Alex Kirk grew up in the seaside town of Cleethorpes, which has brilliant beaches and the best fish and chips in the entire world. 
 
He has worked in a fish finger factory, as a plumber, a gardener, an English teacher, and for the last twenty-five years as a screenwriter, actor and comedian. Alex has written comedy shows for both radio and television, as well as being part of the writing team behind the wonderful Paddington 2 and Wonka. As an actor he has appeared in many TV productions such as My Family, Fresh Meat, The Detectorists and Coronation Street. 
 
He now lives in London with his family and a cat called Jonesey. This is his very first book.

Alex Kirk

Alex Laird is a medical herbalist with more than 20 years' experience. Trained in biomedicine and plant pharmacology, she treats patients in the only NHS herbal clinic based in a UK hospital at Whipps Cross. Alex is a visiting lecturer, and has published clinical research, and is the co-founder of the charity Living Medicine.

Alex Laird

Alex Latimer is an author and illustrator living in Cape Town, which is why he regularly has to shoo baboons out of his lounge. 
 
Alex's book Lion VS Rabbit won the Hampshire Picture Book Award 2014

Alex Latimer

Alex Livingston

Alex Manson-Smith is a journalist and copywriter. She has written lifestyle features for The Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Evening Standard and Observer, as well as award-winning commercials for Google, YouTube and Nike.

Alex Manson-Smith

Alex Marshall grew up in the area where London sinks into Essex. He's an award-winning journalist who has been writing about music and politics for over a decade, and who has been published in the Guardian and by the BBC, amongst others. He started investigating national anthems back in 2008. This is his first book.

Alex Marshall

Alex Maunder

Alex McBride is a criminal barrister. He is the author of the 'Common Law' column in Prospect magazine and has contributed to the New Statesman and various BBC programmes, including From Our Own Correspondent.

Alex McBride

Alex McCarthy was born in Cardiff and grew up in South Wales. An alumna of London Contemporary Dance School, she worked as a dancer and choreographer for a number of years on stage, TV and film. In 2017, following a career change and several years of writing, Alex began to write this novel. She has a daughter and stepdaughter, and lives in Wales.

Alex McCarthy

Alex Michaelides was born in Cyprus to an English mother and a Greek-Cypriot father. He has an M.A. in English from Trinity College, Cambridge University, and an M.A. in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. 
 
The Silent Patient, his first novel, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and debuted at no. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and has sold more than 7.5 million copies worldwide. The rights have been sold in a record-breaking 50 countries and it has been optioned for film by Plan B. His second novel, The Maidens, was an instant Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for television by Miramax Television and Stone Village. His third thriller, The Fury, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Sunday Times bestseller, and a Waterstones Thriller of the Month pick.

Alex Michaelides

Alex Montgomery

Alex Morris

Alex North was born in Leeds, where he now lives with his wife and son. He studied Philosophy at Leeds University, and prior to becoming a writer he worked there in their sociology department. The Whisper Man was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, and is being published in more than 30 languages.

Alex North

Alex O. Imas is Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago School’s Booth School of Business. He is the recipient of the 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Review of Financial Studies Rising Scholar Award, the New Investigator Award from the Behavioral Science and Policy Association, the Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award from the Society of Judgment and Decision Making, the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award, and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Behavioral Economics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Alex O. Imas

Alex Owen

Alex Patrick was born in the Kentish town of Dartford in the South-East of England and has been drawing for as long as he can remember. His lifelong love for cartoons, picture books and comics has shaped him into the passionate children’s illustrator he is today. Alex loves creating original characters - he brings an element of fun and humour to each of his illustrations and is often found laughing to himself as he draws.

Alex Patrick

Alex Pavesi lives in Surrey, where he writes full time. He previously worked as a software engineer and before that obtained a PhD in Mathematics. He enjoys puzzles, long walks and recreational lock picking. His debut novel Eight Detectives has been published in more than twenty languages, and was picked by the Sunday Times and the New York Times as one of their books of the year.

