A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

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

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Charlie Croker

How long does the average British male spend in the shower? 
 
What is the worst-paid job? 
 
Where are the keenest DIYers in the UK to be found? 
 
Which profession least favours the wearing of ties? 
 
Why are 63% of us too embarrassed to complain about bad food in a restaurant? 
 
Covering everything from food to travel, via gardening and fashion, 8 out of 10 Brits tells you everything you need to know, and much that you don't, about who we are, where we're going, and why - on statistical grounds - we should all consider living in Southend-on-Sea.

8 out of 10 Brits

Intriguing statistics about the world's 79th largest nation

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 
___________________________________ 
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. 
___________________________________ 
'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

Arthur Herman

Mohandas Gandhi and Winston Churchill: India's moral leader and Great Britain's greatest Prime Minister. Born five years and seven thousand miles apart, they became embodiments of the nations they led. Both became living icons, idolized and admired around the world. Today, they remain enduring models of leadership in a democratic society. 
 
Yet the truth was Churchill and Gandhi were bitter enemies throughout their lives. This book reveals, for the first time, how that rivalry shaped the twentieth century and beyond. For more than forty years, from 1906 to 1948, Gandhi and Churchill were locked in a tense struggle for the hearts and minds of the British public, and of world opinion. Although they met only once, their titanic contest of wills would decide the fate of nations, continents, peoples, and ultimately an Empire. 
 
Here is a sweeping epic with a fascinating supporting cast, and a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure - and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.

Gandhi and Churchill

The Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, many proclaimed the start of a new Elizabethan Age. Few had any inkling, however, of the stupendous changes that would take place over the next 50 years, in Britain and around the world. 
 
In Our Times, A.N. Wilson takes the reader on an exhilarating journey from that day to this. With his acute eye not just for the broad social and cultural sweep but also for the telling detail, he brilliantly distils half a century of unprecedented social and political change. 
 
Here are the defining events and characters of the modern age, from the Suez crisis to Vietnam, The Beatles to Princess Diana, the miners' strike to the Cold War. Here are the Angry Young Men, the satirists of Beyond the Fringe, Ruth Ellis and the abolition of hanging, the rise of pop culture and celebrity, industrial unrest and the Winter of Discontent, the Thatcher era and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. This book will propel you from post-war austerity - an age of deference in which men wore hats and women wore gloves - through the alterations in our social landscape to the multi-cultural Britain of today. Despite the appalling tyrannies that have taken place in the world, Wilson argues that in the last fifty years Britain has known a period of prosperity and peace without precedent in its history. 
 
With Our Times, A.N. Wilson triumphantly concludes the acclaimed trilogy which includes The Victorians and After the Victorians. It makes compelling reading for anyone interested in the forces that have shaped our world.

Our Times

James Schefter

On July 21st 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step on the surface of the moon. As he did so, he uttered the immortal words 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' 
 
No achievement defines the modern era more than America's historic moon landing, yet it was the culmination of a decade's long struggle between the Soviet Union and America that epitomised the Cold War. The Race is the definitive history of the battle between the superpowers, from the first Sputnik into space in 1957, through Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight in 1961 to the years of America's Apollo Saturn rocket programme that finally saw the USA snatch the prize from Russia. 
 
This irresistible story is populated by inspired inventors, feuding rocket scientists, extraordinarily brave astronauts and imperturbable mission controllers. It is a tale of blind faith, of a giant leap into the unknown, of national pride and political ambition, and one of the greatest achievement of science and of humanity.

The Race

Kate Williams

Our perception of Victoria the Queen is coloured by portraits of her older, widowed self - her dour expression embodying the repressive morality propagated in her time. But Becoming Queen reveals an energetic and vibrant woman, determined to battle for power. It also documents the Byzantine machinations behind Victoria's quest to occupy the throne, and shows how her struggles did not end when finally the crown was placed on her head. 
 
Laying bare the passions that swirled around the throne in the eighteenth century, Becoming Queen is an absorbingly dramatic tale of secrets, sexual repression and endless conflict. After her lauded biography of Emma Hamilton, England's Mistress, Kate Williams has produced a most original and intimate portrait of Great Britain's longest reigning monarch.

Becoming Queen

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

A dramatic, sparkling tale of sex, glamour, intrigue, romance and heartbreak, England's Mistress traces the rise and rise of the gorgeous Emma Hamilton. 
 
Born into poverty, she clawed her way up through London's underworlds of sex for sale to become England's first media superstar. Nothing could stand in the way of her dreams- except her self-destructive desires. 
 
