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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

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

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Lanre Bakare

**AN OBSERVER, GQ, ESQUIRE AND INEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
 
This is the lost story of a hidden Britain. A Black Britain. One that existed outside London and rewrites our idea of British culture. 
 
Rocked by economic turmoil, the rise of the National Front, heavy-handed anti-immigration policies and widespread civil unrest, Thatcher’s Britain was in tumult. And yet, all around this nation, Black creativity, community and resistance flourished like never before. 
 
From Bradford’s towering mills and Northern Soul’s euphoric dance floors to the multicultural docks of Cardiff Bay and rolling hills of rural Britain, from Rastafarians and rugby stars to artists and activists, Lanre Bakare unearths the overlooked places and people who made Britain what it is today. Alive with energy and purpose, We Were There is a dazzling, profoundly important new portrait of modern Britain and a shared legacy which belongs to us all.

We Were There

How Black culture and community shaped modern Britain

How Black culture, resistance and community shaped modern Britain

Christopher de Bellaigue

A ground-breaking, present-tense reconstruction of the life and world of one of the most consequential figures in world history, Suleyman the Magnificent, from the author of The Lion House 
 
Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future are at the mercy of their own dynastic law: whichever of his five sons succeeds him must eventually kill all the others. So why not get a head start? 
 
For the next fifteen years, as Suleyman the Magnificent and his terrifying pirate captain Barbarossa face down imperial enemies across two hemispheres, the self-fulfilling curse of the Ottomans gathers its own unstoppable momentum. 
 
From the burning pyres of Paris to the rain-lashed mountains of Transylvania, from Buda to Basra, from Crimea to the coast of India, The Golden Throne is an intensely gripping yet entirely historical reconstruction of the life and world of the most feared and powerful man of the sixteenth century, revealing the price of succession and the terrible cost of success.

The Golden Throne

The Story of Suleyman the Magnificent

The Curse of a King

Emmanuel Carrère

On 13 November 2015, nine attackers wearing suicide bombs killed 130 people and left hundreds wounded at sites in and around Paris in the deadliest attack on French soil since the Second World War. V13 was the code name for the much-awaited trial of those who helped to carry out these attacks. Lasting nine months, from September 2021 to June 2022, it consisted of 14 defendants, 2,400 plaintiffs, 350 lawyers and a file 53 metres high. 
 
In V13, Emmanuel Carrère follows this landmark trial from its first day to its last, taking us behind the scenes to the lawyers, survivors, family members and the defendants. He assembles, in painstaking and subtle detail, a human portrait of the crime – a study of good and evil, and the philosophical journey through the borderlands between the two. 
 
Over the course of his career, Emmanuel Carrère has reinvented non-fiction writing. In a search for truth in all its guises, he dispenses with the rules of genre, fusing passion, curiosity and a profoundly humane intellect, making him one of the most distinctive and important literary voices today.

Chronicle of a Trial

Nick Davies

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING TRUE STORY BEHIND ITV’S THE HACK** 
 
WITH EXPLOSIVE NEW EVIDENCE, THIS IS THE UPDATED EDITION OF THE BOOK THAT EXPOSED THE PHONE HACKING SCANDAL 
 
Crime, conspiracy, abuse of power – this is the inside story of the scandal that blew the lid off Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Nearly twenty years since one of Murdoch’s reporters was caught eavesdropping on Buckingham Palace, the revelations keep coming. And Nick Davies is still digging out new evidence. 
 
Hack Attack is the story of how Davies and a network of rebel lawyers, MPs and celebrities took on one of the most powerful men in the world and uncovered a web of crime and cover-up reaching from the Murdoch newsrooms to Scotland Yard and Downing Street. It was a scandal that shocked the British elite. And it’s not over yet. 
 
'A colossal service to Britain's democracy' Financial Times 
 
'As exciting as a thriller but far more important' Daily Telegraph 
 
'A masterly summary of the hacking affair, as well as the ingenuity and persistence that lead to great journalism' Observer

Hack Attack

How the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch

Catherine Fletcher

'All roads lead to Rome.' It's a medieval proverb, but it's also true: today's European roads still follow the networks of the ancient empire, stitching together our histories and continuing to inspire our imaginations. 
 
Over the two thousand years since they were first built, the roads have been walked by crusaders and pilgrims, liberators and dictators, but also by tourists and writers, refugees and artists. Catherine Fletcher shows how the roads – as channels of trade and travel, routes of conquest and creativity – forever transformed the cultures, and intertwined the fates, of a vast panoply of people across Europe and beyond. 
 
