The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

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Gus Caseley-Hayford

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Timbuktu is a clear, simple and authoritative introduction to the land once considered one of the most important trading cities of the medieval world. 
 
Written by curator and cultural historian Gus Caseley-Hayford, this book delves into the rise of the largest empire in West Africa and what made Timbuktu the most significant Saharan desert-port of the age. 
 
You'll see the Mali Empire in its golden age, teeming with riches, scholars and trade. A history steeped in magicians, epic wars, story-tellers and missing ships. You'll learn what made Timbuktu so notorious and irresistible to the Emperor, and why centuries later it still enchants the Western World with its beauty, wealth, mystery, intellectual excellence and legacy.

Timbuktu: A Ladybird Expert Book

The secrets of the fabled but lost African city

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

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

‘Exquisite in its honesty and truth and resilience, and a necessary chronicle from one of the greatest writers of our time’ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
 
Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the Guardian 
 
When Ngugi wa Thiong’o arrives at the prestigious Makerere University, it embodies all the potential and excitement of the early 1960s. Campus is a haven of opportunity for the brightest African students, a meeting place for thinkers and writers from all over the world, and its alumni are filling Africa’s emerging political and cultural positions. 
 
 Despite the challenges he faces as a young black man in a British colony, it is here that Ngugi begins to find his voice as a playwright, journalist and novelist, writing his first, pivotal works just as the countries of East Africa enter the final stages of their independence struggles.

Birth of a Dream Weaver

A Writer’s Awakening

Brian MacArthur

The twentieth century was a century of idealism and revolution and as never before speeches were crucial in stirring the hearts and minds of millions around the world. 
 
Whether it was Churchill rousing the British to take up arms or the dream of Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro inspiring the Cuban revolution or Salman Rushdie denouncing his fatwa, speeches have made headlines and shaped the way we see ourselves and the larger society. 
 
Gathered here are some of the most extraordinary and memorable speeches of the modern era. Some are well known, others less so, but all, in their way, whether large or small, had a hand in shaping the world that we inhabit now. 
 
This new edition has been updated to include the most significant speeches up to 2017.

The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches

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

Chris Marnewick

*THE GRIPPING NEW DRAMA AS SEEN ON NETFLIX* 
 
South Africa, 1987. Apartheid. When Leon, a white 19-year-old prison guard working on death row commits an inexplicable act of violence, killing seven black men in a hail of bullets, the outcome of the trial - and the court’s sentence - seems a foregone conclusion. 
 
Hotshot lawyer John Weber (played by Steve Coogan) reluctantly takes on the seemingly unwinnable case. A passionate opponent of the death penalty, John discovers that young Leon worked on death row in the nation’s most notorious prison, under traumatic conditions: befriending the inmates over the years while having to assist with their eventual execution. 
 
As the court hearings progress, the case offers John the opportunity to put the entire system of legally sanctioned murder on trial. How can one man take such a dual role of friend and executioner, becoming both shepherd and butcher? Inspired by true events, this is the story that puts the death penalty on trial and changes history.

Shepherds and Butchers

Jack Shenker

'I started reading this and couldn't stop. It's a remarkable piece of work, and very revealing. A stirring rendition of a people's revolution'- Noam Chomsky 
 
'The deepest and most comprehensive account of Egypt's revolution in the English language' - Paul Mason 
 
Egypt is a nation in turmoil, caught in a cycle of revolution and counter-revolution. In The Egyptians: A Radical Story, Jack Shenker uncovers the historical roots of today's unrest and reveals a land divided between two irreconcilable political orders: authoritarian power and grassroots resistance. Challenging conventional analyses that focus only on the battle between Islamists and secular forces, he travels the Arab World's most populous country to explore other, far more important fault lines - the communities waging war against transnational corporations, the people subverting long-established gender norms, the workers seizing control of their factories, and the novelists, graffiti artists and back-alley DJs defying their repressive regime. 
 
Showing that the revolution was no isolated episode but rather part of an ongoing struggle against state authority and economic exclusion, Shenker explains why recent events are so threatening to elites both inside Egypt and abroad. While Egyptian rulers seek to eliminate dissent, seeded within the politics of the young generation are forms of democracy, social justice and resistance that could yet change the world.

