Alec Russell

Alec Vidler

Alec Wilkinson

Aled Jones

Aleesha Nandhra

Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) was one of the major Latin American writers of the twentieth century, as well as a classically trained pianist and musicologist. His best-known novels are The Lost Steps, Explosion in a Cathedral, and The Kingdom of This World. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and raised in Havana, Cuba, Carpentier lived for many years in France and Venezuela before returning to Cuba after the 1959 revolution. A few years later he returned to France, where he lived until his death.

Alejo Carpentier

Dr Aleks Krotoski is an award-winning international broadcaster, author and academic. She has topped the ratings for the BBC and Channel 4, winning Emmy, BAFTA, Radio Academy and Royal Society awards, and has written and presented landmark technology and social science series for both radio (with BBC Radio 4’s The Artificial Human and The Digital Human) and international television (with BBC World’s The Virtual Revolution). Krotoski has held fellowships at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. She currently teaches at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Aleks Krotoski

Aleksandar Ciric

Aleksandar Sotirovski

Aleksandar Zolotic

Aleksandr Orlov

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 and grew up in Rostov-on-Don. He graduated in Physics and Mathematics from Rostov University and studied Literature by correspondence course at Moscow University. In World War II he fought as an artillery officer, attaining the rank of captain. In 1945, however, after making derogatory remarks about Stalin in a letter, he was arrested and summarily sentenced to eight years in forced labour camps, followed by internal exile. In 1957 he formally rehabilitated, and settled down to teaching and writing, in Ryazan and Moscow. The publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir in 1962 was followed by publication, in the West, of his novels Cancer Ward and The First Circle. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1974 his citizenship was revoked and he was expelled from the Soviet Union. He settled in Vermont and worked on his great historical cycle The Red Wheel. In 1990, with the fall of Soviet Communism, his citizenship was restored and four years later he returned to settle in Russia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died in August 2008.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksei Bitskoff

Aleksei Evdokimo

Aleksi Hoffman

Alena Tkach is an award-winning Ukrainian freelance illustrator who studied Graphic Arts at Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. She works mostly as children’s book illustrator and 2D artist. Alena loves llamas because they are cute and sweet, and when they jump it's really funny. Follow Alena on Instagram @alena.tkach.

Alena Tkach

Alessandra Peters

Alessandro Manzoni

Alex Bellos is a journalist, broadcaster and puzzle master. He read Mathematics and Philosophy at Oxford University before becoming a journalist and writer. Alex was born in Oxford and grew up in Edinburgh and Southampton and lived in Brazil for five years as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian before returning to the UK He is the author of 8 books about puzzles and mathematics and currently writes weekly puzzle column for the Guardian.

Alex Bellos

Alex Berenson

Alex Boardman

Alex Brummer

Alex Bulmer

Alex Butterworth

Alex Caine

Alex Carter

Alex Chance

Alex Cliff

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John Julius Norwich

Constantine the Great moved the seat of Roman power to Constantinople in AD 330 and for eleven brutal, bloody centuries, the Byzantine Empire became a beacon of grand magnificence and depraved decadence . . . 
 
Here then are the centuries dominated by ferocious arguments over the nature of Christ and his Church. By knowledge, where scholars and scribes preserved the heritage of the ancient world. By emperors like Justinian the Great and Basil the Bulgar-Slayer - men pious, heroic or monstrous. By creativity, as art and architecture soared to new heights. In this abridgement of his celebrated trilogy, John Julius Norwich provides the definitive introduction to the savage, scintillating world of Byzantium.

A Short History of Byzantium

Saul David

Between 1660 and 1815 British supremacy on foreign soil was near total. Central to this success was the humble redcoat soldier who showed heroism in battle and stoicism in peace, despite appalling treatment. This is their story: of brutal discipline and inedible food, of loyalty and low pay, of barracks and battlefield - of victory, defeat, life and death.

All The King's Men

The British Redcoat in the Era of Sword and Musket

Orlando Figes

From Orlando Figes, international bestselling author of A People's Tragedy, Just Send Me Word is the moving true story of two young Russians whose love survived Stalin's Gulag. 
 
