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

Alex Edelman

Alex Edmans

Alex Evans is Campaigns Director at Avaaz.org, a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), and has nearly twenty years’ experience in climate and development policy. Alex has worked as Special Adviser to two UK Secretaries of State for International Development (Hilary Benn and Valerie Amos), as an expert on climate change in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and with think tanks including Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. He has also worked as a consultant on futures and foreign policy for organizations from Oxfam to the US National Intelligence Council. 
Alex lives in North Yorkshire and is married with two children.

Alex Evans

Alex Ferguson was born and brought up in Govan, Glasgow. He has always been a controversial figure, never far from the limelight, from the time he led an apprentices’ strike before entering full-time football. As a player with a reputation as uncompromising centre-forward his clubs included Glasgow Rangers, Dunfermline and Falkirk, and he became a spokesman for the player’s union. His first appointment as manager was with East Stirling, from where he moved to Love Street, where St Mirren’s crowds under his dynamic leadership rose from 3,000 to 12,000. He joined the Pittodrie set-up as manager in 1978.

Alex Ferguson

Alex Fryer

Alex Games

Alex Garland was born in London in 1970. He is the author of two novels, The Beach, The Tesseract and an illustrated novella, The Coma, in collaboration with his father. He has also written screenplays for films including 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd. In 2015, Garland made his directorial debut with Ex Machina.

Alex Garland

Alex George

Dr Alex George was the UK’s Mental Health Ambassador for children and young people from 2021 until early 2025, and he currently hosts the Stompcast podcast. Dr Alex’s first children’s book A BETTER DAY was a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller, won a British Book Award and sold 42,000 copies through TCM. Dr Alex previously worked for the NHS as an A&amp;E doctor and is now passionate about helping to equip everyone – especially children and young people – with the tools needed to live a full, productive and meaningful life.

Alex Gordon

Alex Grecian worked for an ad agency before returning to writing fiction full-time and raising his son. Alex is the author of the long-running and critically acclaimed comic-book series Proof, and the bestselling Scotland Yard Murder Squad series. He lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and son.

Alex Grecian

Alex Gutteridge

Alex Halberstadt is the author of the award-winning Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and The Paris Review. He is a two-time James Beard Award nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He works and lives in New York.

Alex Halberstadt

Alex Haley

Dr Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a former senior research scientist on Google's Ethical AI team. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry and a proponent of community-based uses of technology.

Alex Hanna

Alex Hannaford

Alex Hely-Hutchinson

Professor Alex Hill is the co-founder and Director of The Centre for High Performance – a collaboration between the University of Kingston, Duke Corporate Education, London Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford – which is dedicated to helping high-performing organizations develop a stronger and more robust economy, society and environment. The Centre has worked with organizations in sectors ranging from the arts and education to sport, technology and the military. 
 
He is also a Professor at Kingston University (UK), Educator at Duke Corporate Education (US), and Visiting Professor at Cass Business School (UK), Gordon Institute of Business Science (South Africa), The Academy of National Economy (Russia) and KEDGE Management School (France). 
 
He has written a number of books, published articles in leading academic journals such as the Harvard Business Review, advised the UK Government on educational policy, appeared on BBC Newsnight, presented at the Global Economics and Skills Forum and has written for The Times and Schools Week.

Alex Hill

Alex Hoffler and Stacey O’Gorman’s motto is ‘Follow your dream’. Just a couple of year ago Alex and Stacey quit their 9 to 5 jobs and began their Meringue Girls journey. Now they have a bakery HQ in Broadway Market with a staff of eight, which sells to Selfridges, Fortnum &amp; Mason, Recipease and Harvey Nicholls, as well as fashion events, weddings and their weekly market stall. They run masterclasses rated by the Evening Standard as one of the best in London. They have had a huge media and social media response including numerous TV appearance and over 80,000 Instagram followers. They are in talks to open a franchise in Dubai. 
 
They also do weekly food styling for various publications including the Guardian. They live in east London. Alex has a new baby, and Stacey recently got married.

Alex Hoffler

Alex Holt is the Global Head of the multi-billion-dollar Technology, Media and Telecoms practice at KPMG. He leads a large team who work with all the major organisations across the sector on everything from multi-billion M&amp;A deals through to tax, audit and management consulting. As well as leading the TMT sector globally, Alex is also the Global Lead Partner for some of the largest tech companies in the world. 
 
 Alex also serves on the Board of the anti-poverty charity JobTrain.

Alex Holt

Alex Horne 
noun 
1. comedian, writer, gambler, taskmaster, podcaster, birdwatcher, potential neologist and father.

