Following Cromwell's death, there were 10 changes of government in 2 years. Reece argues that there was still no great support for a return to the monarchy and yet, despite strong military b... read more
The democratic experiment of 1918-1933, from defeat in WW1 to the rise of the Nazis. Jähner's description of living through this chaotic period is almost as thrilling as Hitchcock.
VM was the author of The Map of Knowledge, a compelling account of the survival of the ancient classics in the Muslim world, and their re-emergence in the West. Now she turns her attention t... read more
A fascinating look at the way 29 European internal borders were made and have shifted; while some of these reflect the faultlines of old horrors, they also offer new hope. Perceptive and ext... read more
The story of one of the most tumultuous moments in British history, which analyses how James I's rule was haunted by Elizabethan political norms and values.
1870 was a cultural Golden Age, but it was also the background for the Dreyfus Affair and the violence of the Commune. This panorama is shown through the eyes of the age's personalities.
The 60 years following the Portuguese arrival in the Moluccas in 1511 saw an epic global struggle for the sources and distribution of this new geyser of wealth. Told with verve and authority... read more
The remarkable diplomatic mission (Harriman for the US, Archibald Clark Kerr for Britain) that braced Stalin against the Germans and brought him into WW2 as an ally.
In 1600 Adams was the first English man to step on Japanese shores - one of only nine survivors of a Dutch trading expedition. He became the shogun's advisor and ship builder, and a samurai.... read more
While the author's grandfather (Walter Runciman) tried to mediate between the new Czech Republic and the Sudeten Germans, her grandmother publicly favoured the Germans. This is a fascinating... read more
A deeply personal social history. From ancient Greece to 70s' New York, from Diogenes to her father, Eberstadt explores how people have used their bodies to challenge the world around them.
By looking at the relationships Queen Victoria had with her ten Prime Ministers, AS shows us her changing - and often surprising - involvement in affairs of state.
Walls are famous for their ears - but they can also speak: Pelling gathers these silent shouts into a remarkable history through the scratchings and carvings in prisons, walls, lead roofs, t... read more
Like a detective novel of the time, the story of two booksellers who uncovered the forgeries of a pompous bastion of the literary scene in 1930s' London.
How, whether made on tally sticks or via electronic portal, systems of debt and credit have been a driving force in the development of states from Pisa in the C12th to the Bolshevik Revoluti... read more
An investigation of Jesus' messianic contemporaries and the reasons for Christianity's success. From the author of the highly regarded The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Cla... read more
Anne Clifford's diaries, Mary Sidney's translations, Aemilia Lanyer's poems, Elizabeth Cary's playwriting: out of these a fine scholar of Renaissance literature constructs an illuminating gr... read more
Traces the history of Sefton Delmer, the English propagandist who waged a disinformation war in Nazi Germany, and how that history can help us understand the present.
Contacts and connections as the drivers of cultural change: the West was built on far more than the values of ancient Greece and Rome, as per the Victorian paradigm. Erudite and compelling.
Looks back to a group of brave women in the later C18th and onwards - at a time when women had no property and no rights: Elizabeth Montagu, who took on Voltaire and won; Catherine Macauley,... read more
A society's way of dealing with death can be very revealing. Here, the distinguished historian of Victorian Britain and the domestic sphere shows how their behaviour around death offers deep... read more
This fascinating account of a forgotten moment in history is part family memoir, part the telling of a Texan offshoot of the early Zionist movement, when 10,000 Jews set sail for Galveston b... read more
An elucidating account of the conditions that led to, and subsequently shaped the Iraq war. This book casts a light on both CIA intrigue in the Middle East and Hussein's own political motiva... read more
How the daughter of Babur, first Mughal Emperor, wrangled her way out of the harem (for a while) to travel around India, to Persia and beyond. Based on her own account.
He ruled an area of the Indian subcontinent greater than anyone until the British 2000 years later; famously he renounced war for Buddhism and promoted religious toleration throughout his mu... read more
The post-war eclipse of the rural by the urban. Joyce interweaves his own Irish family history into wider story of European peasantry to create a rich and varied cultural account of what it ... read more
The vast Byzantine walls are a powerful image for the conflict between history and the present that squeezes modern Turkey. Structured around encounters with people during his walks, this is... read more
"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!" grumbled Mrs Elton at the marriage of Emma and the divine Mr Knightley. How times have changed!
From the home of the indigenous Formosans to a European trading post, from a Japanese colony to the last bastion of the Republic of China. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understan... read more
Already receiving praise for revolutionising the history of sexuality, this book is bound to be a fascinating analysis of sex and identity in early-modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
The Nuremberg Trials had their counterpart in Japan. This is a thorough investigation of that process, and its significance to what happened afterwards in Asia.