A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Robert Conquest

Robert Conquest's The Great Terror is the book that revealed the horrors of Stalin's regime to the West. This definitive fiftieth anniversary edition features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. 
 
One of the most important books ever written about the Soviet Union, The Great Terror revealed to the West for the first time the true extent and nature Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, in which around a million people were tortured and executed or sent to labour camps on political grounds. Its publication caused a widespread reassessment of Communism itself. 
 
This definitive fiftieth anniversary edition gathers together the wealth of material added by the author in the decades following its first publication and features a new foreword by leading historian Anne Applebaum, explaining the continued relevance of this momentous period of history and of this classic account.

The Great Terror

Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties

Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow helped to reveal to the West the true and staggering human cost of the Soviet regime in its deliberate starvation of millions of peasants and remains one of the most important works of Soviet history ever written. 
 
More deaths resulted from the actions described in this book than from the whole of the First World War. 
 
Epic in scope and rich in detail, The Harvest of Sorrow describes how millions of peasants in the USSR were dispossessed and deported as a result of the abolition of private property, and how millions in the newly established ‘collective’ farms of the Ukraine and other regions were then deliberately starved to death through impossibly high quotas, the removal of all other sources of food and their isolation from outside help. 
 
With the publication of this and his earlier book, The Great Terror, which revealed the truth about Stalin’s political purges, Robert Conquest revealed to the West the staggering human cost of the Soviet regime.

The Harvest of Sorrow

Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine

Jerry White

Jerry White's London in the Eighteenth Century is an unrivalled, panoramic account of the city's dramatic century of rebirth by its leading expert. 
 
London in the eighteenth century had risen from the ashes. The city and its people had been brought to the brink by the Great Fire of 1666. But the century that followed was a period of vigorous expansion, of scientific and artistic genius, of blossoming reason, civility, elegance and manners. It was also an age of extremes: of starving poverty and exquisite fashion, of joy and despair, of sentiment and cruelty. 
 
In Jerry White’s acclaimed history of London’s magnificent and boisterous rebirth we witness the astonishing drama of daily life in the midst of this burgeoning city.

London In The Eighteenth Century

A Great and Monstrous Thing

Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped from the Beginning is a redefining history of anti-Black racist ideas that dramatically changes our understanding of the causes and extent of racist thinking itself. 
 
** Winner of the US National Book Award** 
 
Its deeply researched and fast-moving narrative chronicles the journey of racist ideas from fifteenth-century Europe to present-day America through the lives of five major intellectuals - Puritan minister Cotton Mather, President Thomas Jefferson, fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, brilliant scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary anti-prison activist Angela Davis - showing how these ideas were developed, disseminated and eventually enshrined in American society. 
 
Contrary to popular conception, it reveals that racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Instead, they were devised and honed by some of the most brilliant minds of each era, including anti-slavery and pro-civil rights advocates, who used their gifts and intelligence wittingly or otherwise to rationalize and justify existing racial disparities in everything from wealth to health. Seen in this piercing new light, racist ideas are shown to be the result, not the cause, of inequalities that stretch back over centuries, brought about ultimately through economic, political and cultural self-interest. 
 
Stamped from the Beginning offers compelling new answers to some of the most troubling questions of our time. In forcing us to reconsider our most basic assumptions about racism and also about ourselves, it leads us to a true understanding on which to build a real foundation for change. 
 
**INCLUDED IN BARACK OBAMA'S BLACK HISTORY MONTH READING LIST**

Stamped from the Beginning

The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Jerry White's London in the Nineteenth Century is the richest and most absorbing account of the city's greatest century by its leading expert. 
 
London in the nineteenth century was the greatest city mankind had ever seen. Its growth was stupendous. Its wealth was dazzling. Its horrors shocked the world. This was the London of Blake, Thackeray and Mayhew, of Nash, Faraday and Disraeli. Most of all it was the London of Dickens. As William Blake put it, London was 'a Human awful wonder of God'. 
 
In Jerry White's dazzling history we witness the city's unparalleled metamorphosis over the course of the century through the daily lives of its inhabitants. We see how Londoners worked, played, and adapted to the demands of the metropolis during this century of dizzying change. The result is a panorama teeming with life.