Alex Pavesi

Alex Pellew

Alex Pole

Alex Renton is an award-winning writer and reporter whose career has ranged from theatre criticism, food writing and the investigation of child abuse to work as a political correspondent and war reporter in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is also the author of Planet Carnivore and Blood Legacy.

Alex Renton

Alex Richie

Alex Riley is an award-winning science writer and the author of A Cure for Darkness: The Story of Depression and How We Treat It, his first book. He received a best feature award at the 2019 Association of British Science Writers Awards for his reporting on The Friendship Bench, a project that began in Zimbabwe in 2006 and has since provided mental health care to thousands of people in New York. Since leaving academia in 2015, he began writing popular science articles for magazines such as New Scientist, PBS's NOVA Next, BBC Future, Mosaic Science, Aeon, and Nautilus Magazine. He lives in Bristol.

Alex Riley

Alex Scarrow used to be a rock guitarist, then he became a graphic artist, then he decided to be a computer games designer. Finally, he grew up and became an author. He has written a number of successful thrillers and several screenplays, but it's YA fiction that has allowed him to really have fun with the ideas and concepts he was playing around with designing games. Alex lives in Norwich.

Alex Scarrow

Alex Scott MBE is an award-winning broadcaster and former professional footballer. She helped Arsenal in their historic 'quadruple' season, in which they won all of their trophy competitions, and was later appointed as the team's captain. She represented England in 140 appearances with the Lionesses, retiring as the second most-capped England player across the men's and women's game. 
 
Alex is one of the UK's most in-demand presenters, appearing on The One Show, Children in Need, Sport Relief and ITV's The Games. In 2021, she made history as the first permanent female host of BBC's Football Focus. She is an ambassador for the BBC's mental health platform, Headspace, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of East London and University of Hertfordshire.

Alex Scott

Alex Sharp

Alex Shearer

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, PhD, has spent two decades studying people, technology, and the worlds they make. A Silicon Valley-based futurist and consultant, he has worked with governments and Fortune 500 companies; spoken at venues ranging from CIA headquarters to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Googleplex; and held academic positions at Stanford and Oxford universities. His is the author of the bestselling Rest and Shorter, a guide for companies on how to work less and get more done. Follow @askpang on Twitter and Instagram, or visit strategy.rest.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Alex Stone

Alex Tapscott

Alex Thompson

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Terry Brighton

'They should put Montgomery and Patton and Rommel in the same ring and take off the gloves and let 'em go at it' Bill Mauldin, American GI 
 
In the Second World War, Great Britain, the United States and Germany each had one commander who stood out from the rest: Bernard Montgomery, George Patton and Erwin Rommel. In Masters of Battle, all three are 'put in the same ring' and allowed to 'go at it' against a backdrop of the great armoured battles of North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and Italy, the Normandy landings and the push through France and Belgium into Germany. 
 
Through the mutual respect of the arch-enemies Monty and Rommel, and the mutual animosity of the allies Monty and Patton, Masters of Battle presents the Second World War as it was experienced by its three most flamboyant, controversial and influential commanders.

Masters of Battle

Monty, Patton and Rommel at War

Samuel. D Kassow

In the Autumn of 1940 the Jews of Warsaw were forced into a crowded ghetto, enduring unimaginable conditions until most were killed. Yet, amid this, one man, Emanuel Ringelblum, started an extraordinary clandestine organization dedicated to recording life under Nazi occupation. His aim: to ensure that, if he died, his people's history would still be written. 
 
Codenamed Oyneg Shabes, this underground group painstakingly gathered together an archive of some 35,000 documents - letters, poems, photographs, personal testimonies, menus, sketches, songs and official papers - which was buried in tin boxes and milk bottles just before the ghetto was razed to the ground. This secret cache lay deep beneath the rubble for years, long after most of the Oyneg Shabes's members had perished, until one of the few survivors led the way to its secret location. 
 
Only now can the story of this incredible historical record, and the people behind it, be fully told. It is a testament to an extraordinary act of defiance in the face of tyranny, and to the triumph of history.