The Roads to Rome is a magnificent journey into a past that remains intimately connected to our present. Travelling from Scotland to Cádiz, from Istanbul to Rome, we meander and march through a series of nations and empires that have risen and fallen. Along the way, we encounter spies and bandits, scheming innkeepers, a Byzantine noblewoman on the run, young aristocrats on their Grand Tour, a conquering Napoleon, Keats and the Shelleys, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and even Mussolini on his motorbike. 
 
Reflecting on his own walk on the Appian Way, Charles Dickens observed that here is ‘a history in every stone that strews the ground’. Based on outstanding original research, and brimming with life and drama, this is the first book to explore two thousand years of history through one of the greatest imperial networks ever built.

The Roads To Rome

A Journey Into Europe’s Past

A History

Peter Moore

Bestselling historian Peter Moore traces how Enlightenment ideas were exported from Britain and put into practice in America - where they became the most successful export of all time, the American Dream 
 
'Absorbing... fascinating... eloquent' THE TIMES 
'Engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly' TELEGRAPH 
'Wonderfully absorbing and stimulating' SARAH BAKEWELL 
 
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is frequently evoked today as shorthand for the American Dream. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates – of a free and happy world – owes a great deal to British thinkers too. 
 
Centred on the life of Benjamin Franklin, featuring figures like the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the groundbreaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician and revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It takes us back to a vital moment in the foundation of the West and tells a whole new story about the birth of the United States of America – and some of the key principles by which we live to this day. 
 
 
'Deft insights and in clear prose' ALAN TAYLOR 
'A gripping account' STELLA TILLYARD 
'Rollicking...compulsive readability' WASHINGTON POST 
'A great read' LADY HALE

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Endeavour

Gareth Harney

* A Financial Times Book of the Year * A Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday Summer Read * 
 
HOLD THE POWER AND GLORY OF ANCIENT ROME IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND. 
 
A wild she-wolf tenderly nurses infant twins Romulus and Remus. 
Marcus Junius Brutus looks out over chaos and conflict, flaunting the bloodied daggers with which he murdered Julius Caesar. 
Trumpets blare, crowds roar, gladiators enter the grand Colosseum. Let the games begin. 
 
Frescoes fade and books vanish, but the story of Rome’s epic rise and fall survives in scenes struck in gold, silver and bronze. Told through the lives of twelve remarkable coins, this is ancient Rome as you’ve never seen it before. 
 
* A Financial Times Book of the Year * A Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday Summer Read *

Moneta

Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins

A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins

Tabitha Stanmore

Cunning Folk transports us to a time when magic was used to solve life’s day-to-day problems – as well as some of deadly importance. 
 
‘A brilliant book, written with wit and vigour’ MALCOLM GASKILL, author of The Ruin of All Witches 
 
‘Absolutely fascinating’ IAN MORTIMER, author of The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England 
 
It’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might well have been cunning folk: practitioners of magic who were a common, even essential part of daily life, at a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane. 
 
Charming, thought-provoking and based on original research, Cunning Folk is an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world by an expert historian, as well as a commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human. 
 
‘I adore Cunning Folk. A truly fascinating and human book’ Ruth Goodman, author of How To Be a Tudor 
 
‘Packed with vivid historical anecdotes, this is an intriguing insight into the magical lives of past people and the history of our own superstitions today’ Marion Gibson, author of Witchcraft 
 
‘Fascinating . . . opens a window into another world’ Tracy Borman, author of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I 
 
‘Full of such magical tips and colourful vignettes . . . crackles with incident’ Kate Maltby, Financial Times 
 
‘Spirited and richly detailed’ New York Times

Cunning Folk

Life in the Era of Practical Magic

Matthew Longo

A gripping reconstruction of the daring escape to freedom of hundreds of East Germans in the summer of 1989 and how it led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. 
 
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable: they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain - and held a picnic. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German 'holiday-makers' had made their way to the border, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The stage was set for the greatest border breach in Cold War history. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union - the so-called end of history - all would flow from what happened next. Drawing on dozens of original interviews with those involved, Matthew Longo reconstructs this world-shaping event and its tumultuous aftermath.

The Picnic

An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain

Tony Judt

The definitive history of Europe’s rebirth. 
 