The Egyptians

A Radical Story

Craig Bartholomew Strydom

Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman

In the summer of 1972, during a compulsory stint in the South African military, Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman heard the music that would forever change his life. A decade later, on yet another military base, Craig Bartholomew Strydom heard the same music. It would have a profound effect. Who was this folk singer who resonated with South Africa's youth? No one could say. All that anyone knew was his name - Rodriguez - and the fact that he had killed himself on stage after reading his own epitaph. 
 
After many years of searching in a pre-internet age, Strydom with support from Segerman found the musician not dead but alive and living in seclusion in Detroit. Even more remarkable was the fact that Rodriguez, no longer working as a musician and struggling to eke out a blue-collar existence, had no idea that he had been famous for over 25 years in a remote part of the world...

Sugar Man

The Life, Death and Resurrection of Sixto Rodriguez

Rachel Aspden

In 2003, Rachel Aspden arrived in Egypt as a 23-year-old trainee journalist. She found a country on the brink of change. Of Egypt's 80 million citizens, two-thirds were under 30. The new generation were stifled, broken and frustrated – caught between a dictatorship with nothing to offer them and autocratic parents still clinging to tradition and obedience after a lifetime of fear. 
 
In January 2011, the young people’s patience ran out. They thought the revolution that followed would change everything for them. But as violence escalated, the economy collapsed and as the united front against Mubarak shattered into sectarianism, many found themselves wavering, hesitant to discard the old ways. 
 
What happens when a revolution unravels? 
 
Why is a generation raised on Hollywood movies and global brand names turning to religion? 
 
How do you choose between sex and tradition, consumerism and faith? 
 
Why would people who once chanted for freedom support a military state? 
 
And where will the next generation take the Middle East? 
 
Following the stories of four young Egyptians – Amr the atheist software engineer, Amal the village girl who defied her family and her entire community, Ayman the one-time religious extremist and Ruqayah the would-be teenage martyr – Generation Revolution unravels the complex forces shaping the lives of young people caught between tradition and modernity, and what their stories mean for the future of the Middle East.

Generation Revolution

On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East

Jonny Steinberg

When Asad was eight years old, his mother was shot in front of him. With his father in hiding, he was swept alone into the great wartime migration that has scattered the Somali people throughout the world. 
 
This extraordinary book tells Asad’s story. Serially betrayed by the people who promised to care for him, Asad lived his childhood at a sceptical remove from the adult world, living in a bewildering number of places, from the cosmopolitan streets of inner-city Nairobi to towns deep in the Ethiopian desert. 
 
By the time he reached the cusp of adulthood, Asad had made good as a street hustler, brokering relationships between hardnosed Ethiopian businessmen and bewildered Somali refugees. He also courted the famously beautiful Foosiya, and married her, to the astonishment of his peers. 
 
Buoyed by success in work and in love, Asad put $1,200 in his pocket and made his way down the length of the African continent to Johannesburg, whose streets he believed to be lined with gold. So began an adventure in a country richer and more violent than he could possibly have imagined. A Man of Good Hope is the story of a person shorn of the things we have come to believe make us human – personal possessions, parents, siblings. And yet Asad’s is an intensely human life, one suffused with dreams and desires and a need to leave something of permanence on this earth.

A Man of Good Hope

One Man's Extraordinary Journey from Mogadishu to Tin Can Town

Mary Kingsley

Until 1893, Mary Kingsley lived the typical life of a single Victorian woman, tending to sick relatives and keeping house for her brother. However, on the death of her parents, she made an extraordinary decision: with no prior knowledge of the region, she set out on a solo trip to West Africa. Her subsequent book, published in 1897, describes dangerous treks and deadly animals with enormous humour and verve, and has stood the test of time as a classic travel narrative by a woman whose sense of adventure and fascination with Africa transformed her whole life.

Travels in West Africa

Chris Froome

The biggest cycling book of the decade - the Sunday Times bestselling autobiography from the three time winner of the Tour de France, Chris Froome 
 
THREE TIME WINNER OF THE TOUR DE FRANCE 
 
WINNER OF THE GIRO D'ITALIA! 
 
THE FIRST MAN SINCE BERNARD HINAULT TO HOLD THE MAGLIA ROSA, THE MAILLOT JAUNE AND THE MAILLOT ROJO AT THE SAME TIME. 
 