London In The Nineteenth Century

Jerry White's London in the Twentieth Century, Winner of the Wolfson Prize, is a masterful account of the city’s most tumultuous century by its leading expert. 
 
In 1901 no other city matched London in size, wealth and grandeur. Yet it was also a city where poverty and disease were rife. For its inhabitants, such contradictions and diversity were the defining experience of the next century of dazzling change. 
 
In the worlds of work and popular culture, politics and crime, through war, immigration and sexual revolution, Jerry White’s richly detailed and captivating history shows how the city shaped their lives and how it in turn was shaped by them.

London in the Twentieth Century

A City and Its People

Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age. 
 
Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires and fears, and by reconnecting with this historic reality we are able to experience the true character of the playwright himself. Greenblatt traces Shakespeare's unfolding imaginative generosity - his ability to inhabit others, to confer upon them his own strength of spirit, to make them truly live as independent beings as no other artist has ever done. 
 
Digging deep into the vital links between the playwright and his world, Will in the World provides the fullest account ever written of the living, breathing man behind the masterpieces.

Will In The World

How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

Dominique Moisi

Samuel Huntington's landmark book, The Clash of Civilizations, presented a vision of a world divided by cultural differences, national interests, and political ideologies. In The Geopolitics of Emotion, Dominique Moïsi brilliantly demonstrates that the world is nowadays more likely to be shaped by the 'clash of emotions'. 
 
Moïsi contends that both Europe and the United States are dominated by a fear of the 'other' and by the loss of their national identity and purpose. For Muslims and Arabs, the combination of historical grievances, exclusion from the economic boon of globalization, and civil and religious warfare has created a culture of humiliation that is quickly devolving into a culture of hatred. 
 
And as the West and the Muslim world lock horns, Asia, able to concentrate on building a better future, has come to embody 'the culture of hope'. 
 
By making clear the driving emotions behind today's headlines, Dominique Moisi offers a better understanding of the world we live in and perhaps a more constructive approach to the conflicts that plague us.

The Geopolitics of Emotion

How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are Reshaping the World

Peter Singer

How should we treat non-human animals? In this immensely powerful and influential book (now with a new introduction by Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari), the renowned moral philosopher Peter Singer addresses this simple question with trenchant, dispassionate reasoning. Accompanied by the disturbing evidence of factory farms and laboratories, his answers triggered the birth of the animal rights movement. 
 
'An extraordinary book which has had extraordinary effects... Widely known as the bible of the animal liberation movement' Independent on Sunday 
 
In the decades since this landmark classic first appeared, some public attitudes to animals may have changed but our continued abuse of animals in factory farms and as tools for research shows that the underlying ideas Singer exposes as ethically indefensible are still dominating the way we treat animals. As Yuval Harari’s brilliantly argued introduction makes clear, this book is as relevant now as the day it was written.

Animal Liberation

Sarah B Pomeroy

‘The classic, groundbreaking account of women’s lives in Greece and Rome’ Mary Beard 
 
For centuries, half the ancient world remained invisible -- until Sarah Pomeroy’s pioneering history, which at last revealed the women of antiquity to modern eyes. 
 
What did daily life hold for women in ancient Greece and Rome? How many women read the great histories of Herodotus and Thucydides? Did Socrates’ wife, Xanthippe, debate with her husband on issues of beauty and truth? Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves is a foundational work of feminism, reconstructing the lives of these lost women of antiquity in order that we might better understand the roots of our own classically influenced society today.

Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves

Women in Classical Antiquity

Colin Turnbull

The Forest People is an astonishingly intimate and life-enhancing account of a hunter-gatherer tribe living in harmony with nature -- and an all-time classic of anthropology. 
 
For three years, Colin Turnbull lived with an isolated group of Pygmies deep in the forest of the African Congo, experiencing their daily life first-hand. He attended their hunting parties and initiation ceremonies, witnessed their music and their rituals, observed their quarrels and love affairs. He documented them as an anthropologist but was accepted among them as a friend. 
 
