History

Jung Chang's "Wild Swans" was an extraordinary bestseller throughout the world, selling more than 10 million copies and reaching a wider readership than any other book about China. Now she...

The civil war that tore Spain apart between 1936 and 1939 and attracted liberals and socialists from across the world to support the cause against Franco was one of the...

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become...

Theresa May has presided over the most dramatic and historic peacetime premiership for a century. May at 10 tells the compelling inside story of the most turbulent period in modern...

Sarah Bradford's America's Queen is 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...

'As page-turning as a novel' Joanna TrollopeOne summer of nearly a hundred years ago saw one of the high sunlit meadows of English history. A new king was crowned; audiences...

In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops...

In this riveting book, Michael Burleigh sets Nazi Germany in a European context, showing how the Third Reich's abandonment of liberal democracy, decency and tolerance was widespread in the Europe...

'Written in a lively, accessible style, The Waiting Game is full of insight' Suzannah Lipscomb, Literary ReviewEvery Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the...

Moederland is a courageous and modern appraisal of what it means to be descended from the people who created the ultraracist apartheid system in South Africa. Illuminating its turbulent history...

'Blistering' Sunday Times'Indispensable' Observer'Fascinating' The Times'Brilliant' Peter Frankopan'Revelatory' Lindsey HilsumA timely and unprecedented examination of how the modern Middle East unravelled, and why it started with the pivotal year of...

Budapest has always been an important place. Almost at the centre of Europe, it is at the crossroads of geographical regions and of civilizations, at the intersection of ancient trade...

'A brilliant and important book ... Five Stars!' Mark Dolan, talkRADIO'An important new book' Daily Express An alternative history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2024**An instant Sunday Times bestseller, Radio 4 Book of the Week and Guardian Best Summer Read* Selected as a book to look out for...

Agincourt took place on 25 October 1415 and was a turning-point not only in the Hundred Years War between England and France but also in the history of weaponry. Azincourt...

'Sicily is the key to everything' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The author of the classic book on Venice turns his sights to Sicily in this beautiful book full of maps...

Humanity has always used symbols-material objects used to denote difficult, abstract concepts-to describe thoughts and feelings, or to protect secret truths from common knowledge. This concise A-Z guide is a...

An extraordinary tale of family feuds, forbidden love, civil unrest and the downfall of a mining dynasty Wentworth in Yorkshire was surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of...

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was and is an icon for women. Beautiful, exquisitely dressed, cultivated, gracious, a little mysterious and almost regal, she personifies the way we would like all our...

In a narrative beginning almost 1.5 million years ago with the emergence of Homo erectus, Frank Welsh takes the reader from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the Industrial...

'The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time.' John Le Carre 'Having read Dispatches, it is difficult to convey the impact of total experience...

Shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book AwardAfter reckoning with the ends of the earth in acclaimed books such as Terra Incognita and The Magnetic North, Sara Wheeler rediscovered America thirty-five...

'Fascinating, extraordinary, gripping' Jeremy PaxmanThe Storming of Berlin had been the Red Army's dream of vengeance ever since the German's invasion of Russia in the summer of 1941. Antony Beevor...

Is America the new world empire? Presidents from Lincoln to Bush may have denied it but, as Niall Ferguson's brilliant and provocative book shows, the US is in many ways...

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor...

FROM THE AUTHOR OF NOTHING IS TRUE AND EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE'Elegant, effortlessly readable . . . essential reading for the new dark age of disinformation.' JONATHAN FREEDLAND'Original . . ....

*A BBC RADIO 4 Book of the Week*'A fantastic achievement' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads'Bright, expansive, and iconoclastic, this deliciously witty book has the potential to upset the...

Discover the world's most significant events through a detailed, dynamic, book-long timeline of over 7 million years.When did Hannibal cross the Alps? What caused the War of Jenkins' Ear? Who...

**Explore the fascinating history of the real Downton Abbey as the Crawley family saga makes its way on to the big screen with Downton Abbey, the major motion picture**'Bright, breezy...

Burke's seminal work was written during the early months of the French Revolution, and it predicted with uncanny accuracy many of its worst excesses, including the Reign of Terror. A...

By the time Stephen Matthews was six years old, he had been bombarded by the Luftwaffe and deported from Nazi-occupied Guernsey, along with his family, to a prison camp in...

This book is firstly a testament to those of many nationalities who found themselves imprisoned at Stalag Luft VII, Bankau (Luft 7 for short) in Upper Silesia, the Luftwaffe's last...

This follow-up to Tonight We Die As Men continues the story of the 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division as they dropped into Holland as part of...

As the bombs began to fall in September 1940, as homes were flattened and people emerged from cramped shelters and sleepless nights into barely recognisable streets, something very British happened...

In the early modern world three dominant cultures of war were shaped by a synergy of their internal and external interactions. One was Latin Christian western Europe. Another was Ottoman...

Wounded traces the journey made by a casualty from the battlefield to a hospital in Britain. It is a story told through the testimony of those who cared for him...

On the 2nd of August 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town. He has survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and the harrowing slave camps...

During the First World War and its immediate aftermath, hundreds of women wrote thousands of poems on multiple themes and for many different purposes. Women's poetry was published, sold (sometimes...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2014WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE 2015One morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, seal hunter and abolitionist Captain...

'Rigorously researched, The Lost Cafe Schindler successfully weaves together a compelling and at times deeply moving memoir and family history that also chronicles the wider story of the Jews of...

From the internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads: everything you need to know about the present and future of the world'Masterly mapping out of a new world order' Evening...