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.

Joseph Delaney

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James Poskett

In this major retelling of the history of science from 1450 to the present day, James Poskett explodes the myth that science began in Europe. 
 
The blinkered Western gaze focusing on individual 'genius' - Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - was only one part of the story. The reality was an utterly global, non-linear pattern of cross-fertilization, competition, cooperation and outright conflict. Each rupture in history carved fresh channels for global exchange. 
 
Here, for the first time, Poskett celebrates how scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific were integral to this very human story. We meet Graman Kwasi, the African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria; Hantaro Nagaoka, the Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom; and Zhao Zhongyao, the Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter.

Horizons

A Global History of Science

Chinua Achebe

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War. For more than forty years Achebe was silent on those terrible years, until he produced this towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events. A marriage of history, remembrance, poetry and vivid first-hand observation, There Was a Country is a work of wisdom and compassion from one of the great voices of our age.

There Was a Country

A Personal History of Biafra

John Bierman

Who was the real 'English patient'? The desert explorer Laszlo Almasy, on whom the character was loosely based, was very different from the romantic hero of the prize-winning novel anmd multiple Oscar-winning movie of that name. But a similar aura of mystery surrounds them both. While the fictional Almasy gave the Germans his desert maps only because he was desperate to keep a promise to his dying mistress, the real-life Almasy worked for Germany military intelligence only because he was desperate for the chance to return to the desert he loved more than anything or anybody else. Or so John Bierman implies in this arresting and carefully-researched biography. Among its many unexpected revelations is that far from being the love of his friend's wife, Almasy was a homosexual with no interest at all in the opposite sex. Nor was he really a count, although he was born into the minor Hungarian nobility. In short, the real-life Almasy remains an enigma. For instance there is good reason to believe that he became a double agent working for both sides in World War II - and compelling evidence that he spied for British intelligence during the Cold War.

The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy

The Real English Patient

Daniel Bergner

In this moving and unforgettable narrative journalist Daniel Bergner travels into the heart of Sierra Leone, a country torn apart by war. This is the story of the people he encounters in a realm of fire and jungle as they rebuild their lives: Lamin, who lost his hands to save his daughter; Komba, child soldier and sometime cannibal; Neall Ellis, the mercenary pilot with a conscience; Valentine Strasser the embittered ex-dictator; and the Western outsiders trying to save a land of startling beauty and brutality. 
 
Shocking, often heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful, Soldiers of Light is a story of survival and a haunting work of literary reportage.

Soldiers of Light

Candice Millard

At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill believed that to achieve his ambition of becoming Prime Minister he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Although he had put himself in extreme danger in colonial wars in India and Sudan, and as a journalist covering the Spanish-American War in Cuba, glory and fame had eluded him. Churchill arrived in South Africa in 1899 to cover the brutal colonial war against the Boers. Just two weeks after his arrival, he was taken prisoner. Remarkably, he pulled off a daring escape - but then had to traverse hundreds of miles of enemy territory alone. The story of his escape is extraordinary enough, but then Churchill enlisted, returned to South Africa, fought in several battles and ultimately liberated the men with whom he had been imprisoned. Millard tells a magnificent story of bravery, savagery and chance encounters with a cast of historical characters - including Rudyard Kipling, Lord Kitchener and Gandhi - with whom he would later share the world stage, and gives us an unexpected perspective on one of the iconic figures in our history.

Hero of the Empire

The Making of Winston Churchill

Joyce Tyldesley

For over a decade Nefertiti, wife of the heretic king Akhenaten, was the most influential woman in the Bronze Age world; a beautiful queen blessed by the sun-god, adored by her family and worshipped by her people.  Her image and her name were celebrated throughout Egypt and her future seemed golden.  Suddenly Nefertiti disappeared from the royal family, vanishing so completely that it was as if she had never been.  No record survives to detail her death, no monument serves to mourn her passing and to this day her end remains an enigma - her body has never been found.   Joyce Tyldesley here provides a detailed discussion of the life and times of Nefertiti, Egypt's sun queen, set against the background of the ephemeral Amarna court.

Nefertiti

Egypt's Sun Queen

John Reader

Drawing on many years of African experience, John Reader has written a book of startling grandeur and scope that recreates the great panorama of African history, from the primeval cataclysms that formed the continent to the political upheavals facing much of the continent today.  Reader tells the extraordinary story of humankind's adaptation to the ferocious obstacles of forest, river and desert, and to the threat of debilitating parasites, bacteria and viruses unmatched elsewhere in the world. He also shows how the world's richest assortment of animals and plants has helped - or hindered - human progress in Africa.

Africa

A Biography of the Continent

Susan Williams

Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of Botswana and heir apparent to the kingship of the Bangwato people, brought independence and great prosperity to his nation after colonial rule.  But for six long years from 1950, Seretse had been forced into exile in England, banned from his own country.  His crime?  To fall in love and marry a young, white English girl, Ruth Williams.  Delving into newly released records, Susan Williams tells Seretse and Ruth's story - a shocking account of how the British Government conspired with apartheid South Africa to prevent the mixed-race royal couple returning home.  But it is also an inspiring, triumphant tale of hope, courage and true love as with tenacity and great dignity Seretse and Ruth and the Bangwato people ovecome prejudice in their fight for justice.

Colour Bar

The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation

Tom Higham

50,000 years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements - in radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA, for example - that allowed each of these discoveries to be made, enabling us to be more accurate in our predictions about not just how long ago these other humans lived, but how they lived, interacted and live on in our genes today. This is the story of us, told for the first time with its full cast of characters.

The World Before Us

How Science is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins

Richard Miles

The story of Carthage is one of the great epics of the Ancient World. And yet, thanks to the ruthlessness and brutality of the Roman destruction of the city under Scipio in 146 BC, we know relatively little about the city: its foundation, its expansion, its way of life, its literature and gods. Carthage has to all intents and purposes been driven to the margins of history. A tale of battles and empire-building, of bitter rivalry and destruction - and a great civilisation whose role in shaping European culture and history has, until now, been largely ignored.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed

The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

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