Who Will Write Our History?

Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto

Michael Braddick

The sequence of civil wars that ripped England apart in the seventeenth century was one of the most devastating conflicts in its history. It destroyed families and towns, ravaged the population and led many, both supporters of Charles I and his opponents, to believe that England&rsquo;s people were being punished by a vengeful God. 
 
This masterly new history illuminates what it was like to live through a time of terrifying violence, religious fervour and radical politics. Michael Braddick describes how pamphleteers, armies, iconoclasts, witch-hunters, Levellers, protestors and petitioners were all mobilized in the chaos, as they fought over new ways to imagine their world.

God's Fury, England's Fire

A New History of the English Civil Wars

Julian Norridge

Long before Drake refused to interrupt his game of bowls when the Armada was sighted, the British have had a passionate relationship with sport. Julian Norridge goes through the stories of fourteen major sports from cricket to boxing to football, from their very beginning and throughout the British Isles, whether it&rsquo;s Welsh inventor and tobacco enthusiast Major Walter Clopton Wingfield coming up with a game that could use those new fangled rubber balls (modern tennis) or the Scots inventing the golf club &ndash; 500 years after the game. 
 
But this is far more than a book about sport, it takes a very funny, very British look at our popular history, mythology and most importantly the highly eccentric figures that made it. It chronicles the constant battle between fair play and gambling; between advances in the game and plain cheating (such as turning up with a cricket bat wider than the wicket). 
 
Can We Have Our Balls Back Please? proves that there is an awful lot to be proud of in our history and where that strange feeling of superiority really comes from. It shows why we get just so excited when we take on any other nation in any sporting event and are so disappointed when we lose...

Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?

How the British Invented Sport

Henry Kamen

Spain has had a long history of exiles. Since the destruction of the last Muslim territories in Granada in 1492, wave after wave of its people have been driven from the country. 
 
The Disinherited paints a vivid picture of Spain&rsquo;s diverse exiles, from Muslims, Jews and Protestants to Liberals, Socialists and Communists, artists, writers and musicians. Kamen describes the ways in which many of these expelled citizens have shaped Spanish culture &ndash; or impoverished it by leaving &ndash; and enriched their adopted homes through their creative responses to exile and to encounters with new worlds, Picasso, Mir&oacute;, Dali and Bu&ntilde;uel among them. Henry Kamen&rsquo;s compelling and sympathetic account tells the story of their incalculable impact on the world.

The Disinherited

The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture

Ruth Harris

Lourdes was at the very centre of nineteenth century debates on religion, science and medicine.   Both the Church and secularists championed the 'miracle' town as crucial in shaping how society should think about the mind, body and spirit.  Since the &lsquo;visions&rsquo; of Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 transformed the quiet Pyrenean town into an international tourist and pilgrimage destination, it has been a site for controversy.  In her well-crafted and carefully researched book, Harris deftly places Lourdes and its attendant spiritual movement firmly at the centre of French history and shows its significance in the country&rsquo;s development.

Lourdes

Body And Spirit in the Secular Age

Elie Wiesel

Marion Wiesel

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor&rsquo;s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.

Night

Orlando Figes

Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.

The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

Charles Esdaile

No other soldier has provoked as much anger or as much fervour as Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he a monster, driven on by an endless, ruinous quest for military adventure &ndash; or was he a social and political visionary, brought down by petty reactionaries clinging to their privileges? 
 
Charles Esdaile&rsquo;s major new work reframes our understanding of Napoleon. Napoleon&rsquo;s Wars looks beyond the insatiable greed for glory to create a new, genuinely international context for Napoleon&rsquo;s career. The battles themselves Esdaile sees as almost side-effects, the consequences of rulers being willing to take the immense risks of fighting or supporting Napoleon &ndash; risks that could result in the extinction of entire countries and regimes.

Napoleon's Wars

An International History, 1803-1815

Rachel Lichtenstein

Brick Lane today is a place of extremes &ndash; a street that's constantly reinventing itself. Blending history and reportage with personal testimony and urban myths, and interspersing these with maps and photography, On Brick Lane is a one-of-a-kind chronicle of one of London's most remarkable streets. 
 