From the ruins of war to the rise of the European Union, Postwar tells the sweeping story of Europe’s transformation in the 20th century. Historian Tony Judt draws on a lifetime of scholarship to chart how nations reckoned with totalitarianism, and forged a new vision of democracy and cooperation. 
 
Combining intellectual depth with narrative power, Judt’s masterpiece offers profound lessons about memory, identity and resilience. Postwar is not only an essential work of history - it’s a guide to understanding the political and cultural foundations of modern Europe. 
 
‘A real masterpiece’ Ian Kershaw 
‘History-writing with a human face and brainpower’ Norman Davies 
‘The standard reference work on European post-war history’ Misha Glenny

Postwar

A History of Europe Since 1945

Charlotte Lydia Riley

Imperial Island shows how empire, its disintegration and its ever-present aftermath have profoundly shaped the British people, their culture, society and politics, throughout the last seventy years. 
 
Drawing on a mass of new research, from personal letters to pop culture, it tells a story of immigration and fractured identity, of social strife and communal solidarity, of people on the move and of a people wrestling with their past. 
 
It is the story that best explains Britain today.

Imperial Island

A History of Empire in Modern Britain

Laura Cumming

**WINNER OF THE SALTIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024** 
**WINNER OF THE WRITERS' PRIZE 2024 | NON-FICTION** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024** 
 
 
A beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean. 
 
‘Brilliant’ Edmund de Waal * ‘Captivating’ Nina Stibbe * 'Extraordinary' India Knight 
 
On the morning of 12 October 1654, a gunpowder explosion devastated the Dutch city of Delft. Among the fatalities was the painter Carel Fabritius, dead at thirty-two, leaving behind his haunting masterpiece The Goldfinch. 
 
Thunderclap explores what happened to Fabritius before and after the disaster whilst interweaving the lives of Laura Cumming, her painter father and the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age. It takes the reader from seventeenth-century Delft to twentieth-century Scottish islands, from Rembrandt’s studio to wartime America and contemporary London. This is a book about what a picture may come to mean, how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap. 
 
‘Superb…this book taught me to see anew’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty’ Sunday Times

Thunderclap

A memoir of art and life & sudden death

Timothy Garton Ash

'A moving love letter to Europe' Lea Ypi, author of Free 
 
Homelands is a stunning blend of contemporary history, reporting and memoir by our greatest writer about Europe. 
 
Drawing on half a century of travel and thinking, Homelands tells the story of Europe since its emergence from wartime hell in 1945: how it slowly recovered and rebuilt, liberated and united to come close to the ideal of a Europe 'whole, free and at peace'. And then faltered. 
 
Timothy Garton Ash has spent a lifetime studying Europe. Highly personal and deeply felt, this book is also full of vivid experiences, encounters and anecdotes: from his father's memories of D-Day to interviewing Polish dockers, Albanian guerrillas in the mountains of Kosovo, and angry teenagers in the poorest quarters of Paris, as well as advising prime ministers, chancellors and presidents in the UK, Europe and the US. 
 
Homelands is both a living, breathing history of a period of unprecedented progress and a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the war in Ukraine. At its heart, this book is an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved.

Homelands

A Personal History of Europe - Updated with a New Chapter

A Personal History of Europe

Sarah Watling

In our age of political divisions, this portrait of the women outsiders who took part in the Spanish Civil War asks questions of solidarity and resistance. 
 
'Glorious... so beautifully rendered, so powerful' 
ANNA FUNDER, author of Wifedom 
 
In the 1930s, women and men from across the world made their way to Spain to be part of what they saw as a historic fight for freedom from fascism. Tomorrow Perhaps the Future follows extraordinary outsiders who were determined to live out their lives with courage and conviction. 
 
Sarah Watling weaves together the experiences of a host of writers and activists, including Nancy Cunard, Martha Gellhorn, Jessica Mitford and Virginia Woolf, and searches out the stories of the photographer Gerda Taro and the Harlem nurse Salaria Kea. Throughout, she explores solidarity, art and resistance, finding answers that are as vital today as they were almost a century ago. 
 
&lsquo;A fascinating study&rsquo; 
OBSERVER 
 
&lsquo;Engrossing and impressive&rsquo; 
NEW STATESMAN 
 
* A NEW YORKER BOOK OF THE YEAR *

Tomorrow Perhaps the Future

Writers, Rebels and the Spanish Civil War

Following Writers and Rebels in the Spanish Civil War

Ian Mortimer

We tend to think about the Middle Ages as a dark, backward and unchanging time characterised by violence, ignorance and superstition. By contrast we believe progress is the consequence of science and technological innovation, and that it was the inventions of recent centuries which created the modern world. 
 