Alex Horne

Alex Hughes is an online recipe creator who is committed to making reaching your weight goals not only delicious but fun. All her recipes are comforting, low-calorie and will help you feel full. She can be found doing a little dance in her kitchen (the recipes taste that good) at @alexskitchenbangers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Alex Hughes

Alex James is a writer, farmer, and the bass player with Blur. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and five children.

Alex James

Alex Kadis is half-British, half-Greek, and grew up in Leyton and Walthamstow, East London. She studied English Literature at Goldsmiths University before embarking on a music journalism career. She was Features Editor at Smash Hits in its heyday (RIP) and has also written for various newspapers and magazines, including Sunday Times Style and Q Magazine. She then went into artist management and now works as a consultant in the music industry. Alex suffers from delusions of grandeur and still believes she will, one day, headline Wembley Stadium.

Alex Kadis

Alex Kantrowitz is a senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed News and one of the ten most cited technology reporters in the world. His work has been referenced by dozens of major publications, from the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal to Sports Illustrated. He is the founder of the tech publication and podcast Big Technology, which focuses on analysing tech giants. Kantrowitz is a graduate of Cornell University's College of Industrial and Labor Relations. This is his first book.

Alex Kantrowitz

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Brendan Simms

Brendan Simms's formidable, game-changing history of Europe 
 
In this marvelously ambitious and exciting book, Brendan Simms tells the story of Europe's constantly shifting geopolitics and the peculiar circumstances that have made it both so impossible to dominate, but also so dynamic and ferocious. It is the story of a group of highly competitive and mutually suspicious dynasties, but also of a continent uniquely prone to interference from 'semi-detached' elements, such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and (just as centrally to Simms's argument) the United States.

Europe

The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present

John Gray

The powerful, beautiful and chilling sequel to the bestselling Straw Dogs 
 
'By nature volatile and discordant, the human animal looks to silence for relief from being itself while other creatures enjoy silence as their birthright' 
 
Why do humans seek meaning to life? How do our imaginations leap into worlds so far beyond our actual reality? In this chilling and beautiful sequel to Straw Dogs, John Gray explores how we decorate our existence with countless fictions, twisting and turning to avoid acknowledging that we too are animals. Drawing on an extraordinary array of writers who are mesmerized by extremity, from Ballard to Conrad, Gray makes us re-imagine our place in the world.

The Silence of Animals

On Progress and Other Modern Myths

Rosemary Goring

A vivid, wide-ranging and engrossing account of Scotland's history, composed of eye-witness accounts by those who experienced it first-hand. Contributors range from Tacitus, Mary Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell to Adam Smith, David Livingstone and Billy Connolly. 
 
These include key historic moments - ranging from Bannockburn and Flodden to the SNP parliamentary victory in 2007 - along with a vast array of wonderfully readable insights into the everyday life of Scotland through the millennia. This is living, accesible history told by crofters, criminals, servants, house-wives, poets, journalists, nurses, politicians, novelists, prisoners, comedians, sportsmen and many more.

Scotland: The Autobiography

2,000 Years of Scottish History by Those Who Saw it Happen

Oliver Bullough

'Wonderful ... These are the chronicles of a writer who truly knows Russia' New York Times 
 
Award-winning writer Oliver Bullough travels the country from crowded Moscow train to empty windswept village, following in the footsteps of one extraordinary man, the dissident Orthodox priest Father Dmitry. His moving, terrifying story is the story of a nation: famine, war, the frozen wastes of the Gulag, the collapse of communism and now, a people seeking oblivion. Bullough shows that in a country so willing to crush its citizens, there is also courage, resilience and flickering glimmers of hope.

The Last Man in Russia

And The Struggle To Save A Dying Nation

J M Roberts

Odd Arne Westad

The completely updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World 
 
For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - not just bringing it up to date, but revising it throughout in the light of new research and discoveries, such as the revolution in our understanding of many civilizations in the Ancient World. The closing sections of the book reflect what now seems to be the inexorable rise of Asia and the increasingly troubled situation in the West. 
 
About the authors: 
 
J.M. Roberts, CBE, published The Penguin History of the World in 1976 to immediate acclaim. His other major books include The Paris Commune from the Right, The Triumph of the West (which was also a successful television series), The Penguin History of Europe and The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century. He died in 2003. 
 
Odd Arne Westad, FBA, is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Decisive Encounters, a standard history of the Chinese civil war. He also served as general co-editor of the Cambridge History of the Cold War. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'A work of outstanding breadth of scholarship and penetrating judgements. There is nothing better of its kind' Lord Jonathan Sumption, Sunday Telegraph 
 
'A stupendous achievement' A. J. P. Taylor 
 
'A brilliant book ... the most outstanding history of the world yet written' J. H. Plumb

The Penguin History of the World

6th edition

Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup is a free man, living in New York. Then he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. 
 