Drawing on hundreds of previously undiscovered letters, and told with a novelist's flair, England's Mistress captures the relentless drive, innovative style and burning passion of a true heroine. In a world of tabloid fame and three-minute wonders, Emma's life is truly a tale for our time.

England's Mistress

The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton

Angela Lambert

How did a 19 year-old, middle-class, Catholic girl from Munich become Hitler's mistress and what kept him faithful until the end of their lives? Was her appeal sexual, domestic, political -- or did he really love her? 
 
This biography of Eva Braun is the first in English for 40 years. Angela Lambert has dug deep into Eva's background and brought into sharp focus a fascinating and unexpected relationship, hitherto neglected by male historians. 
 
There are more than 700 biographies of Hitler, yet this is the first thorough study of Eva Braun, his secret mistress. Using never before seen family papers and interviews with her surviving cousin, this book will cause a considerable stir. 
 
Illustrated throughout with little-known black and white photographs of life at the Berghof, it sheds new light on the man, the woman and the past.

The Lost Life of Eva Braun

Tom Fort

Tom Fort, whose writing has been variously described as 'jocund', 'slightly loopy', ' unbelievably poignant' and 'deeply peculiar', travels around Britain experiencing some of its extremer climates and some of its more typical with a view to explaining what we make and have made of the British weather and what it has made of us. 
There are two interlocking strands: the story of those who - moved to an exceptional, sometimes obsessive degree by the fascination felt by so many of us - sought to know and understand our weather; and the story of its impact on us - our history, our culture, the way we think and behave.He focuses on the people - the clergymen, the gentlemen of leisure, the crackpots, visionaries, charlatans and shysters, all now largely or utterly forgotten - who volunteered and toiled for the cause, telling their stories by tracking them down to the places - usually their own gardens - where they indulged their quite passion for measuring rainfall, scrutinising dewdrops, tapping their barometers and peering at their thermometers.Once their age - of the amateur scientist - was over, and the business of weather forecasting was annexed by professionals with state backing it became a less colourful affair. 
The historical strand is, in part, a straightforward chronology; an account of the part played by climate in our history; how, when the sun shone and rain fell in gentle abundance, we prospered and multiplied; how, when the climate cooled, bringing wet summers and savage winters, we perished by plague and famine and retreated from places made unbelievable; how in time, as we matured from a rural, peasant society, our weather became less a matter of life and death (though always on absorbing interest).But beyond that there is another dimension to its influence on us - the moral and spiritual one.This is contentious, but intriguing: the extent to which we share as view of 'our weather', and the extent to which it may have shaped us into the people we are.

Under the Weather

Us and the Elements

When this book begins, in the reign of Edward VII, Great Britain commands the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. By the time it ends, with the Coronation of Elizabeth II, Britain has emerged victorious from a world war, but ruined as a world power. How did Britain's power and influence decline? This is one of the questions which A. N. Wilson seeks to answer in his masterly follow-up to The Victorians.

After The Victorians

The World Our Parents Knew

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

Barbie Probert-Wright

Jean Ritchie

Two sisters. A broken childhood. A heartbreaking journey. 
 
The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable ... 
 
In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot. 
 
Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother. For Barbie, twelve years younger, the journey was to be more perilous but, spurred on by her sister's courage and her desperate desire to be reunited with her mother, she joined Eva on a journey no child should ever have to endure. 
 
Over three hundred miles across a country ravaged by a terrible war, they encountered unimaginable hardship, extraordinary courage and overwhelming generosity. Against all the odds, they survived. But neither sister came out of the journey unscathed ...

Little Girl Lost

Richard Leigh

Michael Baigent

Since the seventeenth century, science has been contending with philosophy, organised religion and the arts for domination over Western civilisation and society. By the middle of the twentieth century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and scepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been the so-called occult revival. 
 
In the Elixir and the Stone, Baigent and Leigh argue that this occult revival - and indeed the entire revolution in attitudes which has taken place recently - owes a profound debt to Hermeticism, a body of esoteric teaching which flourished in Alexandria two thousand years ago and which then went underground. The authors trace the history of this intriguing and all-encompassing philosophy - which has much in common with contemporary holistic thought - charting its origin in the Egyptian mysteries, and demonstrating how it continued to exercise enormous influence through the magicians and magi of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 
 
Many remarkable characters feature in the narrative, including the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Elizabethan magus John Dee; prototype of Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest, but he central figure that emerges is that of Faust himself - one of the defining myths of Western civilisation. 
The Elixir and the Stone is a remarkably rich and ambitious book that adds up to a little short of an alternative history of the intellectual world. Perhaps for the first time it puts into their true context those shadowy alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people for centuries. Moreover it offers a way of looking at the world that is in one sense 'alternative', but, in another, deeply historical.

