the one commanded by Felix Sparks. 
 
The US Army 157th regiment, known as the Thunderbirds, drew many of its men from more than fifty different Native American tribes, mixed in with Mexican-Americans and men more used to herding cattle in the American southwest. Felix Sparks, tasked with leading the diverse regiment regarded by generals as one of the US's finest fighting forces, was a maverick officer, and the only man to survive his company's wartime odyssey from bitter beginning to victorious end. 
 
Here, his remarkable true story is told for the first time, along with those of the men who bravely fought alongside him. 
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'Exceptional....The Liberator balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers' Wall Street Journal 
 
'A revealing portrait of a man who led by example and suffered a deep emotional wound with the loss of each soldier under his command ... The Liberator is a worthwhile and fast-paced examination of a dedicated officer navigating - and somehow surviving - World War II.' Washington Post 
 
'A history of the American war experience in miniature, from the hard-charging enthusiasm of the initial landings to the clear-eyed horror of the liberation of the concentration camps.' The Daily Beast 
 
'Kershaw has ensured that individuals and entire battles that might have been lost to history, or overshadowed by more 'important' people and events, have their own place in the vast, protean tale of World War II ... Where Kershaw succeeds, and where The Liberator is at its most riveting and satisfying, is in its delineation of Felix Sparks as a good man that other men would follow into Hell - and in its unblinking, matter-of-fact description, in battle after battle, of just how gruesome, terrifying and dehumanizing that Hell could be.' Time

The Liberator

One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey From the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau

Gordon F Sander

'A major contribution to our understanding of the Second World War in all its complexity.' John Keegan in his Introduction. 
 
The inspiring story of a German-Jewish family named Frank which, like Anne Frank's family and 25,000 other Dutch and other 'stateless' Jews, 'dived under' in Nazi-occupied Holland in 1942 - but miraculously survived. Told by the grandson of the head of the family, this is the gripping odyssey of the other Frank family: from childhood in an assimilated German-Jewish family at Breitenheim, through the deceptively good life of Berlin in the 1920s, to the rise of Hitler and their flight to apparently safe Holland, the nightmarish ordeal of their thousand day long 'submersion' in a small apartment in The Hague, and the joy and pain of liberation and their final journey to America, the same route Anne Frank might have taken had she not been betrayed. Based on personal testaments, records and family interviews, the book describes their life behind closed curtains in constant fear of discovery. In 1945, after many adventures and appalling vicissitudes, they finally emerged to face the uncertainties of postwar Holland and the promise of the New World.

The Frank Family That Survived

Tim Pat Coogan

Far more Irishmen live outside Ireland than within it. This fascinating study, by Ireland's best known and most controversial contemporary historian, reveals why this is, how it has come about and what the realities are today - political, economic, religious and cultural - for the populations of the 'Irish Diaspora' and the countries they now inhabit. Based on first-hand research in America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe (including, of course, the UK), this book reveals the workings of Irish communities throughout the world, some with great political and economic power (such as in the US, where the Irish political tradition has dominated politics from the 19th century Tammany Hall to presidents Kennedy and Clinton), some with enormous moral authority (including Irish religious communities in Africa) and others living in poverty on the fringes of society.

Wherever Green Is Worn

The Story of the Irish Diaspora

Richard Leigh

Michael Baigent

In this enthralling historical detective story, the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail trace the flight after 1309 of the Knights Templar from Europe to Scotland, where the Templar heritage was to take root, and would be perpetuated by a network of noble families. That heritage, and the Freemasonry that arose from it, became inseparable from the Stuart cause. The Temple and the Lodge charts the birth of Freemasonry through the survival of Templar traditions, through currents of European thought, through the mystery surrounding Rosslyn chapel, and through an elite cadre of aristocrats attached as personal bodyguards to the French king. Pursuing Freemasonry through the 17th and 18th Centuries, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh reveal its contribution to the fostering of tolerance, progressive values, and cohesion in English society, which helped to pre-empt a French-style revolution. Even more dramatically, the influence of Freemasonry emerges as key facto in the formation of the United States of America as an embodiment of the ideal 'Masonic Republic'.