Bringing to life the memories and realities of Brick Lane's many communities, Rachel Lichtenstein harnesses the voices of the famous, the infamous and the obscure, merging memoir, reportage, poetry, photography and local history. The result is as vibrant and fascinating as the neighbourhood it so movingly celebrates.

On Brick Lane

Peter Clarke

'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.' 
 
Winston Churchill's famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously proclaimed his loyalty to the world-wide institution which he had served devotedly for most of his life. The majority of the British people, who believed they were fighting the war to beat the Germans and preserve the Empire, shared his view. Yet less than five years after Churchill's trenchant speech, and despite - apparently - winning the war, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian Independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. How did this rapid change of fortune come about? 
 
In January 1945, just before the conference at Yalta between Churchill, Stalin and Truman, where the disposition of so much of the post-war world was made, Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India wrote in his diary: 'I wonder if the Prime Minister, who is the biggest man of the three, will still be able to assert his dominant personality. A great triumph if he can, the oldest man of the three, with the weakest hand to play.' Peter Clarke's book is the first to analyse in detail the losing hand which Britain was dealt in the last year of the war, and then to see how that hand was played over the next two years by Churchill's successors. Its originality lies in the detailed narrative which shows how military, political and economic developments bore down upon each other. It makes superb use of the copious letters and diaries now available of the major participants and many involved observers to show how decisions were taken, and of contemporary newspaper reports and contemporary witnesses to show how those decisions were received: it recreates both the geopolitics and the atmosphere of the period. Not least, it analyses dispassionately the role of the USA: how Roosevelt and his successors were determined that Britain must be sustained both during the war and after, but that the British Empire must not; and how the tension between Allied war aims, suppressed while the fighting was going on, became rapidly apparent when it stopped. The book thus also describes the short pivotal period when American influence finally took over from the British in world politics.

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire

The Demise of a Superpower, 1944-47

Brendan Simms

This highly original, extremely enjoyable book tells the story of Britain&rsquo;s extraordinary scramble to world power in the 18th century and how, through hubris and incompetence, it lost almost everything it had gained. 
 
Whilst Britain was an important European power, few would have expected her global preeminence by 1760, but as Brendan Simms shows with great flair and originality, Britain had a crucial card to play. It was the joining of the British crown to Hanover that gave Britain two empires: one scattered around the world and another &ndash; the more important of the two - firmly locked into Germany. Having created a new empire Britain then spectacularly lost it, this time because of its chaotic failure to maintain its European alliances. This is an epic and often unexpected story, and Simms tells it brilliantly.

Three Victories and a Defeat

The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783

R F Foster

From 1970, things were changing in Ireland &ndash; the Celtic Tiger had finally woken, and the rules for everything from gender roles and religion to international relations were being entirely rewritten. 
 
Luck and the Irish examines how the country has weathered these last thirty years of change, and what these changes may mean in the long run. R. F. Foster also looks at how characters as diverse as Gerry Adams, Mary Robinson, Charles Haughey and Bob Geldof have contributed to Ireland&rsquo;s altered psyche, and uncovers some of the scandals, corruption and marketing masterminds that have transformed Ireland &ndash; and its luck.

Luck and the Irish

A Brief History of Change, 1970-2000

Norman Stone

'Without question one of the classics of post-war historical scholarship, Stone's boldly conceived and brilliantly executed book opened the eyes of a generation of young British historians raised on tales of the Western trenches to the crucial importance of the Eastern Front in the First World War' Niall Ferguson 'Scholarly, lucid, entertaining, based on a thorough knowledge of Austrian and Russian sources, it sharply revises traditional assumptions about the First World War.' Michael Howard

The Eastern Front 1914-1917

Virginia Nicholson

In 1919 a generation of young women discovered that there were, quite simply, not enough men to go round, and the statistics confirmed it. After the 1921 Census, the press ran alarming stories of the 'Problem of the Surplus Women - Two Million who can never become Wives...'. This book is about those women, and about how they were forced, by a tragedy of historic proportions, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity and their future happiness.