The Elixir And The Stone

The Tradition of Magic and Alchemy

David Cohen

00.23 a.m. August 31st 1997. The Mercedes driven by Henri Paul in which Princess Diana, Dodi Al Fayed and Trevor Rees-Jones were travelling crashes into a pillar in the Alma tunnel in the centre of Paris, killing Paul, Dodi and Diana and seriously injuring Rees Jones. 
 
That much is certain. But little else. 
 
Many people suspected conspiracy from the start. The Establishment dismissed the idea as paranoid. Six years on it is obvious that the true and full story of what happened on the night Diana died has not been told. Now, psychologist and filmmaker David Cohen comes closer to telling what really happened that tragic night than anyone ever has. He is the first person to gain access to and take evidence from the French investigation report, and reveals for the first time much that has been deliberately concealed. 
 
He discloses why the Mercedes was taking the wrong route to Dodi's flat. He uncovers incriminating information about the owner of the infamous white Fiat Uno from French security sources. He reveals Henri Paul's true role on behalf of MI6. Here, for the first time, Cohen reveals startlingly new evidence surrounding the events of that fateful night, and ask s questions which the recently opened enquiry into the accident will have to address

Diana

Death of a Goddess

Christopher Browning

The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed, careful, and comprehensive analysis to date of the descent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews into mass murder: the Holocaust. Arguing that genocide was not a preconceived plan but rather a discovered possibility, Christopher Browning explains how Hitler's decision to murder the Jews en masse emerged in stages and by a process of elimination that gradually foreclosed plans for their expulsion from Europe. Only in the interval between late September and late October 1941 did the desire to "remove" the Jews intersect with the discovery of acceptable means of killing them on a large scale and with the euphoria of expected victory in Russia, all of which followed on from two years of 'race war' and 'racial imperialism' in eastern Europe that prepared 'ordinary Germans' for this fateful task.

The Origins of the Final Solution

Tim Pat Coogan

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

Lynne Olson

Stanley Cloud

Members of the Polish Air Force fought through the defeat of their own country in 1939 and then alongside the French until the fall of France the following year, when they made their varied ways to Britain. There the Poles were among the Royal Air Force's most successful ace pilots. During the Battle of Britain, the pilots of the all-Polish Kosciuszko Squadron - 303 Squadron to the RAF - shot down more German planes than any other squadron. According to Britain's wartime air force minister, without the Polish pilots 'our shortage of trained pilots would have made it impossible to defeat the German air force and so win the Battle'. 
 
This gripping book tells the story of the Polish pilots, who flew and fought for the British RAF in World War Two. It follows five of these pilots from defeat in Poland and France to victory in the Battle of Britain, from their idolisation by the public to the harrowing story of their betrayal, and Poland's, by Britain and the USA as the war came to its closing stages. This is an utterly fascinating story, heroic, inspiring and finally tragic, strikingly well-told.

For Your Freedom and Ours

Tony Benn

Tony Benn is the longest serving MP in the history of the Labour Party. He left Parliament in 2001, after more than half a century in the House of Commons, to devote more time to politics. This volume of his Diaries describes and comments, in a refreshing and honest way, upon the events of a momentous decade including two world wars, a change of government in Britain and the emergence of New Labour, of which he makes clear he is not a member. Tony Benn's account is a well documented, formidable and principled critique of the New Labour Project, full of drama, opinion, humour, anecdotes and sparkling pen-portraits of politicians on both sides of the political divide. But his narrative is also broader and more revealing about day-to-day political life, covering many aspects normally disregarded by historians and lobby correspondents, relating to his work in the constituency, including his advice surgeries. This volume also offers far more of an insight into Tony Benn's personal life, his thoughts about the future and his relationship with his family, especially his remarkable wife Caroline, whose illness and death overshadow these years. Tony Benn is a unique figure on the British political landscape: a true democrat, a passionate socialist and diarist without equal. With this volume, his published Diaries cover British politics for over sixty years. It is edited, as are all others, by Ruth Winstone.

Free At Last

Diaries 1991 - 2001

People, not abstract ideas, make history, and nowhere is this more revealed than in A. N. Wilson's superb portrait of the Victorians, in which hundreds of different lives have been pieced together to tell a story - one which is still unfinished in our own day. The 'global village' is a Victorian village and many of the ideas we take for granted, for good or ill, originated with these extraordinary, self-confident people. What really animated their spirit, and how did they remake the world in their view? In an entertaining and often dramatic narrative, A. N. Wilson shows us remarkable people in the very act of creating the Victorian age.