A ground-breaking work in its time, The Forest People made him one of the most famous intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. It remains a transporting account of an earthly paradise and of a legendary and fascinating people. 
 
With a new foreword by Horatio Clare.

The Forest People

Frances A Yates

This unique and brilliant book is a history of human knowledge. 
 
Before the invention of printing, a trained memory was of vital importance. Based on a technique of impressing 'places' and 'images' on the mind, the ancient Greeks created an elaborate memory system which in turn was inherited by the Romans and passed into the European tradition, to be revived, in occult form, during the Renaissance. 
 
Frances Yates sheds light on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the form of the Shakespearian theatre and the history of ancient architecture; The Art of Memory is an invaluable contribution to aesthetics and psychology, and to the history of philosophy, of science and of literature.

The Art of Memory

Simon Schama

* 'Great art has dreadful manners...' Simon Schama observes at the start of his epic exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. 'The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality...' 
 
* With the same disarming force, Power of Art jolts us far from the comfort zone of the hushed art gallery, as Schama closes in on intense make-or-break turning points in the lives of eight great artists who, under extreme stress, created something unprecedented, altering the course of art for ever. 
 
* The embattled heroes - Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko - faced crisis with steadfast defiance. The masterpieces they created challenged convention, shattered complacency, shifted awareness and changed the way we look at the world. With powerfully vivid story-telling, Schama explores the dynamic personalities of the artists and the spirit of the times they lived through, capturing the flamboyant theatre of bourgeois life in Amsterdam, the passion and paranoia of Revolutionary Paris, and the carnage and pathos of civil-war Spain. 
 
* Most compelling of all, Power of Art traces the extraordinary evolution of eight world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works 'tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver. And when they do that they answer, irrefutably and majestically, the nagging question of every reluctant art-conscript... "OK, OK, but what's art really for?"'

The Power of Art

Alasdair Rae

Britain in 55 Maps

Patricia Kingori

‘Original, fascinating and shocking’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO 
 
You may well know someone who has gone overseas and put their future in the hands of a stranger to pursue their dream of becoming a parent; you may even know someone who has resorted to the services of an exam mill or shadow scholar to get themselves through their finals. But do you know anything about the women who provide these services, let alone where they live? 
 
They call themselves the surrogates. 
 
Patricia Kingori, Professor at Oxford, uncovers a world where the parentally and academically desperate seek help, with few questions asked, from the entrepreneurial surrogates, who sacrifice their bodies and minds at the peak of their most productive years, to give birth to someone else’s baby and write someone else’s assignment. At its heart are Millicent and Rose, the brilliant, unforgettable and resourceful women who embody the pressures and precarity, humour and heartache, corruption and empty choices of these twin trades, on which so many in the Global North depend. 
 
The Surrogates is the first ever in-depth examination of the lives of African women entangled in these booming, multi-billion-dollar industries of biological and intellectual surrogacy. With unprecedented access, drawing on four years of on-the-ground research and interviews with 80 women, it confronts the inequalities and contradictions woven into the fabric of education, technology, globalization, and the pursuit of personal agency. Kingori also holds up a mirror to our own societies, engaging with the thorny issues of medical tourism, AI and offshoring labour, and illuminating the resilience of those largely unheard in the ongoing conversation about empowerment and choice.

The Surrogates

The Hidden Lives and Invisible Labour of the Women for Hire in Kenya

Gareth Harney

Vivid and pacy storytelling, blending insightful scholarship with evocative narration – for readers of Tom Holland, Mary Beard and Bettany Hughes. 
 
It was the Greeks who invented money as we know it, striking the first coins in the seventh century BC. Before long this innovative idea of a portable metallic store of wealth spread across the waves of the Mediterranean. But these coins were more than simple units of exchange; they quickly became artistic masterpieces crafted in gold and silver and endure today as some of the most important surviving examples of Ancient Greek art. 
 
More important, they advertised the power and virtues of each polis with patriotic fervour; for the empire of Greece was not a single entity but a rich mosaic of wholly distinct city-states spread across three continents. Yet for all their unique identities and rivalries, these states were bonded by their shared worship of a colourful gallery of gods, their devotion to art, literature and philosophy, and the courage and skill of their citizen-soldiers. 
 