This is Chris Froome in his own words. 
 
Taking a third Yellow Jersey was a staggering achievement. This memoir shows just how remarkable it was, given the uphill struggle Froome faced. Growing up in Kenya, biking down mile after mile of dusty road, and staying in a humble tin hut, he developed a fierce passion and determination to win. 
 
The road to Europe was long, gruelling and filled with setbacks - but it prepared him for teamwork as a domestique and then the leap to leader of Team Sky and a shot at winning the Tour de France. In The Climb, written with the renowned investigative reporter David Walsh, he vividly recounts the struggles, the rivalries, the battles, the comebacks. Finally he traces his path to triumph and his mission to help clean up cycling. 
 
Inspiring and exhilarating, it will leave you ready to face your own challenges in life, whatever they may be. 
 
 
'Engaging, vividly evoked' Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 
 
'What Chris has done is phenomenal' Sir Chris Hoy

The Climb

The Autobiography

Rian Malan

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
In '70s' South Africa, Rian Malan – descendant of the architects of apartheid, middle-class white boy, friend to blacks – went to work as a crime reporter for a local Johannesburg rag. There he encountered first-hand the horrors wrought by apartheid: the poverty, injustice and violence. After an eight-year exile, he returned to write this book. With gripping stories and in mesmerising prose, this is Malan’s attempt to understand his country, its racial hatred, and his own tortured conscience.

My Traitor's Heart

Blood and Bad Dreams: A South African Explores the Madness in His Country, His Tribe and Himself

David Belton

'Tremendous. A moving and haunting tribute to the human spirit' WILLIAM BOYD 
 
Into the heart of a genocide that left a million people dead 
 
6 April 1994: In the skies above Rwanda the president’s plane is shot down in flames. 
 
Near Kigali, Jean-Pierre holds his family close, fearing for their lives as the violence escalates. 
 
 In the chapel of a hillside village, missionary priest Vjeko Curic prepares to save thousands of lives 
 
The mass slaughter that follows – friends against friends, neighbours against neighbours - is one of the bloodiest chapters in history 
 
 
Twenty years on, BBC Newsnight producer David Belton, one of the first journalists into Rwanda, tells of the horrors he experienced at first-hand. Now following the threads of Jean-Pierre and Vjeko Curic’s stories, he revisits a country still marked with blood, in search of those who survived and the legacy of those who did not. This is David Belton's quest for the limits of bravery and forgiveness.

When The Hills Ask For Your Blood: A Personal Story of Genocide and Rwanda

Kuki Gallmann

Africa evokes a deep sense of mystery. It is a place that retains what most of the world has lost: space, roots, traditions, awesome beauty, true wilderness, rare animals, and extraordinary people. In this wonderful and haunting collection of stories, Kuki Gallmann writes of her life in Africa, where every day brings challenge and adventure. 
 
African Nights is a treasury of memories, in which fascinating people and places are brought to life. It he healing powers Africa can have on those who embrace the land as a place of mystery, superstition, danger, and beauty.

African Nights

Paul Theroux

Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa and Namibia, to Botswana, then on into Angola, heading for the Congo, in search of the end of the line. 
 
Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the intineraries of tourists and the hopes of post-colonial independence movements. After the Cape Town townships, the Namibian bush and the browsing cattle of the great sunbaked heartland of the savannah, he crosses "the Red Line" into a different Africa: of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs and anarchy. 
 
A final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers, The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux's ultimate safari.

The Last Train to Zona Verde

Overland from Cape Town to Angola

David Abulafia

For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is the story of the sea that has shaped much of world history.

The Great Sea

A Human History of the Mediterranean

James Fergusson

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2014 AND THE PADDY POWER POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS BOOK OF THE YEAR. 
 
Award-winning journalist James Fergusson is among the few to have witnessed at first hand the devastating reality of life in the failed and desperate state of Somalia. 
 
This corner of the world has long been seen as the rotting and charred heart of Africa: a melting pot of crime, corruption, poverty, famine and civil war. And in recent years, whilst Somalia’s lucrative piracy industry has grabbed the headlines, a darker, much deeper threat has come of age: the Al Qaida-linked militants Al Shabaab, and the dawn of a new phase in the global war on terror. 
 
