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 In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1974 his citizenship was revoked and he was expelled from the Soviet Union.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

Alex Danchev

Alex Dekker served as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces 'Green Berets' for nearly 20 years, first with 5th Special Forces Group and then as a special operations team member assigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command. He has deployed multiple times to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations worldwide, and has attended multiple advanced tactical and technical schools within the U.S. Special Operations community and interagency. Alex has traveled to dozens of countries for work and personal adventures and has spent years living abroad. He is an avid student of history who has participated as a volunteer in numerous archaeological digs, is an Arabic speaker, and holds a Masters in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. When not traveling, Alex lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Savannah, a former CIA Operations Officer, their children, and their German Shepherd Donovan.

Alex Dekker

Alex Dimitrov is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize from the American Poetry Review and a Pushcart Prize and is the author of Begging For It (2013), Together And By Yourselves (2017), and Love and Other Poems (2021). His work has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Poetry, and more. Formerly, he was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets where he edited the popular online series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. From 2009-2013, he founded and ran Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York. Currently, he teaches creative writing at NYU where he is Writer in Residence.

Alex Dimitrov

Alex Dingwall-Main

Alex Duval

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David Stevenson

1914-1918, David Stevenson's history of the First World War, has been acclaimed as the definitive one-volume account of the conflict 
 
In the summer of 1914 Europe exploded into a frenzy of mass violence. The war that followed had global repercussions, destroying four empires and costing millions of lives. Even the victorious countries were scarred for a generation, and we still today remain within the conflict's shadow. In this major analysis David Stevenson re-examines the causes, course and impact of this 'war to end war', placing it in the context of its era and exposing its underlying dynamics. His book provides a wide-ranging international history, drawing on insights from the latest research. It offers compelling answers to the key questions about how this terrible struggle unfolded: questions that remain disturbingly relevant for our own time. 
 
'It's harder to imagine a better single-volume comprehensive history of the conflict than this superb study' Ian Kershaw 
 
'Perhaps the best comprehensive one-volume history of the war yet written' New Yorker 
 
'David Stevenson is the real deal ... His defining characteristic is his outstanding rigour as an historian ... tremendously clever' Niall Ferguson 
 
'This history of the 1914-1918 conflict surpasses all others. It is tough, erudite and comprehensive' Independent

1914-1918

The History of the First World War

Spike Milligan

'Keep talking, Milligan. I think I can get you out on Mental Grounds.''That's how I got in, sir.''Didn't we all.' 
 
The second volume of Spike Milligan's legendary recollections of life as a gunner in World War Two sees our hero into battle in North Africa - eventually. First, there is important preparation to be done: extensive periods of loitering ('We had been standing by vehicles for an hour and nothing had happened, but it happened frequently'), psychological toughening ('If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it') and living dangerously ('no underwear!'). At last the battle for Tunis is upon them...

'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?'

A Confrontation in the Desert

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

'My namer is Maria Antonoinetta Fontana, but everyone call me Toni.''I'm Spike,' sometimes known as stop thief or hey you.'Yeser, I know.' 
 
The sixth volume of Spike Milligan's off-the-wall account of his part in World War Two sees our hero doing very little soldiering. Because it's 1946. Rather, he is now part of the Bill Hall Trio - a 'Combined Services Entertainment' inflicted on unsuspecting soldiers across Italy and Austria - and is largely preoccupied with the unbearably beautiful ballerina, Ms Toni Fontana ('Arghhhhhhhhh!). But he must enjoy it while he can before he is demobbed and sent home to Catford - so he does ...

Goodbye Soldier

'It's all over, Von Arnheim has surrendered and he's very angry.''This could mean war...' 
 
The third volume of Spike Milligan's laugh-a-line account of life as a gunner in World War Two resumes on the eve of victory in North Africa. Now Britain's looniest war hero must combat some of the direst threats a soldier has ever faced - boredom ('Christ, I just thought of Catford'), a cold ('In this weather?' 'Yed.'), moving camp ('It's a sort of Brighton with camels'), relaxing on the beach ('Life was golden, and we were the assayers'), moving camp again ('We're already somewhere else'), a visit to Carthage ('It's terrible, it's like Catford') and a perilous encounter with the gloriously endowed Mademoiselle Villion ('"Help! massage," I said weakly'). Against the odds, they survive and are sent at last to Italy to be killed...