The Temple And The Lodge

David Rohl

By employing the same basic methodologies used to establish the currently accepted chronology, it has been possible for a group of young archaeologists, including David Rohl, to create a New Chronology which resolves many of the problems permeating ancient world studies. In particular, one model has been developed which has major implications for Old Testament research. Through the revision of the master chronology of ancient Egypt they have unlocked the key to biblical history - the epic events of the Bible really did happen as recorded in the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles - the problem was that we had previously been looking for them in completely the wrong place in time.Many of the conundrums of the past are explained, and legendary figures such as Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon find their true political setting. Exodus and Conquest will be restored to history and the magic of legend will begin to make its great comeback

A Test Of Time

Volume One-The Bible-From Myth to History

Wibke Bruhns

In August 1944, Hans Georg Klamroth was executed for his part in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Wibke Bruhns, his youngest daughter, was six years old at the time. Decades later, watching a documentary about the events of 20 July, images of her father in the Third Reich People's Court appeared on the screen - and she realises she never knew him. 
 
In My Father's Country, Bruhns tells of her search for her father. Returning to her ancestral home in Halberstadt, Northern Germany, she retraces her family's story from Kaiser Wilhelm to the end of World War Two, discovering old photographs, letters and diaries, which she uses to piece together a unique and unforgettable family epic.

My Father's Country

Ireland's bestselling popular historian tells the story of contemporary Ireland - controversial, authoritative and highly readable. Tim Pat Coogan's biographies of Michael Collins and DeValera and his studies of the IRA, the Troubles and the Irish Diaspora have transformed our understanding of contemporary Ireland, and all have been massive bestsellers. Now he has produced a major history of Ireland in the twentieth century. Covering both South and North and dealing with cultural and social history as well as political, this enthralling work will become the definitive single-volume account of the making of modern Ireland.

Ireland In The 20th Century

Barry Turner

Tony Rennell

Compelling and moving real-life accounts of the impact on family life of the return of the troops at the end of the Second World War. 
 
Summer 1945. Britain was in jubilant mood. At last, the war was over. Soon the men would be coming home. Then everything would be fine: life would get back to normal. 
 
Or would it? Six long years of war had profoundly changed family life. For years, Dad had been a khaki figure in a photograph on the wall, a crumpled letter from overseas, an occasional visitor on weekend leave. Now he was here to stay, a stranger in a group that had learned to live without him - and was not always prepared to have him back. 
 
Most homecomings were joyful, never-to-be-forgotten moments of humour and hope. Others were hard. And there was no one to deal with the tears and the trauma. 
 
It would take hope and courage for families to live and love together again.

When Daddy Came Home

How War Changed Family Life Forever

Hugo Vickers

Hugo Vickers has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Royal Family, and has had a fascination with the story of the Duchess of Windsor since he was a young man. There have been a number of books about this doomed couple, but this book brings a new perspective on the story by focussing on the later years of exile. 
 
While Vickers has his own theories about the Abdication itself, and he makes it very clear that Mrs Simpson did not lure the King from the throne, the drama of this narrative comes from the criminal exploitation of an old sick woman after the death of her husband. She was ruthlessly exploited by a French lawyer called Suzanne Blum. Some members of the Royal Family, like Mountbatten and the Queen Mother, don't emerge with much credit either. 
 
Hugo Vickers relates a tragic story which has lost none of its resonance over the years since the Duchess died in 1986.

Behind Closed Doors

Charlie Richardson

Charlie Richardson, one of Britain's most notorious gangland bosses, sheds light on his extraordinary life story completed just weeks before his death in September 2012. 
 
Notorious Charlie Richardson was the most feared gangster in 1960s London. Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies. 
 
The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box. 
 
Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

The Last Gangster

My Final Confession

Bertie Ahern

Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. The man of faith who ushered in progressive, cosmopolitan secular Ireland. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. 'I know 25 per cent of Bertie Ahern', said his finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, 'and that's 24 per cent more than anyone else.' 
 
Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it. He shows the cost to his family of a life played out in the public eye and, for the first time, discloses what really happened in his final weeks in power. 
 
Here for the first time is the truth behind the man who is Bertie. 
 
Ahern has been at the cutting edge of Irish politics for over three decades. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the Fianna Fáil landslide victory in 1977 that saw Jack Lynch returned as Taoiseach. In 1982, Charles Haughey appointed him Government Chief Whip. In volatile political times, he strongly supported Haughey during three challenges to his leadership of Fianna Fáil. 
 