Drugged, beaten, given a new name and transported away from his wife and children to a Louisiana cotton plantation, Solomon will die if he reveals his true identity. This is the searing true story of his twelve years as a slave: the endless brutality, daily humiliations and constant fear, but also the small ways in which he and his fellow men try to survive. 
 
Twelve Years a Slave is a unique, unflinching record of slavery from the inside, and the incredible account of one man whose life was ripped from him - and who fought to get it back.

Twelve Years a Slave (Film Tie-in)

Robert Dallek

Updated edition of the authoritative single-volume biography of John F. Kennedy. Drawing upon first-hand sources and never-before-opened archives, prize-winning historian Robert Dallek reveals more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy, forever changing the way we think about his life, his presidency and his legacy. 
 
Dallek also discloses that, while labouring to present an image of robust good health, Kennedy was secretly in and out of hospitals throughout his life, soill that he was administered last rites on several occasions. 
 
He never shies away from Kennedy's weaknesses, but also brilliantly explores his strengths. The result is a full portrait of a bold, brave and truly human John F. Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy

An Unfinished Life 1917-1963

Sarah Bradford

The definitive biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - a fascinating account of an extraordinary life. 
 
Jackie Bouvier's privileged upbringing instilled rigid self-control, while her expedient marriage into the Kennedy clan consolidated her determination. Revealing new testimony from many of the couple's closest friends show the profound complexities both of this very public relationship, including the affairs that threatened it, and of her controversial marriage to Onassis. Here is the private Jackie - neglected wife, vigilant mother, obsessive shopper and working widow - whose fascinating nature is illuminated by all that Bradford has discovered.

America's Queen

The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Yang Jisheng

Yang Jisheng's Tombstone is the book that broke the silence on of one of history's most terrible crimes 
 
More people died in Mao's Great Famine than in the entire First World War, yet this story has remained largely untold, until now. Still banned in China, Tombstone draws on the author's privileged access to official and unofficial sources to uncover the full human cost of the tragedy, and create an unprecedented work of historical reckoning. 
 
'A book of great importance' Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans 
 
'The first proper history of China's great famine ... So thorough is his documentation that some are already calling Yang "China's Solzhenitsyn"' Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History

Tombstone

The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine

David Priestland

From historian David Priestland, this is remarkable book proposes a radical approach to how we see our world and who runs it 
 
We live in an age ruled by merchants. Competition, flexibility and profit are still the common currency, even at a time when Western countries have been driven off a cliff by these very values. But will it always be this way? 
 
David Priestland argues for the predominance in any society of one of three broad value systems - that of the merchant (commercial and competitive); the soldier (aristocratic and militaristic); and the sage (bureaucratic or creative). These 'castes' struggle alongside the worker (egalitarian and artisanal) for power, and when they achieve supremacy, they can have such a strong hold over us that it is almost impossible to imagine life outside their grip. And yet there does come a point of drastic change, usually because one caste becomes too dominant. The result is economic crisis, war or revolution, and eventually a new caste takes over. 
 
Priestland argues, we are now in the midst of a period with all the classic signs of imminent change. As the history of the last century shows, there is good reason to be fearful of the forces that this failure may unleash. Merchant, Soldier, Sage is both a masterful dissection of our current predicament and a brilliant piece of history. The world will not look the same after you read this book. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'We have here a gripping, argument-led history, efforlessly moving between New York, Tokyo and Berlin, from the Reformation to the 2008 economic crisis ... dazzling ... here, at last, is a work that places the current crisis in a longer history of seismic shifts in the balance of social power' Frank Trentman, BBC History Magazine 
 
'Concise but extremely ambitious ... well worth pondering and reflecting on ... among the many contributions to the dissection of our current predicament, this is surely one of the most thought-provoking' Sir Richard J Evans, Guardian 
 
'Stimulating ... In illustrating these larger processes of caste conflict and caste collaboration, the author offers crisp portraits of entrepreneurs, economists and warriors ... Sparkling prose and ... arresting comparisons' Ramachandra Guha, Financial Times 
 
About the author: 
 
David Priestland has studied Communism in all its forms for many years, in both Oxford and Moscow State Universities. He is University Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford and a Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, and the author of Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization. The Red Flag was shortlisted for the Longman/History Today prize.

Merchant, Soldier, Sage

A New History of Power

Alan Ryan

A magisterial, one-volume history of political thought from Herodotus to the present, Ancient Athens to modern democracy - from author and professor Alan Ryan 
 
This is a book about the answers that historians, philosophers, theologians, practising politicians and would-be revolutionaries have given to one question: how should human beings best govern themselves? 
 
