Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Margaret Humphreys

Also published as Empty Cradles. 
 
In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. At first incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire, right up until as recently as 1970. 
 
Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents often believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. In fact, for many children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse far away from everything they knew. Margaret reveals how she unravelled this shocking secret and how it became her mission to reunite these innocent and unwilling exiles with their families in Britain before it was too late.

Oranges and Sunshine

Empty Cradles

Eric Haney

The story of America's elite military unit told by one of its founding members 
 
They are the U.S. Army's most élite top secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won't hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions; and no book has ever taken readers inside-until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action-to reveal the never-before-told story of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force). 
 
INSIDE DELTA FORCE 
 
In this dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle, Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, takes us inside this legendary unit from the beginning. Here, for the first time, are details of the grueling selection process, designed to break the strongest of men, that singles out the perfect soldier, and then the years of training that turns him into the ultimate modern warrior that is the Delta Force Operator. 
 
From fighting guerrilla warfare in Honduras to close VIP protection in Beirut, from rescuing missionaries in Sudan to the abortive attempt to extract American hostages from Tehran, and leading the way onto the island of Grenada, Eric Haney captures the daring and discipline that distinguish the men of Delta Force. Inside Delta Force puts the reader right at the heart of the action and gives a breathtaking glimpse of a life that is as driven, inspiring and terrifying as they come. 
 
Eric L. Haney, Command Sergeant Major, USA (Ret.), served for more than twenty years in the United States Army's most demanding combat units: as a combat infantryman, a Ranger, and ultimately as a founding member of Delta Force. In his retirement, Haney has protected princes, presidents and CEOs alike.

Inside Delta Force

David Hall

In 2004, after felling his last chimney and retiring from steeplejacking, Fred took to the road on his beloved traction engine for the BBC series Made in Britain. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, the intention was to seek out the remarkable achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like Fred's possible. It was a journey that took him to Britain's most iconic engineering marvels as well as less familiar sites: from the Forth Bridge and the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge to Europe's last deep-working iron ore mine in Cumbria and a local castings workshop in Bo'ness. 
 
This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred's heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. It is not only a glorious testament to our nation's industrial achievements but also a story of the friendships, unfailing courage and determination of the nation's favourite steeplejack.

Fred Dibnah - Made in Britain

Dennis Smith

When disaster struck at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Dennis Smith was among the first to arrive on the scene. Report from Ground Zero is his insider's account of the heroic efforts of the firefighters, police and emergency workers who rushed to downtown New York to face the greatest challenge of their lives. 
 
In all, 343 firefighters gave their lives. Entire companies were lost. Among the dead were a father and son; the department's beloved chaplain; commanders and rookies. Smith, author of the classic bestseller Report from Engine Company 82 and once described as 'the Poet Laureate of firefighters' by the New York Post, tells their stories and those of their families, the camaraderie in their companies and the massive recovery efforts following the catastrophe. 
 
As the world tries to come to terms with the horror of what happened, the firefighters' courage and fortitude in the face of enormous personal danger and bereavement offers a beacon of hope and redemption. Report from Ground Zero is a tribute to those heroes for our troubled times.

Report From Ground Zero

Wayne Johnston

I am foreborn of spud runts who fled the famines of Ireland in the 1830s, not a man or woman among them more than five foot two, leaving behind a life of beggarment and setting sail for what since Malory were called the Happy Isles . . .' 
 
So begins Baltimore's Mansion, Wayne Johnston's story of his grandfather Charlie, his father Arthur and of the small community of Ferryland on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, founded as a Catholic community by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s. Charlie, a fisherman and blacksmith, is an ardent Newfoundland nationalist. His son Arthur, forced from boyhood to fish the freezing seas with his father, vows never to earn his living from Newfoundland's dangerous waters, and leaves the island in the heady months leading to the fateful 1948 referendum held to decide Newfoundland's future. While Arthur is away Charlie dies and Newfoundland cedes its independence to Canada, plunging Arthur into a lifelong battle with the personal demons that haunted the end of their relationship. 
 
In 1981, aged 23, Wayne Johnston himself leaves Newfoundland and old patterns threaten to repeat themselves. At times harrowing, at others both moving and funny, Baltimore's Mansions speaks to us all about the hardships, blessings and power of family relationships, of leaving home and returning.

Baltimore's Mansion

Will Davies

When Will Davies discovered the manuscript for Somme Mud he knew he had found a lost treasure. Private Lynch's powerful, personal story of his time in the trenches of the Somme has become a classic. 
 
In this new book, Will Davies meticulously follows in the footsteps of Lynch and his battalion, the 45th - from their long route marches to lice ridden billets, into the frontline and seeing action at such infamous battles as Messines, Dernancourt, Stormy Trench and Villers Bretonneux, and on the last great push to final victory after August 1918. 
 