Lev and Svetlana, kept apart for fourteen years by the Second World War and the Gulag, stayed true to each other and exchanged thousands of secret letters as Lev battled to survive in Stalin's camps. Using this remarkable cache of smuggled correspondence, Orlando Figes tells the tale of two incredible people who, swept along in the very worst of times, kept their devotion alive. 
 
Orlando Figes was granted exclusive access to the thousands of letters between Lev and Sveta that form the foundation of Just Send Me Word, and he was able to interview the couple in person, then in their nineties. These real-time and largely uncensored letters form the largest cache of Gulag letters ever found. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'One is overcome with admiration for the kindness, bravery and generosity of people in terrible peril ... It is impossible to read without shedding tears' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times 
 
'This powerful narrative by a distinguished historian will take its place not just in history but in literature' Robert Massie 
 
'Electrifying, passionate, devoted, despairing, exhilarating ... a tale of hope, resilience, grit and love' The Times 
 
 
 
'Moving ... a remarkable discovery' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 
 
'The gulag story lacks individuals for us to sympathise with: a Primo Levi, an Anne Frank or even an Oskar Schindler. Just Send Me Word may well be the book to change that' Oliver Bullough, Independent 
 
'Immensely touching ... [a] heartening gem of a book' Anna Reid, Literary Review 
 
'The remarkable true story of a love affair between two Soviet citizens ... as much a literary challenge as a historical one: the book can be read as a non-fiction novel' Telegraph 
 
'Remarkable ... Figes, selecting and then interpreting this mass of letters, makes them tell two kinds of story. The first is a uniquely detailed narrative of the gulag, of the callous, slatternly universe which consumed millions of lives ... The second is about two people determined not to lose each other' Neal Ascherson, Guardian 
 
'A quiet, moving and memorable account of life in a totalitarian state ... The book often reads like a novel ... captivating' Evening Standard 
 
'Orlando Figes has wrought something beautiful from dark times' Ian Thomson, Observer 
 
'A heart-rending record of extraordinary human endurance' Kirkus Reviews 
 
'[A] remarkable tale of love and devotion during the worst years of the USSR ... [Figes's] fine narrative pacing enhances this moving, memorable story' Publishers Weekly 
 
About the author: 
 
Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Peasant Russia, Civil War, A People's Tragedy, Natasha's Dance, The Whisperers and Crimea. He lives in Cambridge and London. His books have been translated into over twenty languages.

Just Send Me Word

A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag

Lyn Smith

For British children the Second World War was a terrifying time of deprivation, uprootings and separation. But many also endured intense air raids or found themselves, shockingly, caught up in the action. 
 
Young Voices tells how British children across the globe lived in the days before and during the fighting. Meet nine-year-old Jean Greaves, whose father was taken by the Nazis for helping Jewish people; schoolboy Derek Bech who clung to a raft in heavy seas after his ship was torpedoed; baker's boy Ron Hurford in occupied Guernsey who stole German flour for his family; teenager and messenger Peter Izard who dodged a falling doodlebug; Manila internee Jacqueline Towell who couldn't walk for malnutrition; and many others who survived adversity and danger. 
 
Through the breathtaking stories of over one hundred contributors, Lyn Smith has written an extraordinary history of the war as seen through child's eyes.

Young Voices

British Children Remember the Second World War

Duncan Campbell-Smith

'Vivid, detailed, colourful ... a first-class history ... all sorts of delights leap out of these pages' Daily Telegraph 
 
From the very first 'master of the post' in 1512 to the vast network of today, the Royal Mail is an intrinsic part of everyday life in Britain. This book tells its extraordinary story in full. Whether describing the sensation caused by the penny post in 1840, the Post Office boffins who helped the wartime code-breakers of Bletchley Park, the Great Train Robbery of 1963, the growth of telegrams and telephones, or the many visionaries, philanthropists and firebrands who made the service what it is today, Masters of the Post shows how the history of the Royal Mail is our history.

Masters of the Post

The Authorized History of the Royal Mail

Heike B. Gortemaker

DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK CLUB title 
 
'I want to be a beautiful corpse, I will take poison' Eva Braun, 1945 
 
Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler were together for fourteen years, a relationship that ended only with their marriage and double suicide in Berlin. 
 