Monty

His Part in My Victory

A voice is calling across the land, "Bombardier Milligan.""Bombadier Milligan is dead," I replied in a disguised voice.The voice replied, "Then he's going to miss his breakfast." 
 
The fourth volume of Spike Milligan's legendary account of his time in the army during World War Two begins as he and his regiment land in sunny Italy in 1943 ('The ship touched the beach very gently, so gently I suspect it's not insured'). After a bout of Sandfly Fever, from which he soon recovers ('I'm ready to be killed again'), our plucky hero is piddled on by a farm dog ('Mussolini's revenge?') before forging his way inland towards the enemy and the sound of guns ('We're getting near civilisation'), where matters suddenly take a dark turn ('I was not really me any more') ...

Mussolini

His Part in My Downfall

'I had not informed my parents of my return, I wanted it to be a lovely surprise; it was, for me, they were away ...' 
 
The seventh and last volume of Spike Milligan's memoirs sees our hero returning from war and Italy ... but to what? Aside from shooting large, inaccurate guns at Germans, all he has done for five long years is blow a trumpet, tell rude jokes and write and perform sketches for the entertainment of bored and murderous soldiers - who on earth is going to pay a civilian to do more of that? From the giddy heights of Hackney Empire to a Zurich Freak Show and beyond, Spike makes his way through the backwaters of showbiz, first as band musician then as one-man wild-act and eventually in the company of a group of like-minded comedians called Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Peter Sellers. They decide to call themselves The Goons...

Peace Work

Sunil Khilnani

This is one of the key books on modern India, acclaimed as the definitive account, and now republished with a new introduction. 
 
The Idea of India was originally published to mark the 50th anniversary of India's independence and has since established itself as a uniquely valuable and authoritative book on a key subject. At the heart of India's self-image since independence has been 'the idea of India' - modern, technocratic, egalitarian, secular - but the tensions between the idea and the reality have become almost intolerable. This book shows how. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'A splendid - and timely - book ... Spirited, combative and insight-filled ... Khilnani has woven a rich analysis of contemporary India and its evolution since indepence. I am inclined to agree with [him] on the robustness and staying power of the secular idea of India' Amartya Sen, Times Literary Supplement 
 
'A masterful rebuttal to all cultural romantics and religious chauvinists ... [A] splendid book about definitions of the Indian nation' Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books 
 
'Especially brilliant is Khilnani's attempt to understand the changing nature of India by studying its urban constructs' Chitra Divakaruni, Los Angeles Times

The Idea of India

'Back to those haunting days in Italy in 1944, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, with lava running in great red rivulets down the slope towards us, and Jock taking a drag on his cigarette and saying, "I think we've got grounds for a rent rebate."' 
 
The fifth volume of Spike Milligan's unsurpassed account of life as a Bombardier in World War Two sees our hero dispatched from the front line to psychiatric hospital and from there to a rehabilitation camp. Considered loony (and 'unfit to be killed in combat by either side'), he becomes embroiled in his own private battle with melancholy. But it is music, wit and a little help from his friends - including one Gunner Harry Secombe - that help carry him through to his first stage appearances ...

Where Have All the Bullets Gone?

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

Iris Jones Simantel

From the dirty streets of the East End to the Welsh countryside, will little evacuee Iris ever find somewhere to belong? 
 
Born in 1938 under threat of looming war, Iris spent her early years playing in the rubble of bombed buildings in Dagenham by day and cowering in a dusty shelter at night. But the hardships of poverty and the dreaded Blitz could not match the pain she felt at her parents' indifference. She prayed that just once her mother would hold her when the bombs rained down. But loneliness only intensified when she was evacuated. 
 
Finding the nurturing home she had always dreamt of in her adopted Welsh parents, she wonders what, when she returns to London after the war, will be waiting for her. Will she ever be able to love her philandering father, depressive mother and an angry, bullying brother? Will her family even survive? Or will she have to look farther afield for the affection she so longs for?

