Alex Kapranos

Alex Kerr is an American writer and Japanologist whose previous books include Lost Japan and Another Kyoto (with Kathy Arlyn Sokol). He was the first foreigner to be awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan.

Alex Kerr

Alex Kershaw

Alex Kingston is TV royalty, celebrating 45 years in the business, from her debut in Grange Hill in 1980 to the title role (and BAFTA nomination) in The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, starring in over 150 ER episodes and becoming part of Doctor Who folklore as River Song. Her appearance in Doctor Who was meant to be a one-off but she became a regular and remains a fan favourite.

Alex Kingston

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

Alex Kirk

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

Alex Laird

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

Alex Latimer

Alex Livingston

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

Alex Manson-Smith

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

Alex Marshall

Alex Maunder

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

Alex McBride

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

Alex McCarthy

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

Alex Michaelides

Alex Montgomery

Alex Morris

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

Alex North

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

Alex O. Imas

Alex Owen

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

Alex Patrick

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

Alex Pavesi

Alex Pellew

Alex Pole

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

Alex Renton

Alex Richie

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

Alex Riley

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

Alex Scarrow

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

Alex Scott

Alex Sharp

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Hooman Majd

Hooman Majd, acclaimed journalist and New York-residing grandson of an Ayatollah, has a unique perspective on his Iranian homeland. In this vivid, warm and humorous insider's account, he opens our eyes to an Iran that few people see, meeting opium-smoking clerics, women cab drivers and sartorially challenged presidential officials, among others. 
 
Revealing a country where both t-shirt wearing teenagers and religious martyrs express pride in their Persian origins, that is deeply religious yet highly cosmopolitan, authoritarian yet reformist, this is the one book you should read to understand Iran and Iranians today.

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

The Paradox of Modern Iran

R.V. Jones

Reginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Second World War. 
 
In Most Secret War he details how Britain stealthily stole the war from under the Germans' noses by outsmarting their intelligence at every turn. He tells of the 'battle of the beams'; detecting and defeating flying bombs; using chaff to confuse radar; and many other ingenious ideas and devices. 
Jones was the man with the plan to save Britain and his story makes for riveting reading.

Most Secret War

Heinz Guderian

Heinz Guderian - master of the Blitzkrieg and father of modern tank warfare - commanded the German XIX Army Corps as it rampaged across Poland in 1939. 
 
Personally leading the devastating attack which traversed the Ardennes Forest and broke through French lines, he was at the forefront of the race to the Channel coast. Only Hitler's personal command to halt prevented Guderian's tanks and troops turning Dunkirk into an Allied bloodbath. 
 
Later commanding Panzergruppe 2 in Operation Barbarossa, Guderian's armoured spearhead took Smolensk after fierce fighting and was poised to launch the final assault on Moscow when he was ordered south to Kiev. In the battle that followed, he helped encircle and capture over 600,000 Soviet troops after days of combat in the most terrible conditions. 
 
Panzer Leader is a searing firsthand account of the most effective fighting force in modern history by the man who commanded it.

Panzer Leader

George Psychoundakis

George Psychoundakis was a young shepherd boy who knew the island of Crete intimately when the Nazis invaded by air in 1941. He immediately joined the resistance and took on the crucial job of war-time runner. 
 
It was not only the toughest but the most dangerous job of all. It involved immense journeys carrying vital messages, smuggling arms and explosives and guiding Allied soldiers, agents and commandos through heavily garrisoned territory. And George did not escape capture and torture on his many forays. 
This brilliant account of George's activities across mountainous terrain, come blazing summer or freezing winter, is a gripping story of bravery against impossible odds.

The Cretan Runner

Ewen Southby-Tailyour

Andre Hue

Andre Hue was a daredevil. By the age of twenty the Anglo-Frenchman had survived shipwreck and years undercover in France, sabotaging German supply lines. Returning to Britain, he was recruited by SOE to parachute behind enemy lines on 5 June 1944, to unite resistance forces in Brittany and paralyse local German troops during the Allied invasion. 
 
Though Hue's mission was fraught with difficulty - he missed his landing site, his secret base camp became the site of a pitch battle and a band of Cossacks tried to hunt him down - he knew that thousands of lives depended on his success or failure . . .

The Next Moon

Christopher Clark

King of Prussia, German Emperor, war leader and defeated exile, Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of the most important - and most controversial - figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe. But how much power did he really have? 
 