Almost every modern government claims to be democratic; but is democracy really the best way of organising our political life? Can we manage our own affairs at all? Should we even try? In the west, do we actually live in democracies? In this extraordinary book Alan Ryan engages with the great thinkers of the past to show us how vividly their ideas speak to us in today's uncertain world. 
 
ALAN RYAN was born in London in 1940 and taught for many years at Oxford, where he was a Fellow of New College and Reader in Politics. He was Professor of Politics at Princeton from 1988 to 1996, when he returned to Oxford to become Warden of New College and Professor of Political Theory until his retirement in 2009. His previous books include The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life and John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. 
 
Reviews of On Politics: 
 
'An engaging and smart survey of major political thinkers ... Through Ryan [they] speak directly to the present' Mark Mazower, Prospect 
 
'Ryan's book is a magnificent piece of work, clear (even when the ideas he's exploring are obscure) and engaging (even when the theory in the original is forbidding) ... anyone remotely interested in political theory will profit from reading or dipping into Ryan's On Politics, whether this is their first acquaintance with the canon of political theory or whether they have been "Hobbing and Locking" for decades ... It's a remarkable experience' Jeremy Waldron, New York Review of Books 
 
'Ambitiously and elegantly covers two and a half millennia of political thinking ... despite covering huge intellectual terrain, [On Politics] a delight both when it explores detail and also when it draws conclusions of a broader perspective' Justin Champion, BBC History Magazine 
 
'On Politics is crammed with smart observations and wise advice' John Keane, Financial Times 
 
'An impressive achievement' Economist

On Politics

Kofi Annan

Over forty years of service to the United Nations - the last ten as Secretary-General - Kofi Annan has been at the centre of the major geopolitical events of our time. As much a memoir as a guide to world order, INTERVENTIONS provides a unique, behind-the-scenes view of global diplomacy during one of the most tumultuous periods in UN history. 
 
With eloquence and immediacy, Annan writes about the highs and lows of his years at the United Nations: from shuttle-diplomacy during crises such as Kosovo, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine to the wrenching battles over the Iraq War to the creation of the landmark Responsibility to Protect doctrine. He is remarkably candid about the organization's failed efforts, particularly in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Ultimately, Annan shows readers a world where solutions are available, if we have the will and courage to see them through.

Interventions

A Life in War and Peace

Andrew Marr

'We may be about to see a new country - indeed, two new countries, - emerging on these islands. Half a lifetime ago, I sat down to write this book as a work of history. As it's aged, it's become current affairs.' 
 
Just twenty years ago it seemed impossible that Scotland would ever get home rule, let alone full independence. Yet very soon there will be a Scottish referendum which will not only decide on this matter but which will have profound consequences for the future of all people on these islands. 
 
In The Battle for Scotland, first published in 1992, Andrew Marr provides the historical backdrop to these extraordinary events. He attempts to explain the deep sources of Scottish national feeling and the political will which has brought us to this deeply uncertain time. 
 
And in a substantial new introduction, Marr considers how we got here so suddenly, what the stakes really are and what the questions every voting Scot (and every non-voting UK citizen) will be asking themselves.

The Battle for Scotland

John Darwin

A both controversial and comprehensive historical analysis of how the British Empire worked, from Wolfson Prize-winning author and historian John Darwin 
 
The British Empire shaped the world in countless ways: repopulating continents, carving out nations, imposing its own language, technology and values. For perhaps two centuries its expansion and final collapse were the single largest determinant of historical events, and it remains surrounded by myth, misconception and controversy today. 
 
John Darwin's provocative and richly enjoyable book shows how diverse, contradictory and in many ways chaotic the British Empire really was, controlled by interests that were often at loggerheads, and as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength.

Unfinished Empire

The Global Expansion of Britain

Matthew Parris

In this surprising and eccentric autobiography from a former Conservative MP, Matthew Parris writes of his personal and political life with equal candour. With a First from Cambridge and the possibility of working for the Foreign Office, he decided instead to apply to be an apprentice diesel-fitter with London Transport. He was rejected and so turned to a life in politics. He has worked with Margaret Thatcher, Chris Patten, Tony Blair and Michael Portillo, and his observations of political lifeand those who move within it are truly fascinating. This colourful memoir is an account of a young life already well lived.

Chance Witness

An Outsider's Life in Politics

Christopher Clark

The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher Clark 
 
FINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 
SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012 
Winner of the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize 2014 
 
The moments that it took Gavrilo Princip to step forward to the stalled car and shoot dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were perhaps the most fateful of the modern era. An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination? 
 