Yet, paradoxically, Somalia’s star is brightening, as forms of business, law enforcement and local politics begin to establish themselves, and members of the vast Somali diaspora return to their homeland. 
 
Fergusson takes us to the heart of the struggle, meeting everyone from politicians, pirates, extremists and mercenaries to aid workers, civilians and refugees. He gives a unique account of a country ravaged by war, considers what the future might hold for a generation who have grown up knowing little else and exposes the reality of life in this hard, often forgotten land.

The World's Most Dangerous Place

Inside the Outlaw State of Somalia

During the early fifties, Kenya was a country in turmoil. While Ngugi enjoys scouting trips, chess tournaments and reading about Biggles at the prestigious Alliance School near Nairobi, things are changing at home. He arrives back for his first visit since starting school to find his house razed to the ground and the entire village moved up the road closer to a guard checkpoint. Later, his brother, Good Wallace, who fights for the rebels, is captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. Finally, Ngugi  himself comes into conflict with the forces of colonialism when he is victimised by a police officer on a bus journey and thrown in prison for six days. This fascinating memoir charts the development of a significant voice in international literature, as well as standing as a record of the struggles of a nation to free itself.

In the House of the Interpreter

A Memoir

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

Julian Thompson

Imperial War Museum

‘Between Friday and Monday we never slept at all. Everyone’s face was one mass of sand … The guns were so hot, all the paint had gone’ Bombardier Ray Ellis 
 
Had the Allies lost in North Africa, Rommel’s Afrika Korps would have swept through the Middle East, cutting the vital supply line through the Suez Canal to Australia and India, and taking the oilfields of the Persian Gulf. Britain would have been isolated, without oil, and unable to fight. 
 
These historic battles of 1940–1943 were fought over vast distances on rugged terrain, with supply lines often stretched to breaking point. It was here that David Stirling formed the SAS to perform audacious sabotage missions, and the Long Range Desert Group collected intelligence from behind enemy lines. 
 
This is the story of the Allies’ first victory against Hitler’s army, told in the voices of the men who were there, which proved that the seemingly unstoppable Germans could be beaten.

Forgotten Voices Desert Victory

Gus Casely-Hayford

For many of us the history of Africa is, at best, vague. We might think of Egyptian pyramids, legendary queens (of Sheba or Cleopatra) and Zulu warriors. The truth, however, is one of remarkably diverse, creative, culturally rich civilisations. In this book, which accompanies an 8-part BBC series, Gus Casely-Hayford takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of this remarkable continent. We will encounter archaeological sites of staggering beauty that rival the Great Wall of China, vast and ancient universities that predate Oxford and Cambridge, kingdoms of extraordinary wealth, artistic traditions that still inspire artists today, great religious sites that surpass the Vatican, and a country with more pyramids than Egypt. 
 
In recent years new archaeological and anthropological research has opened up the study of African history in ways previously unimaginable. Long-lost kingdoms are suddenly being brought back to life. Civilisations that had faded into myth are revealing their secrets. Using this latest research, Gus Casely-Hayford is able to tell the history of Africa's major kingdoms in an entirely new, colourful and richly-informed way. 
 
Accessible and inspiring, The Lost Kingdoms of Africa is both a major addition to our understanding of this oft-overlooked history and a source of genuine delight and wonder.

The Lost Kingdoms of Africa

Adrian Fort

Archibald Wavell was born a few years before Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and died shortly after the end of the Second World War (1883-1950). During that time the country in which he was born and brought up in changed beyond recognition, undergoing a fundamental revision in the attitudes, expectations, prejudices and hopes of the British people. His life epitomises that of a generation of famous men whose education and upbringing equipped them for a future that was to prove an illusion. 
 
At seventeen, Archibald Wavell joined the army and as a young officer saw action in the Boer War and on the North West Frontier.In the Great War, he was often close to the greatest generals in the British Army; he fought in the trenches, was decorated for bravery and lost an eye. Between the wars his career included command of troops attempting to keep the peace in Palestine as revolt engulfed the country. His victorious campaigns early in the Second World War attracted a blaze of public admiration and renown; but he also tasted defeat and rejection, both in Africa and from 1941 as commander-in-chief of Allied forces in India, wilting before the Japanese onslaught in Burma and Singapore. In 1943 he was appointed Viceroy of India, where he took on the task of guiding that country's destiny as it crossed the brink of Empire into the turmoil of independence.