The acclaimed historian Christopher Clark follows Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court through the turbulent decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and the collapse of Germany in 1918, to his last days. He asks: what was his true role in the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War? What was the nature and extent of his control? What were his political goals and his success in achieving them? How did he project authority and exercise influence? How did the people view him? 
 
Through original research, Clark presents a fresh new interpretation of this contentious figure, focusing on how his forty-year reign from 1888 to 1918 affected Germany, and the rest of Europe, for years to come.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

A Life in Power

Ross Kemp

He has played an East End hardman, an SAS soldier and investigated vicious world gangs. Now Ross Kemp is taking on perhaps his hardest assignment of all - the Taliban. In order to prepare for this life-threatening ordeal, Ross Kemp trains with the First Battalion Royal Anglians in England's subzero temperatures, practicing firing SA 80 rifles and .50 calibre machine guns, getting to know the soldiers and learning the tactics they use to stay alive. Sent with them to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan's Helmand province, he immerses himself fully: he endures the stifling heat, the constant threat of snipers, RPG attacks, suicide bombers and land mines. In short, he discovers first hand what it's like to fight on the frontline. It's the closest he's ever come to dying - bullets fizzing inches from his head as they hit the ground on either side of him. After two harrowing and arduous months Ross returns to England, but there is little relief to be had as he meets the mothers of soldiers killed in the conflict. Then in September 2008 he goes back to the war zone, to see how the men he grew so close to are faring, to check how many of them are still alive. It's a fascinating, horrifying and often moving insight into the brutal reality ordinary soldiers have to face in one of the world's most dangerous and volatile regions.

Ross Kemp on Afghanistan

Andrew Roberts

Masters and Commanders describes how four titanic figures shaped the grand strategy of the West during the Second World War. Each was exceptionally tough-willed and strong minded, and each was certain that he knew best how to win the war. Yet each knew that he had to win at least two of the others over in order to get his strategy adopted. The book traces the mutual suspicion and admiration, the rebuffs and the charm, the often explosive disagreements and wary reconciliations which resulted.

Masters and Commanders

The Military Geniuses Who Led The West To Victory In World War II

John Hersey

When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 100,000 men, women and children, it was the beginning of a terrifying new episode in human history. Written only a year after the disaster, John Hersey brought the event vividly alive with this heart-rending account of six men and women who survived despite all the odds. He added a further chapter when, forty years later, he returned to Hiroshima to discover how the same six people had struggled to cope with catastrophe and with often crippling disease. The result is a devastating picture of the long-term effects of one very small bomb.

Hiroshima

Bill Emmott

The world is changing, as political and economic power shift further towards Asia. In this penetrating book Bill Emmott shows the ways in which our future will be dominated not by one, but by three Asian giants - China, India and a newly resurgent Japan. 
 
How will competition between the emergent great powers in the East affect the West? What will the potential benefits, tensions and danger zones be? Emmott, former editor of the Economist, is one of the world's most authoritative international commentators. In Rivals he has written the essential book for understanding how this new power game will shape the twenty-first century.

Rivals

How the power struggle between China, India and Japan will shape our next decade

Stephen Graubard

In this magisterial examination of the Presidency over the course of the 20th Century, the author explores the history of the world's greatest elective office and the role each incumbent has played in changing the scope of its powers. Using individual presidential portraits of each of the presidents of the past century Graubard asks, and answers, a wide variety of crucial questions about each President. What intellectual, social and political assets did they bring to the White House, and how quickly did they deplete or mortgage that capital? How well did they cope with crises, foreign and domestic? How much attention did they pay to their election pledges after they were elected? How did they use the media, old and new? Above all, how did they conduct themselves in office and what legacy did they leave to their successors? Graubard provides original analysis in each case, and reaches many surprising conclusions.

The Presidents

The Transformation of the American Presidency from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama

Mark Mazower

Hitler's empire was the largest, most brutal and most ambitious reshaping of Europe in history. Inspired by the imperial legacy of those such as the British, the Third Reich cast its shadow from the Channel Islands to the Caucasus and ruled hundreds of millions. Yet, as Mark Mazower's groundbreaking new account shows, it was an empire built on an illusion. 
 
From Hitler's plans for vast motorways crossing an ethnically cleansed Russian steppe, to dreams of a German super-economy rivalling America's, Mazower reveals the lethal fusion of mass murder, modern managerialism and colossal incompetence that underpinned the Nazi New Order. Ultimately Hitler's empire ended up consuming its own, leaving destruction in its wake and finishing not just with the downfall of Germany, but an entire continent.