Singled Out

How Two Million Women Survived without Men After the First World War

Christopher Duggan

The greatness of Italy's culture and way of life have had a powerful attraction for many generations of visitors. This has created an overwhelming sense that Italy is a fundamentally benign and easy going country. The Force of Destiny, Christopher Duggan's immensely enjoyable new book, lays waste to this idea. While sharing everyone's enthusiasm for Italy as a place, he strongly distinguishes this from its political role over the past two centuries, which has been both vicious and ruinous for Europe as a whole.

The Force of Destiny

A History of Italy Since 1796

Mark Mazower

Dark Continent is a searching history of Europe's most brutal century. Stripping away the comforting myths and illusions that we have grown up with since the Second World War, Mark Mazower presents an unflinching account of a continent locked in a finely balanced struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambition and national self-determination, liberty and the tyrannies of Right and Left.

Dark Continent

Europe's Twentieth Century

Judith Herrin

For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made possible Europe&rsquo;s transition to the modern world: Byzantium. An audacious and resilient but now little known society, it combined orthodox Christianity with paganism, classical Greek learning with Roman power, to produce a great and creative civilization which for centuries held in check the armies of Islam. 
 
Judith Herrin&rsquo;s concise and compelling book replaces the standard chronological approach of most histories of Byzantium. Instead, each short chapter is focused on a theme, such as a building (the great church of Hagia Sophia), a clash over religion (iconoclasm), sex and power (the role of eunuchs), an outstanding Byzantine individual (the historian Anna Komnene), a symbol of civilization (the fork), a battle for territory (the crusades). In this way she makes accessible and understandable the grand sweeps of Byzantine history, from the founding of its magnificent capital Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 330, to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Byzantium

The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

Duncan Campbell-Smith

Most books on politics and government take a view from the top down. They focus on the individuals and institutions that set policies in place and make the laws. But how are these policies and laws translated into action on the ground, where their success or failure helps determine the day to day running of schools and hospitals, police forces and councils? This is the much less familiar territory explored by Follow The Money. It tells the story of the men and women responsible for keeping track of the money spent locally on public services since the early 1980s. What emerges is a rare behind-the-scenes account of the political world in which central government edicts come up against the reality of how things are made to happen at the grass roots. 
 
Follow The Money shows how the Commission has helped over 25 years to transform the management of public services, including the NHS, while mediating in an often tense relationship between central and local government from the Thatcher era to the years of New Labour. The result, encompassing a string of scandals and battles between town hall and Whitehall, is a compelling narrative for which an accounting qualification is most certainly not required.

Follow the Money

A History of the Audit Commission

Catherine Bailey

Wentworth is in Yorkshire and was surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain andbelonged to the Fitzwilliam family. 
 
It is England's forgotten palace which belonged to Britain's richest aristocrats. Black Diamonds tells the story of its demise: family feuds, forbidden love, class war, and a tragic and violent death played their part. But coal, one of the most emotive issues in twentieth century British politics, lies at its heart. 
 
This is the extraordinary story of how the fabric of English society shifted beyond recognition in fifty turbulent years in the twentieth century.

Black Diamonds

The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty

Ian Kershaw

In 1940 the world was on a knife-edge. 
 
The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined. In Fateful Choices Ian Kershaw re-creates the ten critical decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain chose not to surrender, and December 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe's Jews, showing how these choices would recast the entire course of history.

Fateful Choices

Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941

Tim Blanning

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman 
 
The Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history - from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon), and explores an era of almost unprecedented change, growth and cultural, political and technological ferment that shaped the societies and economies of entire countries.

The Pursuit of Glory

Europe 1648-1815

Tim Harper

Christopher Bayly

This extraordinary book is a vivid, highly original account of the creation of a new Asia after the Second World War - an unstoppable wave of nationalism that swept the British Empire aside.  It tells the definitive story of how India, Pakistan, Burma and Malaysia came into existence and how British interference in Vietnam and Indonesia fatally shaped those countries' futures.