Far from the East End

The moving story of an evacuee's survival and search for home

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

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

Evelyn Juers

When the Nazis began destroying lives across Europe and artists became state enemies, Nelly Kroeger, a tall, blonde ex-barmaid, and writer and political activist Heinrich Mann - twenty-seven years her senior and top of the list at Goebbels's book-burnings - fled together, first to France, then to Los Angeles. 
 
Interweaving stories from their friends, relatives and literary contemporaries - Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, James Joyce, Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf - House of Exile tells the remarkable story of Nelly and Heinrich, a couple divided by class and their own families, and of their unconventional love in a time of war.

House of Exile

With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy, leaving a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's Flying Circus to the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today. 
 
Throughout his life, Milligan wrote prolifically - scripts, poetry, fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words: an autobiography - of sorts. 
From his childhood in India, through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of The Goon Show and beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote.

Milligan's Meaning of Life

An Autobiography of Sorts

Jason Burke

From the author of Al-Qaeda, Jason Burke's The 9/11 Wars is an essential book for understanding the dangerous and unstable world of the twenty-first century. 
 
 On September 11th 2001, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks, terrorists destroyed New York's World Trade Center and a substantial portion of the Pentagon. Since the Twin Towers fell, the world has seen the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the downfall of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, bombings, battles and riots. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the 'war on terror'. 
 
 Whether reporting on the riots in France or the attack on Mumbai, suicide bombers in Iraq or British troops fighting in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, Jason Burke's The 9/11 Wars, named 2011 Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph, Economist and Independent, tells the story of a world that changed forever when the hijacked planes flew out of the brilliant blue sky above Manhattan on September 11th. 
 
 'The best overview of the 9/11 decade so far in print' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Economist 
 
 'A magisterial history of the last decade' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Pankaj Mishra, Guardian 
 
 'At a time when there are more books out on terrorism than ever before ... this is likely to be among the best' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Potent ... journalism of a high order ... essential for understanding the past decade' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sherard Cowper-Coles, Sunday Times 
 
 Jason Burke is the South Asia correspondent for the Guardian. He has reported around the world for both the Guardian and the Observer. He is the author of two other widely praised books, both published by Penguin: Al-Qaeda and On the Road to Kandahar. He lives in New Delhi.

The 9/11 Wars

Stephen E. Ambrose

Douglas G. Brinkley

Since it first appeared in 1971, Rise to Globalism has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The ninth edition of this classic survey, now updated through the administration of George W. Bush, offers a concise and informative overview of the evolution of American foreign policy from 1938 to the present, focusing on such pivotal events as World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and 9/11. Examining everything from the Iran-Contra scandal to the rise of international terrorism, the authors analyze-in light of the enormous global power of the United States-how American economic aggressiveness, racism, and fear of Communism have shaped the nation's evolving foreign policy.

Rise to Globalism

American Foreign Policy Since 1938

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

'At Victoria station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train . . .' 
 
In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitus, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback. No ammunition') to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ('I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway'). 
 
Filled with bathos, pathos and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.

Adolf Hitler

My Part in his Downfall

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

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

Henry Kissinger

In 1971 Henry Kissinger took the historic step of reopening relations between China and the West, and since then has been more intimately connected with the country at the highest level than any other western figure. This book distils his unique experience, examining China's history from the classical era to the present day, describing the essence of its millennia-old approach to diplomacy, strategy and negotiation, and reflecting on these attitudes for our own uncertain future.

On China

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

Niall Ferguson

The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wrong? How did we do this to ourselves? The War of the World comes up with compelling, fascinating answers. It is Niall Ferguson's masterpiece.

The War of the World

History's Age of Hatred

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 Edgerton

GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
The familiar image of the British in the Second World War is that of the plucky underdog taking on German might. David Edgerton's bold, compelling new history shows the conflict in a new light, with Britain as a very wealthy country, formidable in arms, ruthless in pursuit of its interests and sitting at the heart of a global production system. 
 