In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Formidable ... one of the most impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 
 
'Easily the best book ever written on the subject ... A work of rare beauty that combines meticulous research with sensitive analysis and elegant prose. The enormous weight of its quality inspires amazement and awe ... Academics should take note: Good history can still be a good story' Washington Post 
 
'A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. It is hard to believe we will ever see a better narrative of what was perhaps the biggest collective blunder in the history of international relations' Niall Ferguson 
 
'[Reading The Sleepwalkers], it is as if a light had been turned on a half-darkened stage of shadowy characters cursing among themselves without reason ... [Clark] demolishes the standard view ... The brilliance of Clark's far-reaching history is that we are able to discern how the past was genuinely prologue ... In conception, steely scholarship and piercing insights, his book is a masterpiece' Harold Evans, New York Times Book Review 
 
'Impeccably researched, provocatively argued and elegantly written ... a model of scholarship' Sunday Times Books of the Year 
 
'Superb ... effectively consigns the old historical consensus to the bin ... It's not often that one has the privilege of reading a book that reforges our understanding of one of the seminal events of world history' Mail Online 
 
'A monumental new volume ... Revelatory, even revolutionary ... Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable' Boston Globe 
 
'Superb ... One of the great mysteries of history is how Europe's great powers could have stumbled into World War I ... This is the single best book I have read on this important topic' Fareed Zakaria 
 
'A meticulously researched, superbly organized, and handsomely written account' Military History 
 
'Clark is a masterly historian ... His account vividly reconstructs key decision points while deftly sketching the context driving them ... A magisterial work' Wall Street Journal 
 
'This compelling examination of the causes of World War I deserves to become the new standard one-volume account of that contentious subject' Foreign Affairs 
 
'A brilliant contribution' Times Higher Education 
 
'Clark is fully alive to the challenges of the subject ... He provides vivid portraits of leading figures ... [He] also gives a rich sense of what contemporaries believed was at stake in the crises leading up to the war' Irish Times 
 
'In recent decades, many analysts had tended to put most blame for the disaster [of the First World War] on Germany. Clark strongly renews an older interpretation which sees the statesmen of many countries as blundering blindly together into war' Stephen Howe, Independent Books of the Year 
 
About the author: 
 
Christopher Clark is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He is the author of The Politics of Conversion, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Iron Kingdom. Widely praised around the world, Iron Kingdom became a major bestseller. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Sleepwalkers

How Europe Went to War in 1914

Andrew Bryson

'We have been, and should remain, in bed with the French. There are only two things you can conveniently do in bed. We have tried sleeping and it is time for the other...' HM Resident Commissioner, New Hebrides, 1974 
 
Following their acclaimed Parting Shots, Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson bring together further sharp-eyed, thoughtful and often hilarious despatches from British Ambassadors abroad. Packed with curious and revealing stories (some once thought to be urban myths), including the horse given by the Turkmenistan authorities to John Major which had to be rescued from a Moscow railway and the Spanish Ambassador's odd behaviour in the Algerian desert, this book also contains fascinating glimpses and insights into diplomatic - and undiplomatic affairs. Showing our representatives abroad at their best and sometimes worst - whether rude or sympathetic, clever or confused - it shines a light on how we British have seen the world ... and how the world has too often seen us.

The Spanish Ambassador's Suitcase

Stories from the Diplomatic Bag

Mark Mazower

The compelling and provocative history of world government, from acclaimed author Mark Mazower 
 
Shortlisted for the RUSI 2013 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military Literature 
 
In 1815 the shocked and exhausted victors of the decades of fighting that had engulfed Europe for a generation agreed to a new system for keeping the peace. Instead of independent states changing sides, doing deals and betraying one another, a new, collegial 'Concert of Europe' would ensure that the brutal chaos of the Napoleonic Wars never happened again. 
 
Mark Mazower's remarkable new book recreates two centuries of international government - the struggle to spread values and build institutions to bring order to an anarchic and dangerous state system.

Governing the World

The History of an Idea

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra's provocative account of how China, India and the Muslim World are remaking the world in their own image - shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2013 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2013 
 
Viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, the Victorian period was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire or burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, it was clear that for Asia to recover a new way of thinking was needed. Pankaj Mishra re-tells the history of the past two centuries, showing how a remarkable, disparate group of thinkers, journalists, radicals and charismatics emerged from the ruins of empire to create an unstoppable Asian renaissance, one whose ideas lie behind everything from the Chinese Communist Party to the Muslim Brotherhood, and have made our world what it is today. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Arrestingly original ... this penetrating and disquieting book should be on the reading list of anybody who wants to understand where we are today' John Gray, Independent 
 
'A riveting account that makes new and illuminating connections ... deeply entertaining and deeply humane' Hisham Matar 
 
'Fascinating ... a rich and genuinely thought-provoking book' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Provocative, shaming and convincing' Michael Binyon, The Times 
 
'Lively ... engaging ... retains the power to shock' Mark Mazower, Financial Times 
 
'Subtle, erudite and entertaining' Economist, New Delhi 
 
About the author: 
 
Pankaj Mishra is the author of Butter Chicken in Ludiana, The Romantics, An End to Suffering and Temptations of the West. He writes principally for the Guardian, The New York Times, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. He lives in London, Shimla and New York.