In this thrilling adventure Gareth Harney introduces us to twelve fascinating coins that provide the perfect introduction to Ancient Greece. We witness the birth of democracy on a sacred hilltop overlooking the Acropolis, battle invading Persians in an existential war on land and at sea, take part in the bitter conflict between Athens and Sparta, and march alongside Alexander the Great as he carries Greek culture all the way to India.

Nomos

A History of Ancient Greece in Twelve Coins

Mona Chalabi

Ten Lives

How What We Have Shapes Who We Are

Michael Taylor

Illuminati

The History of a Conspiracy Theory

Timothy Garton Ash

It has never been more important to understand the extraordinarily complex and tightly meshed history, geography, culture and politics of the European continent. 
 
As confidence in the post-war world order led by America and policed by NATO is shaken, as the US Trump administration cosies up to right-wing disruptors within Europe and the Russian dictator on its Eastern flank, the value of our nearest and closest neighbours is greater than ever. 
 
Garton Ash draws on a lifetime of reporting, analysis and consulting on Europe in this distilled and accessible, narrative driven and conversational introduction to what he calls the world’s oldest and newest continent. The methodology of Europe in 7 ½ Chapters will be that of a CT-scan, dividing this vast subject into thin thematic slices which elucidate the whole. And he will begin by looking at Europe from the outside, acknowledging the legacy of colonialism and cultural imperialism, as he assesses the continent’s past achievements and future prospects. 
 
This will be an indispensable travel companion and primer – thoughtful, surprising, and highly entertaining.

Europe in 7 1/2 Chapters

The Shortest Introduction to the World's Oldest and Newest Continent

How the turmoil of revolution and war created the London we know today – the world’s first truly global city. 
 
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars changed London beyond recognition, turning it into the capital of the world – the focal point of international finance and trade. Victory over France in 1815 ushered in the ‘British Century’: the next hundred years would be defined by Britain’s capitalist innovation and financial might, naval supremacy and imperial ambition. 
 
In this brilliant portrait of these pivotal years, Jerry White looks at how revolution and war on the Continent transformed the capital. While the manufacture of war materials brought wealth for some, high food prices led to bread riots. The war divided public opinion, with ultra-patriots clamouring for the defeat of ‘Bony’, while others sought to emulate the democratic reforms pioneered across the Channel. Crucially, the chaos and uncertainty on the Continent led to a mass flight of foreign bankers and merchants to London, which would help turn London into the world’s leading financial centre -- contemporaries called it ‘The Modern Rome’. 
 
Yet Birth of a Global City takes in the wider world too. Who was feeding London, in the British Isles and across the empire? How instrumental was Britain’s financial might in victory over France? What impact did the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 have on London, Britain and its empire? And how dangerous were the political ideas coming from the Continent? It was this turbulent period of war and political turmoil that created London as we know it today.

Birth of a Global City

London in a Revolutionary World, 1789-1815

William A. Pettigrew

Britain's Slave Traders: A Forgotten History combines forensic new research with vivid and compelling narrative to provide an entirely new history of Britain that for the first time clarifies the true significance of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans to Britain’s development as a modern nation. 
 
Between the birth of the trade in the 16th century and its abolition in 1807, Britain derived vast wealth from the traffic in Africans from West Africa to the Americas - but until now the people who conceived, designed and engineered that trade have been largely unknown to us. As a result, it has been impossible to trace where the wealth derived from slavery went, what purposes it was put to, who it empowered and what it enabled. This erasure was a conscious decision on the part of the abolitionists, who realised that success in their mission relied on it. But by bringing these people and institutions fully into the light for the first time, this book fills a hugely significant gap in Britain's history, one that has profoundly distorted our understanding of how Britain became such a prosperous and dominant global force and, perhaps surprisingly, how it came to enjoy a reputation as a progressive, philanthropic, freedom-loving nation. 
 