The author assesses the impact Lynch and those like him had both on the battlefield and in the greater context of the war on the Western Front. Written in a lively and accessible style, it sheds light on the campaigns and offensives, the weapons and the equipment, the food, the living conditions and the neglected minutiae of war and in so doing brings to life the young men who sacrificed their youth over 90 years ago.

In The Footsteps of Private Lynch

Alan Cowell

On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer, sipped tea in the upmarket Millennium Mayfair hotel near the American Embassy in London - tea that had been spiked with a rare radioactive isotope called Polonium 210. Twenty two days later, he was dead. And the mystery behind his murder would be revealed as more baffling and more labyrinthine than any John Le Carré plot. 
 
Litvinenko had sought asylum in London and from there had become a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin's government. His is the most high profile of a string of mysterious deaths of a number of Russian dissenters, which heralds a new era of KGB-style authoritarianism and terror. It quickly became known as one of the most mysterious and audacious crimes of the post-Cold War era, and triggered an international investigation led by London's top counterterrorism officials. 
 
Blending the pace of a thriller with original reportage and research, The Terminal Spy documents Litvinenko's life and death, the ensuing police investigation, the reaction from Vladimir Putin and others in Moscow, the Russian émigré set in London, and the implications of this case for nuclear proliferation and international terrorism in the future. It is a shocking endictment of how contemptuous of the rule of law certain governments are and an chilling reminder of the power - in every respect - of the New Russia.

The Terminal Spy

Fred Pearce

DEEP JUNGLE is an exploration of the most alien and feared habitat on Earth. Starting with man's earliest recorded adventures, Fred Pearce journeys high into the canopy - home to two-thirds of all the creatures on our planet, many of whom never come down to earth. During his travels he encounters all manner of fantastic flora and fauna, including a frog that can glide from tree to tree, a spider that can drag live chickens into its burrow and a flower that smells of decaying flesh. 
 
It is in the jungle that Pearce discovers secrets about how evolution works, the intricate links that connect us all, and maybe even clues to where humans came from - here is the key to our future foods and medicines, our climate and our understanding of how life works. At the start of a new millennium Pearce asks why we continue to waste precious time - and billions of dollars - looking for signs of life elsewhere in our universe when the greatest range of life-forms that have ever existed lies right here on our doorstep. Today environmentalists say we are on the verge of destroying the last rainforests, and with them the planet's evolutionary crucible, and maybe even its ability to maintain life on Earth. But nature has a way of getting its own back. The Mayans and the people of Angkor went too far in manipulating nature and paid the ultimate price. Their civilisations died and the jungle returned. Nature reclaimed it's own and it may do so again ...

Deep Jungle

Journey To The Heart Of The Rainforest

Peter FitzSimons

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his Gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers’ ploughs. 
 
Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy’s brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka? 
 
Peter FitzSimons, bestselling chronicler of many of the great defining moments and people of Australian history, is the perfect person to tell this most iconic of all Australian stories. From Kelly’s early days in Beveridge, Victoria, in the mid-1800s, to the Felons Apprehension Act, which made it possible for anyone to shoot the Kelly Gang, to Ned’s appearance in his now-famous armour, prompting the shocked and bewildered police to exclaim ‘He is the devil!’ and ‘He is the bunyip!’. FitzSimons brings the history of Ned Kelly and his Gang exuberantly to life, weighing in on all the myths, legends and controversies generated by this compelling and divisive Irish-Australian rebel.

Ned Kelly

Pip Granger

Do you remember the West End of London during the 1950s? Did you live or work there? If so, I want to hear from you ... 
 
This was the advertisement author Pip Granger placed in a local newspaper, and the response was immediate. Soon she was hearing from people who recalled what it was like when sweets were rationed; from families who'd been bombed out of their homes during the Blitz; from men who'd worked in the flower markets of Covent Garden; and from the son of a family of immigrants who'd opened one of the very first delicatessens in Soho. All had extraordinary stories to tell. 
 
Based on the author's own memories and dozens of interviews and written testimonies, Up West evokes a unique and vibrant community, and a way of life that is vanishing fast.

Up West

Voices from the Streets of Post-War London

Diana Preston

In 44 bc, Julius Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March. His mistress, Cleopatra of Egypt, fled back to Alexandria with their little son. Mark Antony, Caesar's friend and henchman, who, according to some accounts, was already besotted by the beautiful Cleopatra, took up her son's case before the Senate. But they refused to recognize him as one of Caesar's heirs. 
Civil war broke out, and after the defeat of Caesar's murderers, Antony took control over the East. Summoned to his headquarters in present-day Turkey, Cleopatra made her entry at dusk on a scented, candlelit barge: and so began one of the greatest love stories of all time - an eleven-year love affair that created the ancient world's most famous celebrity couple. The affair became all-consuming and fired the lovers with the ambition to create a new order. Had they succeeded, our world today might have been very different. 
Filled with murder, intrigue, civil war and great battles, the tragedy of Cleopatra and Antony has fascinated the world for two millennia, and has been depicted by everyone from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the iconic 1960s film. 
Now Diana Preston has gone back to the original sources and delved into the real history behind the propaganda and the myth, to breathe new life into this epic love story.

Cleopatra and Antony

Sarah Ryle

From one man’s Hackney market stall to a company serving fifty million customers in thirteen countries every week, this is the extraordinary story of one of Britain’s most remarkable companies. Told by those who themselves feature in it – Tesco’s own employees – it relates a fascinating social history as well as an epic business venture. 
 
Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with Tesco staff, collected by National Life Stories at the British Library, these personal accounts from across the decades are frank, insightful, sometimes funny and, above all, very human. 
 
How, then, did Tesco grow from Jack Cohen’s barrow in Hackney to the hypermarkets in Hungary and Thailand and a home-delivery service to customers from Cheshire to the Czech Republic? Why and how did Tesco survive and (mostly) thrive where other British companies stalled? And what impact has Tesco’s success had on its employees and consumers? Here is Tesco’s authentic story, carefully researched and engagingly written by Sarah Ryle, told for the first time by the people at the very heart of the business.

The Making of Tesco

A Story of British Shopping

Bill Bryson

What does history really consist of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home. 
 
This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the rooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. 
And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching, from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live, enhanced in this new edition by hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations.

At Home (Illustrated Edition)

A short history of private life

Colette Hooper

From the exploits of railwaymen at the Front to the secrets of railway spies who worked behind enemy lines; the manufacture of munitions in railway workshops to the role of railways in post-war remembrance – this book explores some of the remarkable stories of the railway war. Individually, each illuminates a different aspect of the conflict. Taken together, they provide us with a fresh perspective on the First World War as a whole. 
 
The Great War was the quintessential railway war. Railways helped to precipitate this mechanized conflict: they defined how it was fought and kept the home front moving; they conveyed millions to the trenches and evacuated the huge numbers of wounded. The railways sustained a terrible war of attrition and, ultimately, bore witness to its end. 
 
In Railways of the Great War, Michael Portillo and Colette Hooper tell the forgotten story of the war on the tracks and explore the numerous ways in which Britain’s locomotives, railway companies and skilled railway workforce moulded the course of the conflict. From mobilizing men and moving weapons, to transporting food for troops and later taking grieving relatives to the battlefields on which their loved ones had fallen, the railways played a central role throughout this turbulent period in our history.

Railways of the Great War with Michael Portillo

Gus Casely-Hayford

For many of us the history of Africa is, at best, vague. We might think of Egyptian pyramids, legendary queens (of Sheba or Cleopatra) and Zulu warriors. The truth, however, is one of remarkably diverse, creative, culturally rich civilisations. In this book, which accompanies an 8-part BBC series, Gus Casely-Hayford takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of this remarkable continent. We will encounter archaeological sites of staggering beauty that rival the Great Wall of China, vast and ancient universities that predate Oxford and Cambridge, kingdoms of extraordinary wealth, artistic traditions that still inspire artists today, great religious sites that surpass the Vatican, and a country with more pyramids than Egypt. 
 
In recent years new archaeological and anthropological research has opened up the study of African history in ways previously unimaginable. Long-lost kingdoms are suddenly being brought back to life. Civilisations that had faded into myth are revealing their secrets. Using this latest research, Gus Casely-Hayford is able to tell the history of Africa's major kingdoms in an entirely new, colourful and richly-informed way. 
 
Accessible and inspiring, The Lost Kingdoms of Africa is both a major addition to our understanding of this oft-overlooked history and a source of genuine delight and wonder.

The Lost Kingdoms of Africa

Melody Ermachild Chavis

Meena founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan in 1977 as a twenty-year-old Kabul University student. She was assassinated in 1987 at the age of thirty, and lives on in the hearts of all progressive Muslim women. Her voice, speaking for freedom, has never been silenced. The compelling story of Meena's struggle for democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan will inspire young women throughout the world. 
 
MEENA: HEROINE OF AFGHANISTAN is a compelling portrait of a courageous mother, poet and leader who symbolizes an entire movement of women that can influence the fate of nations. It is also a riveting account of a singular political career whose legacy has been inherited by RAWA, the women who hold the keys to a peaceful future for Afghanistan. RAWA has authorized this first-ever biography of their martyred founder.

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