Greek and Roman patrons, robber-baron philanthropists, welfare socialists, celebrity activists...: motives and results are explored through historical analysis and numerous interviews.
The director of the Bodleian includes some of the US president's deleted tweets in an historical survey that ranges from the Library of Alexandria to the Windrush papers. The surprise is tha... read more
Reinvention, escape, adventure, romance, survival... Not all the women were 'port out starboard home'. Gripping and entertaining social history from the author of 'Queen Bees'.
It was the biggest seaborne landing in history; a difficult campaign, not least because of the heat. Its success was hard-won, and crucial to the course of the war.
The clandestine manoeuvres of one branch of military intelligence, responsible for saving thousands of lives. Airey Neave, Jimmy Langley, Sam Derry and Mary Lindell emerge as central figures... read more
In 1942, seventeen ships were bombed in Bari. One of them contained mustard gas. The appalling results, though hushed up, fortunately became known to a research scientist.
Focuses on the lives of six individuals and their families who were among the 20 million Germans who never voted for the Nazis. This is an important new assessment of those who had to manage... read more
A fascinating account of the group of queer young MPs who visited Berlin in the 1930s and spoke out against Hitler. Dubbed 'the glamour boys' by Chamberlain, their warnings were ignored and ... read more
Cities, economies and national infrastructures of every kind were reduced to rubble by the end of WW2. Betts looks at the efforts made by western European countries to rebuild their societi... read more
Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill and Kathleen Harriman all accompanied their fathers to the Yalta Conference. This is an intriguing account of their involvement and influence on events.
If you want to read one book about inequality and its ramifications for all societies, now and in the past, let it be this. By a former Pulitzer winner.
Berlin is defined by its many edges - the blurred edge between Huns and Slavs, pagan and Christian, the competing spheres of influence of Western Europe and Russia, autocracy and democracy, ... read more
Demick has previously won the Samuel Johnson prize and was short-listed for a Pulitzer. Her account of the modern Tibetan experience is unequalled. The town she writes about is Ngaba, in eas... read more
A dive through other dives: architecture as the key to Soho's history, with its waves of immigrants - Huguenots, East European Jews, Chinese. Has an elegiac quality in the face of the dispir... read more
Explores the growth of Greek medicine from the early references in Homer to the flowering its Hippocrates and subsequent influence on the Islamic world and early modern Europe.
Revisits the circumstances surrounding the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjoeld in 1961, who was found dead in the smoking wreckage of his plane on the way to Leopoldville in the ... read more
How Putin and his entourage of KGB men seized power in Russia, controlling the economy through a fiefdom of oligarchs, and have used that wealth to extend their own influence.
This hardba... read more
The story of London's notorious drinking den, the realm of the great and foul-mouthed Muriel Belcher. Constructed from interviews with many of its principal players.
This book was in our summer catalogue but we include it (exceptionally) in the present one too because it is outstanding. As in her 'Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire' (200... read more
Of the 50,000 Jews who were sent to concentration camps from Salonika, only 2,000 returned. The author is one of them. This manuscript from 1948 is presented by his grandson.
The author's German grandparents were 'Mitlaufer' - those who went with the flow in the Third Reich. They just wanted to forget, to bury it all under the wreckage... In this fascinating book... read more
The author of 'East West Street' examines the life of Otto von Wachter, the SS Governor of Galicia, who was indicted for mass murder in 1945 and went to ground in the Austrian Alps.
A whistle-stop tour, from Ivan to Putin, by one of the world's foremost Russia-watchers.
NB Publication of this book has been delayed until February 2021. Publishing schedules have been... read more