We couldn't be more wrong. As Ian Mortimer shows in this fascinating introduction to the Middle Ages, people's horizons - their knowledge, experience and understanding of the world - expanded dramatically. All aspects of life were utterly transformed between 1000 and 1600, marking the transition from a warrior-led society to that of Shakespeare. 
 
Just as Ian Mortimer's bestselling Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England revealed what it was like to live in the fourteenth century, Medieval Horizons provides the perfect primer to the period as a whole. It outlines the enormous cultural changes that took place - from literacy to living standards, inequality and even the developing sense of self - thereby correcting misconceptions and presenting the period as a revolutionary era, of fundamental importance in the development of the Western world.

Medieval Horizons

Why the Middle Ages Matter

Alison Weir

The third volume of Alison Weir&rsquo;s magisterial history of the queens of medieval England. 
 
&lsquo;Weir&rsquo;s history books are as gripping as novels&rsquo; The Times 
 
Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies &ndash; yet, as Alison Weir shows in this group biography, many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex. 
 
Using personal letters and fascinating sources, Weir evokes the lives of these five extraordinary women: Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois. At the same time, she recreates a truly astonishing period of history &ndash; the turbulent, brutal Age of Chivalry. 
 
&lsquo;Places the reader in the midst of&hellip;complex, gripping events, telling the stories of five royal wives who lived through them&rsquo; BBC History 
 
&lsquo;Weir is an excellent storyteller&rsquo; Spectator

Queens of the Age of Chivalry

Leanda de Lisle

A myth-busting biography of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, which retells the dramatic story of the civil war from her perspective 
 
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE 
 
Henrietta Maria, Charles I's queen, is the most reviled consort in British history. Condemned as the 'Popish brat of France' and a 'notorious whore', she remains in popular memory the woman who turned the king Catholic - so causing a civil war - and a cruel and bigoted mother. 
 
Leanda de Lisle unpicks these myths to reveal a very different queen. We meet a new bride who enjoyed annoying her uptight husband, who was a passionate advocate for the female voice in public affairs and who, when civil war came, proved crucial to Charles's campaign. The image of the Restoration queen as an irrelevant crone is replaced with Henrietta Maria as an influential 'phoenix queen'. It is time to look again at this despised queen and judge if she is not in fact one of our most remarkable. 
 
 
'Brilliantly written, mesmerising, superb scholarship and totally immersive... A total game changer' KATE WILLIAMS, author of Rival Queens 
 
'This is revisionist history at its absolute best' ANDREW ROBERTS author of Churchill 
 
'Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating' ALEXANDER LARMAN author of The Crown in Crisis 
 
'Popular history of the finest kind' RONALD HUTTON author of The Witch

Henrietta Maria

Conspirator, Warrior, and Phoenix Queen – the true story of Charles I’s wife

Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen

Adrian Tinniswood

From the bestselling author of The Long Weekend: a wild, sad and sometimes hilarious tour of the English country house after the Second World War, when Swinging London collided with aristocratic values. 
 
'Preposterously entertaining' Observer 
'Brilliant' Daily Telegraph 
'Rollicking' Sunday Times 
 
As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in twentieth-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished. 
 
Yet - perhaps surprisingly - many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants' balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers. From the Rolling Stones rocking Longleat to Christine Keeler rocking Cliveden, Noble Ambitions takes us on a lively tour of these crumbling halls of power. 
 
* A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year * 
* Longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History *

Noble Ambitions

The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House

Caroline Moorehead

A thrilling biography of Benito Mussolini's favourite daughter, and a heart-stopping account of the unravelling of the Fascist dream in Italy 
 
'Engrossing... Moorehead has a spirited turn of phrase, a keen eye for the telling detail and pungent quote, and a gift for marshaling complex material' Jenny Uglow, New York Times Book Review 
 
Edda Mussolini was Benito's favourite daughter: spoilt, venal and uneducated but also clever, brave, and ultimately loyal. She was her father's confidante during the 20 years of Fascist rule and married Foreign Secretary Galeazzo Ciano, making them the most celebrated couple in Roman fascist society. 
 
Their fortunes turned in 1943, when Ciano voted against Mussolini in a plot to bring him down. In a dramatic story that takes in hidden diaries, her father's fall and her husband's execution, we come to know a complicated, bold and determined woman who emerges not just as a witness but as a key player in some of the twentieth century's defining moments. 
 