So who was Eva Braun? Heike Görtemaker's highly praised book is the first to take Braun's role in the Nazi hierarchy seriously. It uses her to throw fascinating light on a regime that prided itself on its harsh, coherent and unsentimental ideology, but which was in practice a chaos of competing individuals fighting for space around the overwhelmingly dominant figure of Hitler. 
 
'Finally gives Braun her place in the dark history of the Third Reich' Wall Street Journal

Eva Braun

Life With Hitler

Intricate, captivating, beautiful, romantic, unique, unforgettable . . . 
 
A History of Venice tells the story of this most remarkable of cities from its founding in the fifth century, through its unrivalled status for over a thousand years as one of the world's busiest and most powerful city states, until its fall at the hands of Napoleon in 1797. Rich in fascinating historical detail, populated by extraordinary characters and packed with a wealth of incident and intrigue, this is a brilliant testament to a great city - and a great and gripping read.

A History of Venice

Norman Davies

From Norman Davies, the acclaimed author of Europe: A History, comes the magical history of Europe's lost realms, selected as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Independent, Guardian and Financial Times. 
 
Europe's history is littered with kingdoms, duchies, empires and republics which have now disappeared but which were once fixtures on the map of their age. What happened to the once-great Mediterranean 'Empire of Aragon'? Where did the half-forgotten kingdoms of Burgundy go? Which current nations will one day become a distant memory too? This original and enthralling book peers through the cracks of history to discover the stories of lost realms across the centuries. 
 
'Dazzling, provocative and brilliant' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
 'A luminous account ... there are few better ways of understanding the multilayered splendours and horrors of Europe's past than through the pages of this wise, humane and unfailingly engaging book' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Vanished Kingdoms is great history and also great art. It is written with verve, passion and profound empathy' David Marquand, New Statesman, Books of the Year 
 
'A magnificent achievement. Brocaded with scholarship, the book is unlikely ever to be equalled' Ian Thomson, Independent

Vanished Kingdoms

The History of Half-Forgotten Europe

Michael Lewis

Right now, Europe is in serious financial chaos. In Greece, infrastructure costs mean it would be cheaper to transport all Greek rail passengers by taxi, and hairdressing is classified as arduous for tax avoidance purposes. In Iceland, Range Rovers frequently explode as owners collect the insurance to pay for them. Ireland saw the entire country put up for sale - to itself, while the Germans expected the whole world to behave like them. But the whole world didn't. 
 
In this hilarious, fascinating, timely must-read, Michael Lewis reveals the true natures of the countries caught up in - and exacerbating - our boomerang economies. 
 
'Desperately funny' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Top form' Spectator 
 
'Fascinating' The New York Times 
 
'Hilarious' Irish Independent Review

Boomerang

The Meltdown Tour

John Guy

Acclaimed Tudor historian John Guy offers a compelling re-interpretation of Mary Queen of Scots in My Heart is My Own. 
 
For centuries, Mary Queen of Scots has been a figure of scholarly debate. Where many have portrayed her as the weak woman to Elizabeth's rational leader, John guy re-assesses the young Queen, finding her far more politically shrewd than previously believed. 
 
Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months old, Queen of France by age sixteen and widowed the following year, Guy paints Mary as a commanding and savvy queen, who navigated the European power struggles of the time to her advantage. 
 
Her life was one of drama and conflict - Scottish Lords constructed labyrinthine plots to wrest power from her and attempts to prove claim to the English throne were thwarted by English ministers bent on protecting Elizabeth. 
 
My Heart is My Own re-examines the original sources, resulting in a riveting new argument surrounding Mary's involvement in her husband Lord Darnely's murder and her subsequent marriage to his suspected assassin. 
 
Guy's accessible treatment of the well trodden story, his deft storytelling and insightful new arguments provide compelling and dramatic reading.

My Heart is My Own

The Life of Mary Queen of Scots

Geoffrey Hosking

Geoffrey Hosking has been one of the foremost historians of Russia and her Empire for more than twenty years. He traces Russia's history from the settlement of Kiev through to the present day. He argues that two nation-building movements, one based on a messianic vision of Russia's destiny as God's people, the other a modernising and expansive imperial project of administration and assimilation, have clashed since the rise of Tsarism. These two nascent national identities offer a chance to compare &amp; trace continuities in Tsarist and Soviet Russia &amp; allow us to appreciate more fully the recurrent themes that have at times, and not least this century, appeared wholly without precedent in the history of the world.