Hitler's Empire

Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe

R. W. Johnson

The universal jubilation that greeted Nelson Mandela's inauguration as president of South Africa in 1994 and the process by which the nightmare of apartheid had been banished is one of the most thrilling, hopeful stories in the modern era: peaceful, rational change was possible and, as with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the weight of an oppressive history was suddenly lifted. 
 
R.W. Johnson's major new book tells the story of South Africa from that magic period to the bitter disappointment of the present. As it turned out, it was not so easy for South Africa to shake off its past. The profound damage of apartheid meant there was not an adequate educated black middle class to run the new state and apartheid had done great psychological harm too, issues that no amount of goodwill could wish away. Equally damaging were the new leaders, many of whom had lived in exile or in prison for much of their adult lives and who tried to impose decrepit, Eastern Bloc political ideas on a world that had long moved on. 
 
This disastrous combination has had a terrible impact - it poisoned everything from big business to education to energy utilities to AIDS policy to relations with Zimbabwe. At the heart of the book lies the ruinous figure of Thabo Mbeki, whose over-reaching ambitions led to catastrophic failure on almost every front. But, as Johnson makes clear, Mbeki may have contributed more than anyone else to bringing South Africa close to "failed state" status, but he had plenty of help.

South Africa's Brave New World

The Beloved Country Since the End of Apartheid

Adrian Orchard

James Barrington

Helmand Province, October 2006: British soldiers are engaged in the most intense, sustained fighting they've faced since the Korean War. Against a tough, experienced and frighteningly motivated enemy, their lives too often depended on the success of danger-close, pin-point attacks pressed home from the air. 
 
When 800 Naval Air Squadron - callsign 'Recoil' - arrived in theatre, their Boss, Commander Ade Orchard, knew there could be no slip-ups. Day and night, the Fleet Air Arm crews were on constant alert, ready to scramble their heavily armed Harrier attack jets at a moment's notice in support of the men on the ground. 
 
The call wasn't slow in coming. Just fifteen minutes after getting airborne for the first time, Orchard and his wingman were in the thick of it, called in when an Apache helicopter gunship was forced back by heavy fire . . . 
 
The first book written by a serving British fast jet pilot since the 1991 Gulf War, Joint Force Harrier offers an unprecedented, heart-stopping insight into the realities of modern air warfare. The complexity and sophistication of the equipment may have moved on since the epic war battles of WWII, but it's clear that the courage, skill and character of the men engaged in this struggle for a country's survival has not.

Joint Force Harrier

Terry Brighton

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

Masters of Battle

Monty, Patton and Rommel at War

Steve Coll

The Bin Ladens are shrouded in secrecy, living in one of the most closed, unaccountable countries on earth. Little has been known about the world that created Osama - until now. 
 
In this gripping account prizewinning journalist Steve Coll has interviewed those closest to the family who rose from Yemeni peasants to jetsetting millionaires in two generations. In doing so, he reveals a Saudi Arabia torn between religious purity and the temptations of the West, telling a story of oil, money, power, patronage and dangerous cultural extremes.

The Bin Ladens

Oil, Money, Terrorism and the Secret Saudi World

Thomas E. Ricks

Based on unprecedented real-time access to the military's entire chain of command, The Gamble is the definitive account of the insurgency within the US military that led to a radical shift in America's strategy in Iraq - and the bloody implementation of that strategy on the ground. 
 
In his international bestseller Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks gave us the definitive reckoning with what went so wrong in Iraq. The story The Gamble tells is how, when the war was at its darkest hour, a group of dissident junior commanders and their civilian allies did an end run around their superiors in the military establishment and seized control of the war. The result was "the Surge," one of the American military's boldest strategic gambles since the landings at Inchon. 
 
General David Petraeus gave military expert Thomas E. Ricks extraordinary privileged access to himself and his team during the past two years, and the result is a chronicle of astonishing vividness and analytical depth. It is the story of military leadership in the crucible of war, under excruciating political pressure at home. It is also the story of the soldiers who executed the strategy out in the field. Ricks concludes that the war likely will last for many years to come - and that it will not be remembered for the reasons we think.

The Gamble

General Petraeus and the Untold Story of the American Surge in Iraq, 2006 - 2008

Samuel. D Kassow

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

Who Will Write Our History?

Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto

Avi Shlaim

For most of his long reign (1953-1999) Hussein of Jordan was one of the dominant figures in Middle Eastern politics, its most continuous presence, and one of the most consistent proponents of peace with Israel. This is the first major account of his life and reign, written with access to many of his surviving papers, with the co-operation (but not approval) of his family and staff, and extensive interviews with policy-makers of many different nationalities.