The British, indeed Churchillian, vision of war and modernity was challenged by repeated defeat by less well equipped enemies. Yet the end result was a vindication of this vision. Like the United States, a powerful Britain won a cheap victory, while others paid a great price. Britain's War Machine, by putting resources, machines and experts at the heart of a global rather than merely imperial story, demolishes some of the most cherished myths about wartime Britain and gives us a very different and often unsettling picture of a great power in action

Britain's War Machine

Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War

Manning Marable

'Groundbreaking ... It will be difficult for anyone to better this book ... a work of art, a feast that combines genres skilfully: biography, true-crime, political commentary. It gives us Malcolm X in full gallop' Wil Haygood, Washington Post 
 
'He was a country bumpkin who became a zoot-suited entertainer who became a petty criminal who became a self-taught intellectual ... In his revealing and prodigiously researched new biography, Marable vividly chronicles these many incarnations of Malcolm X, describing the "multiple masks" he donned over the years' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 
 
'Explodes the myths that obscure the real man' Hugh Muir, Guardian 
 
'By the end of the 1960s, Malcolm's disciples had elevated him to what Manning Marable calls "secular sainthood" ... But Marable resists the temptation of hagiography and fills in the gaps left by previous books. He gives us Malcolm in all his self-contradiction and self-doubt' Yo Zushi, New Statesman 
 
'Lucid, hugely researched and surely definitive ... an extraordinary story' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 
 
'Here at last is the meticulous portrait he deserves' Andrew Anthony, Observer

Malcolm X

A Life of Reinvention

King Abdullah II of Jordan

HRH King Abdullah was schooled in America and at Sandhurst and was heading for a life as a career soldier, when his father fell ill and he unexpectedly inherited the throne of Jordan. Fiercely loyal to his country but possessing an outsider's perspective on the political difficulties of the region, King Abdullah has since spent every effort to better Jordan - improving their economy, education and rights for women - and find security for his people and their neighbours. In this seminal work, he puts forward what may be our best chance yet for the most important issue in the region - Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Our Last Best Chance

The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril

Fearghal McGarry

In 1947 the Bureau of Military History was established by the Irish government to record the experiences of those who took part in the fight for independence. In 1959, the results of this research - including 1,773 'witness statements' - were placed in 83 steel boxes and locked into a strongroom in Government Buildings. Rebels, edited by one of Ireland's top young historians, brings the best of the surviving accounts of the Easter Rising together into a comprehensive, accessible and thrillingly readable telling of that much-debated insurrection, the first in a series of events that brought about Irish independence. From the witnesses' recollections of their schooling and other childhood influences to their accounts of what happened at Easter 1916, Rebels tells this famous story in a new and exhilarating way.

Rebels

Voices from the Easter Rising

The controversial revisionist history of World War I that made Niall Ferguson's name 
 
The First World War killed around eight million men and bled Europe dry. More than any other event, it made the twentieth century. In this boldly conceived book and provocative, aimed to appeal not only to students but also to the general reader, Niall Ferguson explodes many of the myths surrounding the war. 
 
Niall Ferguson is Herzog Professor of Financial History at the Stern School of Business, New York University, Visiting Professor of History, Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow, Jesus College, Oxford. His other books for Penguin include Empire, The Cash Nexus, Colossus, The War of the World, Virtual History, High Financier and Civilization.

The Pity of War

Intellectually brilliant, cultured and sophisticated, with refined tastes in art, music and cuisine. And a pure sociopath. This is the series that launched the world’s number one villain – Hannibal Lecter.

Hannibal Lecter

Happy Families

Harlem Renaissance Series

Harold Fry

Harry Hole

Harry and the Dinosaurs

Hatchimals

Hattie B, Magical Vet

Hawk series

Hawthorne

He Who Fights With Monsters

Heart Hassle

Heartland Trilogy

Heaven Official's Blessing

Heavenly Bodies

Henry Pratt is the epitomy of the great British underdog. Nothing is ever simple in his world, just when it seems things are going right, life throws him another unwanted curve-ball. Join Pratt as he traverses the highs and lows of everyday life in this comic masterpiece.

Henry Pratt

Her Hidden Fire

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.

Hereward

Heroes of Olympus

Heroes of Olympus Graphic Novels

Hetty Feather was left at a foundling hospital when she was a tiny baby. Having grown up in a loving foster family until she was five, and then finding herself returned to the hospital, she begins to question who her actual family are, and is determined to stop at nothing to find out where she came from. Jacqueline Wilson’s acclaimed series follows Hetty and her friend Diamond as they work their way up from their lowly backgrounds to become stars, overcoming loss, unkind bosses and flirtatious boys.

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