Forgotten Wars

The End of Britain's Asian Empire

Martin Goodman

In AD 70, after a war that had flared sporadically for four years, three Roman legions under the future Emperors Vespasian and his son Titus surrounded, laid siege to, and eventually devastated the city of Jerusalem, destroying completely the magnificent Temple which had been built by Herod only eighty years earlier. What brought about this extraordinary conflict, with its extraordinary consequences? This superb book, by one of the world&rsquo;s leading scholars of the ancient Roman and Jewish worlds, narrates and explains this titanic struggle, showing why Rome&rsquo;s interests were served by this policy of brutal hostility, and how the first generation of Christians first distanced themselves from its Jewish origins and then became increasingly hostile to Jews as their influence spread within the empire. The book thus also provides an exceptional and original account of the origins of anti-Semitism, whose history has had often cataclysmic reverberations down to our own time.

Rome and Jerusalem

The Clash of Ancient Civilizations

Steve Roud

This enthralling book will take you, month-by-month, day-by-day, through all the festivities of English life. From national celebrations such as New Year&rsquo;s Eve to regional customs such as the Padstow Hobby Horse procession, cheese rolling in Gloucestershire and Easter Monday bottle kicking in Leeds, it explains how they originated, what they mean and when they occur. 
 
A fascinating guide to the richness of our heritage and the sometimes eccentric nature of life in England, The English Year offers a unique chronological view of our social customs and attitudes

The English Year

Steven Johnson

In Ghost Map Steven Johnson tells the story of the terrifying cholera epidemic that engulfed London in 1854, and the two unlikely heroes &ndash; anaesthetist Doctor John Snow and affable clergyman Reverend Henry Whitehead &ndash; who defeated the disease through a combination of local knowledge, scientific research and map-making. 
 
In telling their extraordinary story, Johnson also explores a whole world of ideas and connections, from urban terror to microbes, ecosystems to the Great Stink, cultural phenomena to street life. Re-creating a London full of dirt, dust heaps, slaughterhouses and scavengers, Ghost Map is about how huge populations live together, how cities can kill &ndash; and how they can save us.

The Ghost Map

A Street, an Epidemic and the Hidden Power of Urban Networks.

Christopher Tyerman

The story of how a group of warriors, driven by faith, greed and wanderlust, carved out new Christian-ruled states in the Middle East is one of the most extraordinary of all epics. The crusaders' stunning initial success started a sequence of great Crusades, each with its own story, that fundamentally shaped the Christian and Muslim worlds for two centuries, until the last Crusader castles were finally expunged. The energy and commitment that sent army after army into the eastern Mediterranean also led to the invasion and conversion of Central and Baltic Europe, Spain, Portugal, the destruction of the Cathars in Provence and the settlement of America. Told with great verve and authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating but also horrifying story. 
 
&lsquo;We are still living with the images and legends of the crusades&hellip;Tyerman tells us how the Church set about preaching the crusades, exploiting the perennial pessimism and guilt of the European nobility of the Middle Ages. He shows how crusading ideology penetrated the religious sensibility of the period, as well as its secular fiction and poetry&hellip;Of all the modern histories of the crusades it is the shrewdest, the most reliable and the most complete.&rsquo; &ndash; The Spectator

God's War

A New History of the Crusades

Christopher Clark

'Of the "Great Powers" that dominated Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, Prussia is the only one to have vanished ... Iron Kingdom is not just good: it is everything a history book ought to be ... The nemesis of Prussia has cast such a long shadow that German historians have tiptoed around the subject. Thus it was left to an Englishman to write what is surely the best history of Prussia in any language' Sunday Telegraph

Iron Kingdom

The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

Jeremy Paxman

What is the point of Kings and Queens? What do they do all day? And what does it mean to be one of them? 
 