Russia and the Russians

From Earliest Times to the Present

David McKittrick

David McVea

'I would strongly advocate that it be made compulsory reading for everyone in Northern Ireland because for the first time it is our history, all of it warts and all, presented in a clear and understandable way' Irish News 
 
First published two decades ago, Making Sense of the Troubles is widely regarded as the most 'comprehensive, considered and compassionate' (Irish Times) history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Written by a distinguished journalist and a teacher of history in Northern Ireland, it surveys the roots of the problems from 1921 onwards, the descent into violence in the late 60s, and the three terrible decades that followed. McKittrick and McVea have now fully updated the book to take into account the momentous events of the ten years that followed their first publication, including the disbanding of the IRA, Ian Paisley's deal with the Republicans and the historic power-sharing government in Belfast.

Making Sense of the Troubles

A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict

Iain Sinclair

'A book full of richness, unexpected enticements, short sharp shocks and breathtaking writing' Guardian 
 
Welcome to the real, unauthorised London: the disappeared, the unapproved, the unvoiced, the mythical and the all-but forgotten. The perfect companion to the city. 
 
'Exhilarating, truly wonderful, a cavalcade of eloquent writing. London demands an anthology like this to remind us of the irascible quirkiness of its residents, and we have Sinclair to thank for marshalling such a perverse and ultimately pleasurable exercise' Independent on Sunday

London

City of Disappearances

T. M. Devine

In Scotland's Empire, T.M Devine tells the compelling story of Scotland's role in forging and expanding the British Empire, from the Americas to Australia, India to the Caribbean. 
 
 By 1820 Britain controlled a fifth of the world's population, and no people had made a more essential contribution than the Scots - working across the globe as soldiers and merchants, administrators and clerics, doctors and teachers. 
 
 In this widely praised book, T. M. Devine - acclaimed author of The Scottish Nation and To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora - traces the vital part Scotland played in creating an empire - and the fundamental effect this had in moulding the modern Scottish nation. 
 
 'A tour de force ... Tom Devine is the pre-eminent historian of modern Scotland' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Niall Ferguson, author of Empire 
 
 'Captivating ... tells the story of the Scots who put their marching boots on, or were forced into them, to start a new life abroad' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Barclay McBain, Herald 
 
 'A fascinating work, replete with telling detail' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Allan Massie, Literary Review 
 
 'Nobody has done more over the past thirty years to bring Scottish historiography into rigorous and unsentimental alignment with developments elsewhere than Tom Devine' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Colin Kidd, The Times Literary Supplement 
 
 'Captivating ... tells the story of the Scots who put their marching boots on, or were forced into them, to start a new life abroad' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Economist 
 
 T.M. Devine, OBE is University Research Professor and Director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. His other books include The Scottish Nation and To the Ends of the Earth.

Scotland's Empire

The Origins of the Global Diaspora

HERALD BOOKS OF THE YEAR and NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 
 
 
Part of a trilogy on Scottish history, T.M. Devine's The Scottish Nation: A Modern History traces the epic story of a nation from the Union with England to today's debates on the possibilities of Scottish independence. 
 
 Drawing on extensive research and exploring everything from the high politics of the devolved parliament to the everyday effects of huge and growing levels of social inequality, this bestselling history places Scotland firmly within an international context and provides a key focus for the ongoing debate regarding Scotland's future. 
 
 Ranging from high politics to everyday life, The Scottish Nation is the most read modern history of Scotland at home and abroad: vital to understanding an ancient nation at a crucial time. 
 
 'Outstanding ... if you are after answers to the big questions of Scottish history, Devine is your man' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Niall Ferguson 
 
 'Magnificent ... a high achievement, a history of modern Scotland which, rarely for the subject, endows with sweep and power the changes that have created the country we live in' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Michael Fry, The Herald 
 
 'The work of a compendious historical mind ... the first history of Scotland which both a nationalist and a unionist Scot can keep on their shelves with pride, and that is a large achievement in itself' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;John Lloyd, Financial Times 
 
 'A formidable work ... quite remarkable' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Donald Dewar 
 
 'A fiercely intelligent account of Scotland ... Devine is the country's most prominent historian, and from the evidence of this book, rightly so' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Rosemary Goring, Scotland on Sunday 
 
 T.M. Devine, OBE is University Research Professor and Director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. His other books include The Scottish Nation and To the Ends of the Earth.