The Victorians

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

John Humphrys

________________________ 
For decades, John Humphrys has been at the beating heart of the BBC's news division. 
 
From the 9 O'Clock News desk to his marathon 32-year stint on the Today Programme, Humphrys has had a remarkable career as a journalist, steering the coverage of stories and issues that have defined multiple generations of British life. If the country has a pulse, John Humphrys is the man whose finger is firmly on it. 
 
In Devil's Advocate, Humphrys draws on his immense experience to detail the huge, sweeping changes that have overtaken Britain during his career. From the thorny geopolitical questions of the UK's relationship with Europe and America to the subtler ways our national social and moral values have changed, Humphrys sees a deep unease at the heart of a divided union, and identifies what truly links us all: consumer populism. 
 
As our lives and media become increasingly commercialised, the fabric of daily life begins to fray and a growing thoughtlessness and even hysteria emerge in public debate. Our children, growing up online, are losing their innocence at an ever-earlier age. In an age when our control over the world seems to be fraying, Humphrys wonders if we've ever had much say in our destination. 
 
A brilliant and incisive analysis of the changing state of Britain from one of the leading lights of BBC journalism.

Devil's Advocate

Christopher Knight

Robert Lomas

There is now no published theory to explain the enigma of the Turin Shroud that fits the known evidence. Many people want the shroud to be proof of Christ's mission, but Knight and Lomas prove that it is not. The truth behind the shroud is an epic story of pride, greed, powerlust and suffering. It had been prophesised that the Messiah would return shortly after 1230AD. Jacques de Molay was born in 1244, beacame a Templar in 1265 and Grand Master om 1297; the Templars regarded themselves as the guardians of the secret teachings of Jesus. In 1307 Molay was arrested at the instigation of the Pope, who was alarmed at the spread of this influence - and was crucified. Using the latest scientific techniques , the authors prove that the shroud Molay was wrapped in is the one now known as the Turin Shroud.

The Second Messiah

YEARS OF HOPE is a kind of 'prequel' to the published series of DIARIES, and will cover fully the peerage renunciation, as well as revealing his early career, touching on schooldays, RAF service during the war, early involvement with politics etc. As a young man he had dealings with Atlee, Bevan, Morrison, Gaitskill and all the major politicians of the post-war Labour Government. This book will be more personal than earlier volumes and will draw on letters and other documents as well as the DIARIES themselves. It will reveal the extraordinary consistency of Benn's political views, as well as showing how he came to acquire them.

Years Of Hope

Diaries, Letters and Papers 1940-1962

Martin Dillon

___________ 
'This excellent book demands the attention of anyone concerned about civil liberties in the United Kingdom' Guardian 
 
1969 was a year of rising tension, violence and change for the people of Northern Ireland. Rioting in Derry's Bogside led to the deployment of British troops and a shortlived, uneasy truce. The British army soon found itself engaged in an undercover war against the Provisional IRA, which was to last for more than twenty years. 
 
In this enthralling and controversial book, Martin Dillon, author of the bestselling The Shankill Butchers, examines the roles played by the Provisional IRA, the State forces, the Irish Government and the British Army during this troubled period. He unravels the mystery of war in which informers, agents and double agents operate, revealing disturbing facts about the way in which the terrorists and the Intelligence Agencies target, undermine and penetrate each other's ranks. 
 
The Dirty War is investigative reporting at its very best, containing startling disclosures and throwing new light on previously inexplicable events.

The Dirty War

William L Shirer

It was Hitler’s boast that the Third Reich would last a thousand years. Instead it lasted only twelve. But into its short life was packed the most cataclysmic series of events that Western civilisation has ever known. 
 
William Shirer is one of the very few historians to have gained full access to the secret German archives which the Allies captured intact. He was also present at the Nuremberg trials. 
 
First published sixty years ago, Shirer’s account of the years 1933–45, when the Nazis, under the rule of their despotic leader Adolf Hitler, ruled Germany is held up as a classic of its time. Some of his views have not stood the test of time but in this book Shirer explores how the Nazis commandeered the Holocaust, one of the most shocking acts of evil in modern history, plunged the world into a second war, and changed the face of modern history and modern Europe forever. 
 
‘One of the most important works of history of our time.’ New York Times 
 
‘I can think of no book which I would rather put in the hands of anyone who wanted to find out what happened in Germany between 1930 and 1945, and why the history of those years should never be forgotten’ Alan Bullock

Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

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.

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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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