Jeremy Paxman is used to making politicians explain themselves &ndash; but royalty has always been off limits. Until now. In On Royalty he delves deep into the past and takes a long hard look at our present incumbents to find out just what makes them tick. Along the way he discovers some fascinating and little-known details. Such as: 
 
 &bull; how Albania came to advertise in England for a king 
 
&bull; which English queen gave birth in front of 67 people 
 
&bull; how easy it is to beat up future kings of England 
 
&bull; and how meeting the Queen is a bit scary &ndash; whoever you are &hellip; 
 
No other book will tell you quite as much about our kings, queens, princes and princesses: who they are and what they&rsquo;re for.

On Royalty

Simon Jenkins

The history of Britain in the last thirty years, under both Conservative and Labour governments, has been dominated by one figure &ndash; Margaret Thatcher. Her election marked a decisive break with the past and her premiership transformed not just her country, but the nature of democratic leadership. Simon Jenkins analyses this revolution from its beginnings in the turmoil of the 1970s through the social and economic changes of the 1980s. Was Thatcherism a mere medicine for an ailing economy or a complete political philosophy? And did it eventually fall victim to the dogmatism and control which made it possible? This is the story of the events, personalities, defeats and victories which will be familiar to all those who lived through them, but seen through a new lens. It is also an argument about how Thatcher&rsquo;s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. And as the Conservative party reinvents itself as a viable political force once again, is the age of Thatcher finally over?

Thatcher and Sons

A Revolution in Three Acts

Inspector Maigret

DI Tony McLean of the Lothian and Borders Police knows Edinburgh like the back of his hand - an invaluable advantage when simultaneously pursuing depraved and dangerous criminals, and dodging overbearing superiors. Alongside a few trusted colleagues like DS 'Grumpy Bob' Laird and DS Kirsty Ritchie, McLean is an unorthodox force to be reckoned with . . .

Inspector McLean

Inspector Sejer

Inspector Taleb Series

Inspector Webb

Instinct Series

Intercrime

Invisible Series

Irish Classics

Iron Seas

Charismatic, handsome, and fiercely loyal, Isaac Bell is a no-nonsense private detective at the Von Dorn Detective Agency. Travelling all over early 20th century America in pursuit of justice for his clients, chasing down a steam train in a sports automobile is all in a day's work for Bell. And while he's on the trail of thieves, killers, and sometimes much worse, he'll have to use his every last wit to stay ahead of those he seeks, and to stay alive. . .

Isaac Bell

Witness the political struggles and tragedies of Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand and their children as ambitions take over in a time of civil war.

Isabella & Ferdinand Trilogy

It's Time to...

Izzy Dobson

I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again

Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery series is not for the faint-hearted. 
DI Jack Caffery specialises in the most gruesome, twisted and terrifying crimes. Against the clock to find the killer before the next murder is committed, Caffery is young, unshockable and driven.

Jack Caffery

Jack Reacher is a former major in the US Military Police who, since leaving the army, has drifted round the wide open spaces of America, hitchhiking or on buses, wherever the whim takes him. He has no permanent address, no job, no family ties, no car, no luggage, no mobile phone, no credit card - all he carries with him is a folding toothbrush. 
Reacher is never looking for trouble, but somehow trouble always find him. He is the ultimate hero for our troubled times, with a keen moral compass and sense of justice, even if he is often prepared to take the law into his own hands: he says he doesn't want to put the world to rights, he just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs.

Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher Short Stories

Jack Ryan

Jack Ryan Jr

Jack Slater

Jack Stalwart

Jack Tanner

Jack and Millie

Jackson Brodie is a private investigator, originally from Yorkshire. A former soldier and policeman he now makes his money working from investigating infidelity and finding missing cats. Jackson's tough-guy exterior belies a deeply empathetic heart. He's unable to resist coming to the rescue and increasingly he becomes a magnet for the bereaved, the lost and the dysfunctional. His ability to connect comes from his own tragic childhood that still haunts him. 
 
Jackson Brodie has appeared in four of Kate Atkinson's novels. Each can be read in isolation but are best enjoyed in order of publication: Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News?, Started Early, Took My Dog.

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