The Scottish Nation

A Modern History

Part of his trilogy on Scottish history, T. M. Devine's To the Ends of the Earth is a compelling account of the Scots as a 'global people', charting their forgotten role in the building of the modern world. 
 
The Scots are one of the world's greatest nations of emigrants. For centuries, untold numbers of men, women and children sought their fortunes in every part of the globe, from the British Empire to the United States, in cities and on prairie farms, as traders, bankers, missionaries, soldiers, politicians and engineers. 
 
With To the Ends of the Earth T.M. Devine - acclaimed author of The Scottish Nation and Scotland's Empire - puts this extraordinary epic centre stage in Scottish history, cutting through myth and sentiment surrounding stories such as the Highland Clearances and the Enlightenment to show the true impact of Scottish emigration on the world, and on the nation it left behind. 
 
 'A seminal work' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Harry McGrath, Herald 
 'Devine's final book in a remarkable trilogy ... fascinating and far-reaching ... His conclusions are ... thoughtful and incisive' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Scottish Field 
 '[This] rigorous and unsentimental history of Scotland's global diaspora ... explodes myths and foregrounds the prosaic realities of emigration ... it has the fascinating charm of a detective story' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Guardian 
 'Presents a grand overview of Scottish emigration ... very revealing' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Tom Nairn, Scottish Review of Books 
 'Devine has brought a greater understanding to this fascinating subject and offers an intriguing perspective on a key component of our history and national identity' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Alex Salmond, First Minister Of Scotland, Herald 
 
 T.M. Devine, OBE is University Research Professor and Director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. His other books include The Scottish Nation and To the Ends of the Earth.

To the Ends of the Earth

Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010

Keith Lowe

In the last days of July 1943, British and American planes dropped 9,000 tons of bombs with the intention of erasing the German city from the map. The resultant firestorm burned for a month and left 40,000 civilians dead. 
 
Inferno is a searing account of terrifying destruction: of how and why the Allies dropped a hail of high-explosive and incendiary bombs; of blizzards of sparks, hurricane-force winds and 800-degree temperatures; of survivors cowering in basements or struggling along melting streets; of a city and its people near annihilated from above. 
 
Inferno is an epic story of human devastation and survival against impossible odds.

Inferno

The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943

Claire Tomalin

Acclaimed as the greatest comic actress of her generation, Dora Jordan played a quite different role offstage as the mistress of one of the sons of George lll. Dora bore him ten children, and they lived in quiet happiness in Bushy Park on the Thames until the unexpected news arrived of his ascendancy to the throne as William lV - at which point he was forced to abandon her. 
Claire Tomalin vividly recreates the political, theatrical and royal worlds of the late eighteenth century. The story of how Dora moved between stage and home, of how she battled for career and family, makes for a classic tale of royal perfidy and womanly courage.

Mrs Jordan's Profession

The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King

Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Women, lived through the Terror in France, had an illegitimate daughter and married the philosopher William Godwin before dying in childbirth at the age of 38. 
Claire Tomalin's first book inaugurated a glittering career, and brought to life one of the great figures in the history of women.

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

Leading British historian John Guy, author of Thomas Becket and My Heart is My Own, uncovers one of the most touching and compelling family relationships in history in A Daughter's Love. 
 
Sir Thomas More is a stalwart figure of British history. Lord Chancellor in Henry Tudor's government, opposed to Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn and famously executed for treason, he is a well studied and eminent figure. 
 
John Guy's revealing new work sheds light on a little known aspect of More, as a politician and as a man. His daughter Margaret played a key role in More's private and public life, but has been all but hidden from his story. 
 
Neglected from previous historical works, A Daughter's Love uses original sources to reveal a deep and loving relationship between father and daughter. Margaret, a prodigy encouraged by her father, was highly skilled in Latin and Greek, even emending texts from the prominent scholar Erasmus. She became her father's advisor, confidante and friend, exchanging long, loving letters during his incarceration and providing comfort in his final hours. It is these letters, which she smuggled from the Tower, that provide compelling new insights into the famed politician. 
 