From the Ruins of Empire

The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia

Anne Applebaum

Chosen 16 times as a 'Book of the Year' - the top non-fiction pick of 2012 
 
'The best work of modern history I have ever read' A. N. Wilson, Financial Times 
 
At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union unexpectedly found itself in control of a huge swathe of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: Communism. Anne Applebaum's landmark history of this brutal time shows how societies were ruthlessly eviscerated by Communist regimes, how opposition was destroyed and what life was like for ordinary people who had to choose whether to fight, to flee or to collaborate. 
 
A haunting reminder of how fragile freedom can be, Iron Curtain is an exceptional work of historical and moral reckoning. 
 
 
ANNE APPLEBAUM is a historian and journalist, a regular columnist for the Washington Post and Slate, and the author of several books, including Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. She is the Director of Political Studies at the Legatum Institute in London, and she divides her time between Britain and Poland, where her husband, Radek Sikorski, serves as Foreign Minister. 
 
'The outstanding book of the year ... a masterpiece' Oliver Kamm, The Times, Books of the Year 
 
'Exceptionally important, wise, perceptive, remarkably objective' Antony Beevor 
 
'Explains in a manner worthy of Arthur Koestler what totalitarianism really means ... it is a window into a world of lies and evil that we can hardly imagine' Edward Lucas, Standpoint 
 
'At last the story can be told ... a magisterial history' Orlando Figes, Mail on Sunday

Iron Curtain

The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56

Stephen Alford

The acclaimed and enthralling story of the dark side of Elizabethan rule, from Stephen Alford 
 
Elizabeth I's reign is known as a golden age, yet to much of Europe she was a 'Jezebel' and heretic who had to be destroyed. The Watchers is a thrilling portrayal of the secret state that sought to protect the Queen; a shadow world of spies, codebreakers, agent provocateurs and confidence-men who would stop at nothing to defend the realm. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Forget Le Carré, Deighton and the rest - this is more enthralling than any modern spy fiction' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Absorbing and closely documented ... Alford vividly evokes this murky world of codes, ciphers, invisible ink, intercepted letters, aliases, disguises, forgeries and instructions to burn after reading ... flowing narrative [and] crisp judments ... engrossing' Guardian 
 
'[Alford] has brought a dash of le Carré to the 16th century' The Times (Book of the Week) 
 
'A vivid and staggeringly well-researched portrait of the sinister side of Elizabethan England ... This is a spectacular book. It sheds new light on plots that most historians have ceased to explore and brings less famous conspiracies to the attention of the general reading public' Herald 
 
'Fascinating ... If you want to know the inside story of this struggle, the dark heart of calculation and the fight for survival, then this is the book to read. I know no better' Spectator 
 
About the author: 
 
Stephen Alford is the author of the acclaimed biography Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He taught for fifteen years at Cambridge University, where he was a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of History and a Fellow of King's College. He is now Professor of Early Modern British History in the University of Leeds.

The Watchers

A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I

Nandan Nilekani

Indian software entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani has written the definitive book about modern India. 
 
Nilekani gives us a fascinating new perspective for the twenty-first century, defying received and imported wisdom, and showing us what is really at stake in the world's largest democracy. He reveals why India's huge population has now become her greatest strength; how information technology is bringing the benefits of globalization; why rapid urbanization is transforming social and political life; and how we can learn from India's difficult journey towards a single internal market. 
 
He also gets to the heart of debates about labour reform, the social security system, higher education and the role of the state. And he asks the key questions of the future: how will India as a global power avoid the mistakes of earlier development models? Will further access to the open market continue to stimulate such extraordinary growth? And how will all this affect - and be shaped by - her young people.

Imagining India

Ideas For The New Century

Keith Lowe

The end of the Second World War saw a terrible explosion of violence across Europe. Prisoners murdered jailers. Soldiers visited atrocities on civilians. Resistance fighters killed and pilloried collaborators. Ethnic cleansing, civil war, rape and murder were rife in the days, months and years after hostilities ended. Exploring a Europe consumed by vengeance, Savage Continent is a shocking portrait of an until-now unacknowledged time of lawlessness and terror.

Savage Continent

Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Jonathan Haidt

'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times 
 
Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion? 
 
Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and how moral values are not just about justice and equality - for some people authority, sanctity or loyalty matter more. Morality binds and blinds, but, using his own research, Haidt proves it is possible to liberate ourselves from the disputes that divide good people.

The Righteous Mind

Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Shane Ross

Nick Webb

In March of 2011, the Irish people elected a new government. But how much has really changed? 
 
In The Untouchables, Shane Ross and Nick Webb shine a light into dark corners of official Ireland to show that the blame for running the country into the ground goes well beyond Fianna Fail, that a dismaying number of the people who should share the blame are still in situ, and that the bad old mindsets haven't been shifted. They detail the destructive culture of cronyism that afflicts so much of Irish life, from the boards of the leading companies to the appointment of judges. They trace how the same civil servants, estate agents and bankers who presided over the crash have in many cases been rewarded with important new jobs. They investigate the workings of the law firms, lobbyists and consultancies that seem to have their fingers in every pie. They name names, trace connections, and show how the untouchables managed to do so much damage, and how they have held on to power and influence in Ireland.

The Untouchables

The people who helped wreck Ireland - and are still running the show

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains why we are experiencing such destructively high levels of inequality - and why this is not inevitable 
 
 The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn - too late. 
 
 In this timely book, Joseph Stiglitz identifies three major causes of our predicament: that markets don't work the way they are supposed to (being neither efficient nor stable); how political systems fail to correct the shortcomings of the market; and how our current economic and political systems are fundamentally unfair. He focuses chiefly on the gross inequality to which these systems give rise, but also explains how inextricably interlinked they are. Providing evidence that investment - not austerity - is vital for productivity, and offering realistic solutions for levelling the playing field and increasing social mobility, Stiglitz argues that reform of our economic and political systems is not just fairer, but is the only way to make markets work as they really should. 
 
 Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist at the World Bank until January 2000. He is currently University Professor of the Columbia Business School and Chair of the Management Board and Director of Graduate Summer Programs, Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and is the best-selling author of Globalization and Its Discontents, The Roaring Nineties, Making Globalization Work and Freefall, all published by Penguin.

The Price of Inequality

Laurence Bergreen

He knew nothing of celestial navigation or of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. He was a self-promoting and ambitious entrepreneur. His maps were a hybrid of fantasy and delusion. When he did make land, he enslaved the populace he found, encouraged genocide, and polluted relations between peoples. He ended his career in near lunacy. 
 
But Columbus had one asset that made all the difference, an inborn sense of the sea, of wind and weather, and of selecting the optimal course to get from A to B. Laurence Bergreen's energetic and bracing book gives the whole Columbus and most importantly, the whole of his career, not just the highlight of 1492. Columbus undertook three more voyages between 1494 and 1504, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. By their conclusion, Columbus was broken in body and spirit, a hero undone by the tragic flaw of pride. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, this book shows how the subsequent voyages illustrate the costs - political, moral, and economic.

Columbus

The Four Voyages, 1492-1504

Tim Weiner

The epic, disturbing story of how the FBI is America's real secret service 
 
'Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. The hand of our power should close over them at once' President Woodrow Wilson, 1919 
 
The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most powerful of these forces. 
 
Following his award-winning history of the C.I.A., Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner has now written the first full history of the F.B.I. as a secret intellligence service. Drawn entirely from firsthand materials in the F.B.I.'s own files, Enemies brilliantly brings to life the entire story, from the cracking of anarchist cells to the prosecution of the 'war on terror'. It is the story of America's war against spies, subversives and saboteurs - and the self-inflicted wounds American democracy suffered in battle. 
 
Throughout the book lies the long shadow of J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the F.B.I. with an iron fist for forty-eight years. He was not a monster, but a brilliant confidence man who ruled by fear, force, and fraud. His power shaped America; his legacy haunts it. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Truly impressive ... [Enemies] could have been put together only by a journalist of Weiner's stature' Keith Lowe, Sunday Telegraph 
 
'A history that moves at the pace of a James Ellroy novel. But Weiner's truth is wilder even than Ellroy's fiction. Weiner sets the record straight on the FBI's first 100 years using only the Bureau's documents and oral testimony, most of which has never been seen' David Blackburn, Spectator 
 
'An outstanding piece of work, even-handed, exhaustively researched, smoothly written and thematically timely ... This is certainly the most complete book we are likely to see about the F.B.I.'s intelligence-gathering operations, from Emma Goldman to Osama bin Laden' Bryan Burrough, New York Times 
 
'Extensively researched, admirably understated, yet terrifically entertaining' Boston Globe 
 
'Important and disturbing ... Weiner lays bare a record of embarrassing, even stunning failure, in which the bureau's lawlessness was matched only by its incompetence ... [he] has done prodigious research, yet tells this depressing story with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller' New York Times Book Review 
 