In 1987, Bertie Ahern received his first cabinet portfolio as Minister for Labour. It was a time when the Irish economy was in crisis. Ireland had a higher debt per head than Ethiopia or Sudan. Unemployment stood at 16%. Ahern negotiated Ireland's first social partnership agreement, which underpinned economic recovery and put in place the foundations for a period of sustained growth. In 1991, he was appointed Minister for Finance. International commentators first began to refer to 'Ireland's Tiger economy' in this period. When Bertie Ahern left the Department of Finance in late 1994, for the first time in almost 30 years, Ireland had a budget surplus. 
 
Bertie Ahern succeeded Albert Reynolds as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994. Following the General Election in 1997, he became Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach. The Ahern Era was a time of unprecedented progress in Irish society. Over the course of his tenure in office, Ireland's economy out-performed that of every other European country. For the first time ever, the number of people in employment in the State reached 2 million. 
 
Working closely with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, Ahern won widespread acclaim for his perseverance and skill in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, which has provided the political framework for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. 
 
On the international stage, he was a respected figure who enjoyed an acclaimed Presidency of the European Council in 2004. He presided over the completion of the largest ever expansion of the EU and concluded negotiations on a European constitution. He is one of only five visiting statesmen to have addressed both the United States Congress and the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. 
 
At home, Ahern enjoyed phenomenal electoral support. He was the first Taoiseach since 1944 to win three successive General Elections. 
 
Bertie Ahern resigned on 6th May, 2008. He had served for ten years, ten months and ten days as Taoiseach.

Bertie Ahern Autobiography

Gyles Brandreth

This is the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary stories of our time. Gyles Brandreth, acclaimed biographer of the Queen and Prince Philip, presents a unique portrait of their son, Charles, Prince of Wales, and of the one 'non-negotiable' love of his life, Camilla Shand, now Duchess of Cornwall. 
 
What are Charles and Camilla really like? What is their heritage? What has made them the way they are? This is both a revealing portrait of two unusual individuals and a family saga like no other, told with unrivalled authority and insight - and humour - by a best-selling writer who has met all the key characters in the drama: Charles, Camilla, Diana, their children, their families and their friends.

Charles & Camilla

These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms; stories of life-and-death decisions, and learning how to live with the effects of horrific injuries, both physical and mental. In the voices of the men and women who've fought overseas, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a rare eye-opening look into what it's really like to wear the uniform, fight in combat, lose friends and come home.

Walk in My Combat Boots

True Stories from the Battlefront

Jean-Yves Le Naour

The remarkably powerful and moving true story of a soldier who lost his memory and identity during World War I, and of a people in mourning, who found in him the symbol of a lost generation. 
 
Released from a German POW camp with no memory of his name or his past life and no documents or distinguishing marks to identify him, the soldier was given the name Anthelme Mangin, and sent to an asylum for the insane. With the end of the Great War, a newspaper advertisement placed in the hope of finding his lost family found instead a bereaved multitude ready to claim him as the father, son, husband or brother who had never come home. 
 
With humane sympathy and the skill of a novelist, Jean Yves Le Naour meticulously recreates the twenty-year court battles waged over the Living Unknown Soldier. Poignant, psychologically penetrating, and profoundly revealing of the human cost of war, this remarkable book portrays not just the fate of one individual but a nation's inconsolable post-war grief and profoundly illuminates the nature of mourning.

The Living Unknown Soldier

Barbara Mortimer

On 3 September 1939, the Prime Minister declared that Britain was at war with Nazi Germany. 
 
Thousands of young women, many of them barely out of school, were sent headlong into gruelling training regimes that would see them become wartime nurses. 
 
Sisters features over 150 previously unpublished stories from the archives of the Royal College of Nursing. The vivid, poignant and riveting stories capture these nurses' incredible bravery and touching friendships.