A Daughter's Love is a riveting new portrait of Thomas More and the daughter who played a central role in his life and work, from one of Britain's most acclaimed historians.

A Daughter's Love

Thomas and Margaret More - The Family Who Dared to Defy Henry VIII

Frederick Kempe

'A mind-shaking work of investigative history' (Wall Street Journal) 
 
Checkpoint Charlie, 27 October 1961. At 9pm on a damp night, the Cold War reaches crisis point. US and Soviet tanks face off across the East-West divide, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, could spring the tripwire for nuclear war... 
 
Frederick Kempe's gripping book tells the story of the Cold War's most dramatic year, when Berlin became what Khrushchev called 'the most dangerous place on earth'. Kempe re-creates the war of nerves between the young, untested President Kennedy and the bombastic Soviet leader as they squared off over the future of a divided city. He interweaves this with stories of the ordinary citizens whose lives were torn apart when the Berlin Wall went up - and the world came to the brink of disaster.

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khruschev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth

Jeremy Paxman

The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. It affects everything, from Prime Ministers' decisions to send troops to war to the adventurers we admire. From the sports we think we're good at to the architecture of our buildings; the way we travel to the way we trade; the hopeless losers we will on, and the food we hunger for, the empire is never very far away. 
 
In this acute and witty analysis, Jeremy Paxman goes to the very heart of empire. As he describes the selection process for colonial officers ('intended to weed out the cad, the feeble and the too clever') the importance of sport, the sweating domestic life of the colonial officer's wife ('the challenge with cooking meat was "to grasp the fleeting moment between toughness and putrefaction when the joint may possibly prove eatable"') and the crazed end for General Gordon of Khartoum, Paxman brings brilliantly to life the tragedy and comedy of Empire and reveals its profound and lasting effect on our nation and ourselves.

Empire

What Ruling the World Did to the British

Tim Robinson

Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom is the triumphant conclusion to Tim Robinson's extraordinary Connemara trilogy, which Robert Macfarlane has called 'one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. 
 
 Robinson writes about the people, places and history of south Connemara - one of Ireland's last Gaelic-speaking enclaves - with the encyclopaedic knowledge of a cartographer and the grace of a born writer. From the man who has been praised in the highest terms by Joseph O'Connor ('One of contemporary Ireland's finest literary stylists''), John Burnside ('one of the finest of contemporary prose stylists'), Fintan O'Toole ('Simply one of the best non-fiction prose writers currently at work') and Giles Foden ('an indubitable classic'), among many others, this is one of the publishing events of 2011 and the conclusion of one of the great literary projects of our time.

Connemara

A Little Gaelic Kingdom

David Stevenson

FINANCIAL TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR and DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
Shortlisted for the 2012 DUKE OF WESTMINSTER MEDAL FOR MILITARY LITERATURE 
 
At the end of 1917 Britain and France faced a strategic nightmare. Their great offensives against Germany had been calamitous, leaving hundreds of thousands of young men dead and wounded for negligible territorial gains. Despite America's entry into the war the US army remained tiny, the Italian army had been routed, and Russia had dropped out of the conflict. The Central Powers now dominated Central and Eastern Europe, and Germany could move over forty divisions to the Western Front. Yet only one year later, on 11 November 1918, the fighting ended in a decisive Allied victory. 
 
Stevenson's rich and compelling book retells the story of 1918, and with penetrating original research goes to the very roots of this instrumental turning point in modern history.

With Our Backs to the Wall

Victory and Defeat in 1918

Sarah Bradford

Elizabeth II has lived through the Abdication, the Blitz and World War Two, the sex and spy scandals of the swinging sixties, the Cold War and the nuclear threat and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She has known 11 US Presidents including JFK and Ronald Reagan, and other world leaders like President Mandela and Pope John XXII. Her Prime Ministers have ranged from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, the last only ten years older than her grandson. 
 
Her own family experiences, a mixture of happiness and crisis, weddings and divorces, and, in the case of Diana, violent death, have been lived in the glare of tabloid headlines. More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of her grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2010 shortly before she made the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch for 100 years. Our world has changed more in her lifetime than in any of her predecessors': the Queen has remained a calm presence at the centre, earning the respect of monarchists and republicans. How has she done it?