'Vividly told, engrossing history' CLARE MULLEY, author of The Women Who Flew for Hitler 
 
'Precise, empathic . . . a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read and . . . a worryingly relevant one' GUARDIAN

Edda Mussolini

The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe

Jerry White

Lasting for six long years, the Blitz transformed life in the capital beyond recognition, marking a time of almost constant anxiety, disruption, deprivation and sacrifice for Londoners. With the capital the nation's frontline during the Second World War, by its end, 30,000 inhabitants had lost their lives. 
 
While much has been written about 'the Myth of the Blitz', its riveting social history has often been overlooked. Unearthing what it was actually like for those living through those tempestuous years, Jerry White paints a fascinating portrait of the daily lives of ordinary Londoners, telling the story through their own voices.

The Battle of London 1939-45

Endurance, Heroism and Frailty Under Fire

Peter Doggett

No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and vilified than the 1960s. And at the heart of all that controversy - the music, drugs, fashion, hopes, dreams and political movements - is sex. 
 
But were the 1960s really a great time of liberation, joyful experimentation and celebrations of youth? Growing Up takes an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of the sexual revolution. 
 
In this wide-ranging and eye-opening survey of the sexual landscape of the 1960s, Peter Doggett has assembled a dozen little-known stories that reveal how the sexual revolution transformed people's lives - for better or worse.

Growing Up

Sex in the 1960s

Sex in the Sixties

Jessie Childs

**A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, THE CRITIC, MAIL ON SUNDAY, ECONOMIST AND PROSPECT BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
 
'A gifted narrative historian, eloquent, graceful and witty; the stories she tells are the ones we all should know' Hilary Mantel 
 
It was a time of climate change and colonialism, puritans and populism, witch hunts and war . . . 
 
Drawing on unpublished manuscripts and the voices of countless victims of the crossfire, Jessie Childs weaves a thrilling tale of war and peace, terror and faith, savagery and civilisation. Throughout, we follow artists, apothecaries, merchants and their families from the streets of London as they descend on the royalist stronghold of Basing House. 
 
The Siege of Loyalty House is an immersive and electrifying account of a defining episode in a war that would turn Britain - and the world - upside down. 
 
__________ 
 
'Extraordinary, thrilling, immersive ... at times almost Tolstoyan in its emotional intelligence and literary power' Simon Schama 
 
'Compellingly readable... [a] beautifully written and lucid account' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Brilliant. Original. Gripping.' Antonia Fraser 
 
'Beautifully written and gripping from first page to last. A sparkling book by one of the UK's finest historians' Peter Frankopan 
 
'The Siege of Loyalty House is not only deeply researched. Childs has composed a wonderfully poetic narrative and adds a touch of the gothic' The Times 
 
'Successfully brings the ghastliness of the period to life, dramatically, vividly and with pathos' Charles Spencer, Spectator

The Siege of Loyalty House

A new history of the English Civil War

Jane Ridley

The prequel to The Crown: the first truly candid portrait of George V and Mary, the Queen's grandparents and creators of the modern monarchy 
 
Shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Historical Biography prize and the History Reclaimed Book of the Year prize 
 
The lasting reputation of George V is for dullness. However throughout his reign, the monarch navigated a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the fall of thirteen European monarchies and the rise of Bolshevism. The suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under his horse at the Derby, he refused asylum to his cousin the Tsar Nicholas II and he facilitated the first Labour government. 
 
How this supposedly limited man steered the Crown through so many perils is a gripping tale. With unprecedented access to the Royal archives, Jane Ridley has been able to reassess the many myths associated with this dramatic period for the first time. 
 
'Wonderful... Never a dull paragraph' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, The Times 
 
'Magnificent... An evocative and touching portrait of a surprisingly impressive man' Philip Hensher, Spectator 
 
'A big, beautiful beast of a book. Fair, thorough and unexpectedly funny' Lucy Worsley

George V

Never a Dull Moment

Philip Short

Vladimir Putin is a pariah to the West. 
 
He has the power to reduce the West to nuclear ashes. He invades his neighbours, meddles in western elections and orders assassinations. Yet many Russians continue to support him. Under Putin's leadership, Russia has once again become a force to be reckoned with. 
 
Philip Short's magisterial biography explores in unprecedented depth the personality of Russia's leader and demolishes many of our preconceptions about Putin's Russia. 
 