Archibald Wavell

The Life and Times of an Imperial Servant

Saul David

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is Saul David's compelling examination of one of history's greatest battles. 
 
On 22nd January, at Isandlwana in Zululand, South-East Africa, the British Army suffered one of the worst defeats in its history. A camp of 1,700 men, armed with state-of-the-art weapons and two artillery pieces, was surprised and overwhelmed by a huge Zulu army equipped with only spears. It became the seminal battle of the Zulu War, an ill-conceived, incompetently executed and fruitless campaign for the British. 
 
In this Penguin Short, Saul David presents a concise, devastating and utterly gripping account of the most brutal of battles that will transport you to the plains of Africa and the cauldron of war, and all for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

Great Battles: The Battle of Isandlwana

The Great Zulu Victory of 1879

Romeo Dallaire

In conflicts around the world, there is an increasingly popular weapon system that needs negligible technology, is simple to sustain, has unlimited versatility, and an incredible capacity for both loyalty and barbarism. What are these cheap, renewable, plentiful, sophisticated, and expendable weapons? Children. 
 
This important book is part of a passionate personal mission against the use of child soldiers, by the three-star general who commanded the UN mission in Rwanda. 
 
When Romeo Dallaire was tasked with achieving peace there in 1994, he and his force found themselves caught up in a vortex of civil war and genocide. He left Rwanda a broken man, disillusioned, suicidal, a story he told in the award-winning international sensation Shake Hands with the Devil. 
 
Now, in They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, Dallaire provides an emotionally daring and intellectually enlightening introduction to the child soldier phenomenon, as well as concrete solutions for its total eradication. 
 
Dallaire speaks up for those without a voice - children in conflicts around the globe who do not choose to fight, but who through ill-fate and the accident of birth find their way into soldiering. This is a book that addresses one of the most harrowing, urgent and important issues of our time.

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

Elspeth Huxley

In this marvelous anthology, Elspeth Huxley, our best and most popular writer on Africa, has drawn on her unparalleled knowledge of Kenya and its literature to present a fully rounded portrait of one of the most fascinating countries in the world. In nine sections focusing on exploration, travel, settlement, war, hunting, wildlife, environment, life-styles, and legend and poetry, using only first-hand accounts, she guides the reader through the story of Kenya from AD100 to the present with her characteristic candour and directness.

Nine Faces Of Kenya

Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born the fifth child of his father's third wife, in a family that includes twenty-four children born to four different mothers. He spent his 1930s childhood as the apple of his mother's eye, before attending school to slake what is considered a bizarre thirst for learning. 
 
As he grows up, the wider political and social changes occurring in Kenya begin to impinge on the boy's life in both inspiring and frightening ways. Through the story of his grandparents and parents, and his brothers' involvement in the violent Mau Mau uprising, Ngugi deftly etches a tumultuous era, capturing the landscape, the people and their culture, and the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war.

Dreams in a Time of War

Adrian Tinniswood

From the coast of Southern Europe to Morocco and the Ottoman states of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Christian and Muslim seafarers met in bustling ports to swap religions, to battle and to trade goods and sales - raiding as far as Ireland and Iceland in search of their human currency.Studying the origins of these men, their culture and practices, Adrian Tinniswood expertly recreates the twilight world of the corsairs and uncovers a truly remarkable clash of civilisations 
 
Drawing on a wealth of material, from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, as well as recent Islamic accounts, Pirates of Barbary provides a new perspectives of the corsairs and a fascinating insight into what it meant to sacrifice all you have for a life so violent, so uncertain and so alien that it sets you apart from the rest of mankind.

Pirates Of Barbary

Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean

Laurens Van Der Post

Laurens van der Post was fascinated and appalled at the fate of this remarkable people.  Ostracised by all the changing face of African cultural life they retreated deep into the Kalahari desert. His fascinating attempt to capture their way of life and the secrets of their ancient heritage provide captivating reading and a unique insight into a forgotten way of life.

The Lost World of the Kalahari

With 'The Great and the Little Memory'

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

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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