About the author: 
 
Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, where he has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and fifteen other nations. He was based for a decade in Washington, DC, where he covered the C.I.A. and the Military - the latter topic being the subject of his Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget. He is the author of the bestselling Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

Enemies

A History of the FBI

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid, author of Descent Into Chaos and Taliban, charts the latest developments in the dangerous trajectory of one of the world's most strategically important, and volatile, countries - and the effects on its neighbours and us all 
 
'An expert's examination of the volatile region that gives the world's policy-makers their biggest nightmare' Christina Lamb, Sunday Times 
 
What does the future hold for the world's most unstable region? With Bin Laden dead, Pakistan threatened by internal power struggles and the US and Britain beginning withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is no better guide the possibilities - and dangers -than Ahmed Rashid. In his follow-up to Descent into Chaos, he examines the changing casts of characters in this story, the future of the Taliban and international terrorism, and the political manoeuvring both within Pakistan and Afghanistan and among Western allies, offering a way forward for all countries involved. 
 
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, who has covered Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia for a variety of publications since 1979. He is the author of five books - the best selling Taliban, Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, Jihad and The Resurgence of Central Asia. He writes for the Financial Times, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, , BBC Online and Pakistani publications. Foreign Policy magazine chose him as one of the world's most important 100 Global Thinkers in 2009 and 2010. In 2008 he won Spain's prestigious Casa Asia prize for contributing most about Asia to the Spanish people.The following year he was presented with the prize for best columnist in the Spanish press by King Juan Carlos at a dinner honoring him. In December 2009 he was appointed a member of the board of New York's Committee to Protect Journalists. He has also served on the Board of Advisers for the International Committee of the Red Cross for five years. His books have won numerous prizes. His website is: www.ahmedrashid.com 
 
'This excellent book provides a much-needed update on what has happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan ... Rashid has an eye for the big picture as well as a journalist's nose for detail' Daily Telegraph 
 
'A powerful and pacey primer' Spectator 
 
'A meticulous, reliable and authoritative chronicler ... Unlike many journalists Rashid has the courage to outline how he believes the catastrophic situation in his homeland (Pakistan) and its neighbour, Afghanistan, can be improved' Jason Burke, Observer

Pakistan on the Brink

The future of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West

Juan Pablo Cardenal

Heriberto Araújo

China's Silent Army is a revealing and gripping piece of investigative journalism into the unknown extent of China's global power, from China-based reporters Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo 
 
This book stems from the remarkable, determined work of these two China-based journalists who, frustrated by the facile, pro-business commentary of so much writing on China and the evasions of Beijing's official pronouncements, took a drastic decision: to see for themselves just how rapidly China is spreading its influence around the world. 
 
Many thousands of miles and twenty-five countries later, China's Silent Army is the result: an unprecedented attempt to meet the many Chinese who, through hard work, ingenuity and ruthless business practices are rapidly moving much of the world into Beijing's orbit. From Peruvian mines to Siberian forests, from Sudanese dams to Burmese jade mines - everywhere China's 'silent army' is working to redirect enormous resources. 
 
China's Silent Army allows the reader to come face-to-face with extraordinary individuals working on China's behalf, often in truly terrible conditions, to create what amounts to a new, informal empire. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Powerful ... brilliant ... The book cuts to the political core' Michael Sheridan, Sunday Times 
 
'Lively and humane ... [China's Silent Army] offers essential information for all who wish to learn how the global reach of China Inc is transforming the lives of everyone on this planet' Frank Dikötter, Literary Review 
 
'Excellent macro-economic insights ... but ultimately the human stories are what make it so compelling ... It ought to be required reading' Prospect 
 
'[Cardenal and Araújo's] research is prodigious and the facts they unearth startling ... the Chinese should reflect on the questions the book raises. To put it mildly, there appears to be a case to answer' Evening Standard 
 
'Engaging and sympathetic ... Fascinating and vivid' Spectator 
 
 
About the authors: 
 
Juan Pablo Cardenal has been reporting from and about China and the Asia-Pacific region since 2003, first, as the Shanghai correspondent for Spain's daily El Mundo and, later, in Singapore and Beijing for Spain's leading economic daily El Economista. 
 
Heriberto Araújo arrived to Beijing in early 2007 and has focused in social and economic issues related to China and Asia. He initially worked for the AFP agency, as the Spanish correspondent in Beijing, and then started his career as a freelance, working for several French (M6, France 24, RFI) and Spanish (Notimex, Capital) media. 
 
They have jointly published related articles in Foreign Policy, El País, The South China Morning Post, Radio France International (RFI) and in leading Japanese weekly Shukan Bunshun.

China's Silent Army

The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing's Image

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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