Lion of Jordan

The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace

Bert 'Yank' Levy

1941. Britain is under some of the heaviest air raids of the Second World War. Concerns about Nazi paratroopers landing in Britain and invading take hold in the hearts of the British citizenry. The Home Guard has been mobilised to defend against airborne assault &ndash; and it needs training. &lsquo;Yank&rsquo; Levy is brought in to Osterley Park to teach guerrilla warfare, from practical experience in the Spanish Civil War. &lsquo;Yank&rsquo; trains soldiers of the Home Guard how to use surveillance, defend against tanks and armoured vehicles, how to fight in towns and across country and against a well-supplied, highly-trained and mobile occupying force. His book, Guerrilla Warfare offers such sound advice as: &lsquo;Whether you go to a tea-party or to work on your allotment&hellip;take your rifle with you. Don&rsquo;t leave it downstairs for a German to grab if he enters the house&rsquo; and 'Your motto should always be: &lsquo;Finish them! Then a quick get-away, and another ambush some place else&rsquo;&rsquo;

Guerrilla Warfare

Chris Patten

Globalisation, energy, international crime, Weapons of Mass Destruction, nuclear proliferation, small arms proliferation, international drugs trafficking, climate change, water shortage, migration, epidemic disease, the fraying of the nation state: the list of challenges facing our world is itself proliferating rapidly, and nobody seems to have much of a grip on what is going on. Digesting vast amounts of information from a multiplicity of sources, and drawing on his experience at the highest levels of national and international politics, Chris Patten analyses what we know in each of these areas and argues how in each of them we could get somewhere we might want to be. Very little, he says, has turned out as we might have expected twenty years ago, but there is plenty we can still do. 
 
Readers of Patten's previous books will know what a penetrating analyst and engaging writer he is. This is his most ambitious and impressive yet.

What Next?

Surviving the Twenty-first Century

P. D. Smith

It was the weapon to end all weapons: the doomsday device. A huge nuclear bomb so powerful that it could envelop the entire planet in a cloud of radioactive dust, and bring about instant extinction. 
 
This is the untold story of the Cold War&rsquo;s most insane plan, the men behind it and how it nearly happened. It is also the history of humanity&rsquo;s nightmare vision of a superweapon, showing how popular culture, from the stories of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne to films such as Planet of the Apes, Mad Max and Dr Strangelove itself have both shaped and reflected our darkest dreams.

Doomsday Men

The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon

Elie Wiesel

Marion Wiesel

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

Night

Orlando Figes

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

The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

Yaroslav Trofimov

20 November 1979: as morning prayers began, hundreds of hardline Islamist gunmen, armed with rifles smuggled in coffins, stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca. With thousands of terrified worshippers trapped inside, the result was a bloody siege that lasted two weeks, caused hundreds of deaths, prompted an international diplomatic crisis and unleashed forces that would eventually lead to the rise of al Qaeda. 
 
Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov takes us day-by-day through one of the most momentous &ndash; and heavily censored &ndash; events in recent history, interviewing many direct participants in the siege and drawing on secret documents to reveal the truth about the first operation of modern global jihad.

The Siege of Mecca

The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine

Peter Clarke

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

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire

The Demise of a Superpower, 1944-47

R F Foster

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

Luck and the Irish

A Brief History of Change, 1970-2000

Norman Stone

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

The Eastern Front 1914-1917

Virginia Nicholson

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

Singled Out

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

Christopher Duggan

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

The Force of Destiny

A History of Italy Since 1796

I Funny

I Like Birds

I Wanna Be Your Girl

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

ICONIC

ITCH

Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveller’s Guides

Following a horrific car accident in which she was the only survivor, seventeen year old Mia is faced with a choice. Does she stay, living with her grandparents and her loving boyfriend, or does she leave? She makes a difficult decision, leaving  it all behind her, breaking Adam's heart. Three years later, and the pair find themselves thrown together in New York, reminding Mia of her past and everything that she left behind her. If I stay and Where She Went are simultaneously tragic and hopeful, exploring grief, romance and memory.

If I Stay

In Our Time

In The Night Garden

In Their Own Words

Ink and Iron

Inspector Iwata

Inspector Maigret

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

Inspector McLean

Inspector Sejer

Inspector Taleb Series

Inspector Webb

Instinct Series

Intercrime

Invisible Series

Irish Classics

Iron Seas

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

Isaac Bell

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

Isabella & Ferdinand Trilogy

It's Time to...

Izzy Dobson

I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again

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

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