Queen Elizabeth II

Her Life in Our Times

Ed Glinert

The streets of London resonate with secret stories, from East End lore to Cold War espionage, from tales of riots, rakes, anarchy and grisly murders, to Rolling Stones gigs, gangland drinking dens, Orwell's Fitzrovia and Lenin's haunts. Ed Glinert has walked the length and breadth of the city to unravel its mysteries, travelling through time from the Romans' London wall to the new Olympic site at Stratford. This is London as you have never seen it before.

The London Compendium

Glyn Prysor

During the Second World War the Royal Navy was the most powerful of Britain's armed forces. Its sailors fought across the globe in vast battleships and claustrophobic corvettes, makeshift minesweepers and silent submarines. They endured nerve-wracking convoys, fought epic gun battles, carried out deadly secret missions, rescued armies and landed the largest invasion force in history. Naval power was the foundation of Britain's war effort, and sailors shaped the nation's destiny. Drawing on hundreds of contemporary diaries and letters, Glyn Prysor's original and gripping narrative evokes the triumph and tragedy, horror and humanity of the war at sea, bringing to life the sailor's war as never before.

Citizen Sailors

The Royal Navy in the Second World War

Ian Kershaw

SUNDAY TIMES, TLS, SPECTATOR, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, DAILY MAIL and SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler's Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with an almost unprecedented level of brutality. Just what made Germany keep on fighting? 
 
Kershaw's gripping, revelatory book recounts these final months, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945. 
 
Ian Kershaw is the author of Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris; Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis; Making Friends with Hitler; and Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-4. Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis received the Wolfson History Prize and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize. Until his retirement in 2008, Ian Kershaw was Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. For services to history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994. He was knighted in 2002 and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2004. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and was the winner of the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding 2012.

The End

Germany, 1944-45

Walter Lord

Julian Fellowes

Brian Lavery

'There is no danger that Titanic will sink. The boat is unsinkable and nothing but inconvenience will be suffered by the passengers.' - Phillip Franklin, White Star Line Vice-President 
 
On April 15th, 1912, Titanic, the world's largest passenger ship, sank after colliding with an iceberg, claiming more than 1,500 lives. Walter Lord's classic bestselling history of the voyage, the wreck and the aftermath is a tour de force of detailed investigation and the upstairs/downstairs divide. A Night to Remember provides a vivid, gripping and deeply personal account of the 'unsinkable' Titanic's descent. 
 
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY JULIAN FELLOWES

A Night to Remember

The Classic Bestselling Account of the Sinking of the Titanic

David Gilmour

The book that explains the whole extraordinary course of Italian history like no other in English 
 
The Pursuit of Italy traces the whole history of the Italian peninsula in a wonderfully readable style, full of well-chosen stories and observations from personal experience, and peopled by many of the great figures of the Italian past, from Cicero and Virgil to Dante and the Medici, from Cavour and Verdi to the controversial political figures of the twentieth century. The book gives a clear-eyed view of the Risorgimento, the pivotal event in modern Italian history, debunking the influential myths which have grown up around it. 
 
Gilmour shows that the glory of Italy has always lain in its regions, with their distinctive art, civic cultures, identities and cuisine and whose inhabitants identified themselves not as Italians, but as Tuscans and Venetians, Sicilians and Lombards, Neapolitans and Genoese. This is where the strength and culture of Italy still comes from, rather than from misconceived and mishandled concepts of nationalism and unity. This wise and enormously engaging book explains the course of Italian history in a manner and with a coherence which no one with an interest in the country could fail to enjoy. 
 
David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. His previous books include The Last Leopard : A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (winner of the Marsh Biography Award) Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize) and Long Recessional:The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography).

The Pursuit of Italy

A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples

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To some a brilliant warrior, to others a devil in human form; Hereward is as adept in the art of slaughter as the enemies that gather to claim England's throne. With King Edward heirless and ailing, Hereward has been declared an outlaw. What is he willing to risk in order to save the land he loves? 
 
Hereward's tales are of heroism, treachery, rebellion and bloody battles, with William the Bastard never too far away.

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