We discover that Britain’s slave traders came from a wide range of social backgrounds: plumbers as well as politicians, instrument makers as well as monarchs, women and immigrants as well as aristocrats and merchants. From the birth of the Royal Navy, the restoration of the Stuart monarchy and the emergence of two-party politics to the winning of wars, the founding of modern industry and the building of ports, canals and thriving cities, their profits can now be identified as having had a profound influence on Britain’s economy, politics, science and arts during a crucially formative period, setting it on its path to becoming the nation we know today.

Britain's Slave Traders

A Forgotten History

Camilla Cavendish

Award-winning journalist Camilla Cavendish embarks on a compassionate yet frank investigation into why we’re having fewer children, how it's changing the world and what we should do about it 
 
Camilla Cavendish travels across cultures and continents to investigate one of the most intimate decisions we all make – whether or not to have children. In Britain, one in five couples have no children, and almost half of all families have only one. The populations of China, Japan, Russia and Italy are shrinking rapidly. Poland and South Korea could all but vanish from the map. Pro-natalists wail that feminism has killed the family. Governments throw money at childcare subsidies. Would-be grandparents wring their hands at the apparent selfishness of the young. But the conversation is in the wrong place. 
 
As birth rates plummet, Cavendish offers a startling blend of data and stories to uncover what is really driving the baby gap. Meeting people from a diverse range of ethnicities and experiences, she reveals a tapestry of motivations – from a dating recession to a loss of faith in the future; from the pressures of modern parenting to infertility struggles; from the atomisation of society to a deeply human instinct to mirror each other. 
 
Interviewing voices from across the new political divide, Cavendish warns against weaponising babies. She encounters women going it alone and men who’ve missed out, finds communities quietly bucking the trend and speaks to scientists on the verge of extending the biological clock. 
 
By examining the profound implications of a world where fewer children are born, Generation Maybe argues for a future in which we respect the happily childfree, while genuinely empowering those who long for children. Incisive and humane, this is essential reading for anyone who cares about the world we may – or may not – choose to make for the next generation.

Generation Maybe

Why We're Having Fewer Children, and What It Means for Us All

Ian Mortimer

This book tells the story of Mearsdon, the house where Ian Mortimer lives in Moretonhampstead, on the edge of Dartmoor. We very rarely have a continuous account of a particular place over a long stretch of history, but Mortimer has a documentary record of all the owners who lived there since the 1260s – although the origins of the building probably date back to the eleventh century. 
 
Blending the broadest national history and the most intimate local events with a description of changing daily life from the Norman Conquest to the present day, Mortimer acquaints us with the people who passed through the house – from its first known owner, John the Palmer, to the folklore collector Charlie Laycock, who turned the house into a museum in the early twentieth century, to Mortimer’s family living there today. And along the way he shows how national events – from the Black Death to the Prayerbook Rebellion, from the Civil Wars to the two world wars – affected a rural community in deepest Devon over a time span of 900 years. 
 
The result is fascinating social history like no other. Bringing to it the brilliant imagination and storytelling gifts that made his Time Traveller’s Guides such a huge success, Mortimer introduces us to lords and merchants, ale brewers and peasants, clergymen and murderers, to create a continuously evolving story. Seeing through its windows, we not only glimpse at the people who lived in the house over the ages; we also see through their eyes as they look out at the changing world around them.

Through the Windows of an Ordinary House: A History of England

Tim Whitmarsh

How did Christianity, starting out as a minor offshoot of Judaism, grow into an international faith that shaped the world as we know it? Rome’s Age of Revolution corrects the triumphalist narrative that the Christian message was so persuasive, and indeed superior, that people converted in huge numbers, abandoning their pagan beliefs, thereby turning a small persecuted sect into the state religion of the Roman Empire. 
 
Tim Whitmarsh shows that Christianity would never have succeeded if it had not taken advantage of the infrastructure and culture of the Roman Empire; in turn the new religion was indelibly shaped and transformed by Roman beliefs and ideas, especially those circulating in the Greek-speaking, or Hellenistic, eastern parts of the empire. This radical transformation, Tim argues, can only be described as a revolution. The consequences are with us to this day.

Rome's Age of Revolution

Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter