History

On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz — the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15, the eldest a farmer’s wife of 68; there were among them teachers, biochemists, sales girls, secretaries, housewives and university lecturers.
Caroline Moorehead’s remarkable new book is the story of these women... read more

In Bligh, the story of the most notorious of all Pacific explorers is told through a new lens as a significant episode in the history of the world, not simply of the West. Award-winning anthropologist Anne Salmond recounts the triumphs and disasters of William Bligh's life and career in a riveting narrative that for the first time portrays the Pacific islanders as key players.
From 1777, Salmond charts Bligh's three Pacific voyages - with Captain James Cook in the Resolution, on board the Bounty and as commander of the Provid... read more

In the 1800s, Britain was making a mint selling Indian opium to China. In return, they were buying tea, silks and ceramics. When eventually China decided that the drug trade was ruining her people, the British declared war, declaring China 'protectionist', 'backwards-looking' and 'superstitious'. For two years Britain pummelled China's east coast, forcing her to sign a humiliating treaty allowing Britain full trading access. A weakened China was at the mercy of the West until the Communist triumph of 1949. This is the popular belie... read more

In A History of the World Since 9/11 Dominic Streatfeild expertly combines history, biography and investigative journalism to show how a massacre on a clear September day in 2001 has touched the lives of millions of people around the world. In a series of brilliantly interlinked chapters he shows how an Afghani wedding party; and a gas station proprietor in Texas; and a planespotter in Mallorca have been affected, sometimes devastatingly, by the American response to the attacks on the Twin Towers. Streatfeild shows how the sleep of... read more

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is ... read more

A History of the World in 100 Objects ... has been a triumph: hugely popular, and rightly lauded as one of the most effective and intellectually ambitious initiatives in the making of 'public history' for many decades. - John Adamson Sunday Telegraph

Highly intelligent, delightfully written and utterly absorbing - Timothy Clifford Spectator

Allen Lane has done Mr MacGregor proud... The objects have been beautifully photographed, Mr MacGregor's voice comes through distinctively and his arguments about the i..read more

Levant is a book of cities. It describes Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut when they were windows on the world, escapes from nationality and tradition, centres of wealth, pleasure and freedom. Using unpublished family papers, Philip Mansel describes their colourful, contradictory history, from the beginning of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century to their decline in the mid twentieth century. Smyrna was burnt; Alexandria Egyptianised; Beirut lacerated by civil war.

'Fascinating ... the strengths of the book are colossal. Philip Mansel's knowledge of the history and culture of these places is encyclopaedic; he has walked their streets, met the scions of their famous families and penetrated their private archives. His eye for detail is sharp; telling anecdotes are culled from memoirs of all kinds, and the sights and smells of each city are vividly conjured up ... To anyone who has read Mansel's Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, it will be sufficient to say: read this one too. To anyone who has not, I can only..read more

For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was backward and benighted, locked into the Dark Ages and barely able to tell the time of day. Augustine had decreed that belief, not reason, should be the guiding light of Christian thinking and partially as a result Europeans lived in a world of nominal literacy and subsistence farming, where blind faith, superstition and sorcery took the place of medicine, and the church harnessed nascent aggression among the kingdoms to its own ends in the pursuit of astonishingly violent... read more

'A wonderful and important book which for the first time presents the Western debt to medieval Arabic learning in a clear, accessible manner. From the azimuth to the zenith, from algebra to the zero, so much of what the West takes for granted came to us from the Arab world ... A fascinating book' William Dalrymple 'Lyons tells the story of the House of Wisdom, the caliphs who supported it and the people who worked there, at a riveting, breakneck pace' The Times 'In this clear and well-written book, Jonathan Lyons delves into all sorts of musty ..read more

In 1869, when five women enrolled at university for the first time in British history, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's. Doctors warned that if women studied too hard their wombs would wither and die. When the Cambridge Senate held a vote on whether women students should be allowed official membership of the university, there was a full-scale riot. Despite the prejudice and the terrible sacrifices they faced, women from all backgrounds persevered and paved the way for the generations who hav... read more

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Ever since westerners arrived in Japan, we have been intrigued by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of fictional creations, from Madame Butterfly to Arthur Golden's MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. The reality of the geisha's existence has, however, rarely been described. Contrary to popular opinion, geisha are not prostitutes but, literally, 'arts people'. Their accomplishments might include singing or dancing but, above all, they are masters of the art of conversation, soothing the worries of the highly paid businessmen who can a... read more

Every nation has its founding myth, and for modern China it is the Long March. In 1934, the fledgling Communist Party and its 200,000 strong armies were forced out of their bases by Chiang Kaishek and his National troops. Walking more than 10,000 miles over mountains, grassland and swamps, they suffered appalling casualties and ended up in the remote barren North. Just one-fifth survived; they went on to launch the new China in the heat of revolution. A legend was born. Justified by a remarkable feat, the Long March was also a triu... read more

Marina Benjamin grew up in London, feeling estranged from her family's Middle Eastern ways, refusing to speak Arabic or eat their food. But when Benjamin had her own child a few years ago, she realized that she was losing her link to the past, inspiring a journey to Baghdad and into her family's history. Her discoveries will haunt anyone who seeks to understand a country whose ongoing struggles continue to command the world's attention. By turns moving and funny, Last Days in Babylon is an adventure story, a riveting history and a ... read more

'I had my right arm under a leg, which I thought was [the patient's], but when I lifted I found to my horror that it was a loose leg with a boot and a puttee on it. It was one of the orderly's legs which had been blown off and had landed on the patient's bed. The next day they found the trunk about 20 yards away ...''One of the men asked if Sister Campbell were here, to tell her about her brother being killed ...but she went on working ...'By the end of the Great War, 21 Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas servi... read more

In 1797, Lucia, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of a Venetian statesman, was married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families of the once glorious maritime Republic. They were a golden couple in Venice's twilight years. But Lucia's life was suddenly transformed when the thousand-year-old Serenissima collapsed under the blows of young Bonaparte in 1797. This is Lucia's story, from dazzling young hostess in Habsburg Vienna, lady-in-waiting at the court of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais i... read more

Presents an account of the greatest military encounter in human history. This title describes the events of 1941-45 in which the Soviet Union, after initial catastrophes, destroyed Hitler's Third Reich and shaped European history for the next half Century.

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a remarkable achievement, the story of which has been aching to be told. Who better to take on the challenge than the talented story-teller Simon Winchester? With his characteristic gift for bringing history alive, in The Meaning of Everything Simon Winchester charts the fascinating life of the OED leading up to the appointment of the first editor, James Murray, in 1879, through to the OED's triumphant publication in 1928 and beyond. The Meaning of Everything is a must for anyone with... read more

Set against the stunning backdrop of Renaissance France, Serpent and the Moon is a true story of love, war, intrigue, betrayal, and persecution.At its heart is one of the world's greatest love stories: the lifelong devotion of King Henri II of France to Diane de Poitiers, a beautiful aristocrat who was nineteen years older than her lover. At age fourteen, Henri was married to fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici, an unattractive but extremely wealthy heiress who was to bring half of Italy to France as her dowry. When Catherine me... read more

In Britannia's Daughters, bestselling novelist Joanna Trollope examines the contribution of women in building and sustaining the British Empire. She draws on a vast range of sources, including diaries and letters home. She provides a panoramic picture of the countless women who departed Britain for India, Australia, the Far East, Canada and Africa - often in search of opportunities unavailable at home. Here are penniless pioneers and governors' wives, missionaries and prostitutes, explorers and army nurses. They people this book as... read more

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240 x 170mm / 260 pages The Wartime Story of Brian Cox 1939-43 'Good luck to all the lads'. Brian Cox wrote those words in his diary on 26 August 1940, just before he and his mates from 9 Platoon of 27 (Machine Gun) Battalion experience enemy action for the first time in the Western Desert. Good Luck To All The Lads is the story of Brian Cox and his schoolmates from Nelson College and of 9 Platoon during the Second World War. This moving and fascinating book written by Brian's son Peter Cox, covers the men's time training in New... read more