Sisters

Heroic true-life stories from the nurses of World War Two

Damien Lewis

This book chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two - Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. The West Side Boys were a strange-looking bunch, wearing pink shades, shower caps, fluorescent wigs and voodoo charms they believed made them invulnerable to bullets - an impression re-enforced by ganja, heroine, crack cocaine and gallons of sweet palm wine. In 1999 a twelve man patrol of Royal Irish Rangers, who were training government troops in Sierra Leone, were captured and held hostage by the West Side Boys. They were held prisoner in a fortified jungle hideaway, with severed heads decorating the palisades, defended by some 400 heavily armed soldiers. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed. Operation Certain Death is a thrilling true story of all out war. No hostages taken. Blood-letting on a vast scale inflicted on a very blood-thirsty enemy. A gripping piece of true military history, perfect for fans of action adventure stories and anyone interested in the top secret division of the British Army.

Operation Certain Death

Alastair Campbell

POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY is the third volume of Alastair Campbell's unique daily account of life at the centre of the Blair government. It begins amid conflict in Kosovo, and ends on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, changing the course of both the Bush presidency and the Blair premiership. 
 
In this volume, we see that New Labour's honeymoon is well and truly over. In addition to detailing the continuing tensions at the top, here we find graphic accounts of a variety of domestic crises: foot-and-mouth disease and protests over fuel prices which almost brought Britain to a halt. Volume Three includes Peter Mandelson's second resignation, the agonies of the Millennium Dome, and the most unexpected slow-handclapping in memory, when the Women's Institute turned against Tony Blair. Yet despite all the problems - not least the most accident-prone manifesto launch in history, complete with deputy prime minister John Prescott punching a voter - Labour won a second successive landslide election victory. That triumph is intimately recorded here, alongside the high points of this period, such as devolution to Northern Ireland and the fall of Milosevic.

Diaries Volume Three

Power and Responsibility

Sue Elliott

Steve Humphries

In association with the flagship BBC2 series. 
 
This is the story of the men and women of a truly remarkable generation. Born into a world still reeling from the earth-shattering events of the Great War, they grew up during the appalling economic depression of the 1930s, witnessed the globe tear itself apart again during the Second World War, and emerged from post-war austerity determined to create a new society for their children. 
 
It is the story of people who raised their families during the immense social upheaval of the Fifties and Sixties, as the world in which they had grown up changed inexorably. It is the story of the people who shaped the way we live now. 
 
Britain's Greatest Generation tells this multi-faceted story through the eye-witness accounts of those who were there, from Japanese prisoner of war Fergus Anckorn to Dame Vera Lynn, from Bletchley Park veteran Jean Valentine to Dad's Army creator Jimmy Perry, and from fighter pilot Tom Neil to the Queen's cousin Margaret Rhodes. Together their testimony creates a vivid, often deeply moving picture of an extraordinary epoch – and the extraordinary people who lived through it.

Voices of World War Two

Memories of the Last Survivors

Peter Caddick-Adams

Peter Caddick-Adams - one of the leading military historians of his generation - reviews one of the great final engagements of WW2: The Battle of the Bulge. Including specially commissioned maps, black and white photography, archive material and personal interviews, this is a riveting landmark study of a pivotal historical moment and perfect for readers of James Holland, John Keegan, Anthony Beevor and Max Hastings. 
 
'A thought-provoking and compelling account of one of the most iconic battles of the Second World War. Brilliant' -- James Holland 
'Caddick-Adams knows more about the Bulge than any other historian I have read...I admire his originality...Snow and Steel offers an authoritative narrative of the drama...' -- Max Hasting, The Sunday Times 
'An encyclopaedic and eminently readable book' -- Times Literary Supplement 
'A compelling read' -- ***** Reader review 
'The definitive Bulge history' -- ***** Reader review 
'Absolutely brilliant book' -- ***** Reader review 
'Brilliant read. Captivating and informative' -- ***** Reader review 
'Excellent, authoritative and very well written' -- ***** Reader review 
******************************************************************************************** 
Snow and Steel is a huge reassessment of Hitler's last great throw of the dice: 'The Battle of the Bulge', the battle for the Ardennes from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. 
 
This is an utterly fascinating five weeks when for a time it looked like Hitler had outflanked the allied armies pushing toward the Rhine and might just throw them back to the Normandy beaches. It is also the context for the catastrophic events at Bastogne depicted so graphically in Band of Brothers. 
 
 For military history fans this is one of those touchstone battles of World War Two, written by an author with a world-wide reputation. 
 
With specially commissioned maps, photographs, primary archival material and personal interviews, this is a truly controversial, commercial and landmark book.

Snow and Steel

Battle of the Bulge 1944-45

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