To explain is not to justify. Putin's regime is dark. But on closer examination, much of what we think we know about him turns out to rest on half-truths. This book is as close as we will come to understanding Russia's ruler.

Putin

The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

In A.J.P. Taylor's words, Churchill was 'the saviour of his country' when he became prime minister in 1940. Yet he was also a deeply flawed character. 
 
Giving due credit to Churchill's achievements but making no secret of his failures, Geoffrey Wheatcroft takes a radically different approach to other biographies. Going far beyond a reappraisal of a life and a career, he reveals the complex shadow Churchill has cast over post-war British history and contemporary politics. 
 
Telling the story of Churchill's extraordinary life and the equally fascinating one of his legacy, Churchill's Shadow focuses on how we as a nation have been living in the grip of his self-written myth ever since his death.

Churchill's Shadow

An Astonishing Life and a Dangerous Legacy

Geert Mak

'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial Times 
 
From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium. 
 
How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? 
 
In this illuminating book, Geert Mak - one of Europe's best-loved commentators - charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. He moves through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, and on to the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit. 
 
Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks: what role does Europe now play, and how might we face our fresh challenges together? 
 
'A powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian 
 
'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler' Independent

The Dream of Europe

Travels in a Troubled Continent

Travels in the Twenty-First Century

Venice, 1522. Intelligence arrives from the east confirming Europe's greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has all he needs to wage total war - and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on its throat. 
 
From the palaces of Istanbul to the blood-soaked fields of central Europe and the scorched coasts of north Africa, The Lion House tells the true story of two civilisations in an existential duel and the rise of the most feared man of the sixteenth century. It is a tale of the timeless pull of power, dangerous to live with, deadly to live without.

The Lion House

The Rise of Suleyman the Magnificent

Paul O'Keeffe

'Excellent... It is a tremendous tale - one of the most dramatic in our island's history - and O'Keeffe tells it beautifully' The Times 
 
Charles Edward Stuart's campaign to seize the British throne ended with one of the quickest defeats in history: on 16 April 1746, at Culloden, his Jacobite army was overpowered in under forty minutes. Its brutal repercussions, however, endured for years, its legacy for centuries. 
 
Paul O'Keeffe follows the Jacobite army from initial victories to calamitous defeat. Exploring the battle's aftermath, he chronicles the Jacobite prisoners paying for their treason on block and gibbet while those granted 'the King's mercy' suffered the fate of forced labour on plantations in the colonies. While Stuart's cause eventually acquired an aura of romanticism, the Jacobite Rising remains one of the most bloody and divisive conflicts in British domestic history, which resonates to this day. 
 
'Detailed, vivid - and not for the faint-hearted' Financial Times 
 
'Fascinating, meticulously researched... tremendous' Daily Mail 
 
'Intensely readable... and vividly written' Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books

Culloden

Battle & Aftermath

Thomas Morris

A thrilling investigation of a true Victorian crime at Dublin railway station, shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2022. 
 
Dublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. 
 
Yet there is no sign of a murder weapon and the office door is locked, apparently from the inside. Thousands of pounds in gold and silver are left untouched at the scene of the crime. 
 
Augustus Guy, Ireland's most experienced detective, teams up with Dublin's leading lawyer to investigate the murder - but the case defies all explanation. Then a local woman comes forward, claiming to know the killer...

The Dublin Railway Murder

The sensational true story of a Victorian murder mystery

Barbie Latza Nadeau

The killing took place outside a busy coffee bar in Naples in broad daylight. 
 
Pupetta was eighteen years old and six months pregnant when she pulled the gun from her bag. 
 
The victim? 
 
A man known as Big Tony who had ordered the hit on her husband just months earlier... 
 
In this unputdownable exposé of women in the Mafia, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau tells the stories of the women who have risen to prominence in the Italian mob, beginning with the first documented female boss, the infamous Pupetta Maresca. Through personal interviews and groundbreaking research, Nadeau gives us a jaw-dropping 360-degree view of the dark underbelly of Italian society, taking us deeper into the Mafia and its complex realities than ever before. 
 
'Takes the reader into the little-known role of the women that underpin Italy's most ruthless mob families' Sara Gay Forden, author of House of Gucci 
 
'An unflinching portrait of one the original divas of organised crime' Clare Longrigg, author of Mafia Women 
 
'A must for true-crime fans' Publishers Weekly

The Godmother

Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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