This epic tale of the Sassoons and the Kadoories in 1930s Shanghai is like 'Dynasty' transferred from Texas to the global stage of China-Baghdad-London in the 1930s.
NB Publ... read more
A magnificent account of how the Vikings saw themselves, including also the Viking diaspora, from Finland to Uzbekistan, and also the role of slavery in Viking life and trade that was glosse... read more
SOE sent more than 400 agents into France of whom 39 were women. Vigurs traces them all here, not just the well known ones, and sets them in their context.
A zesty account of archaeological wizardry, from Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.
The idea that our ancestors turned from the hunted to the hunter; Calasso dazzles as ever; a rich evocation of the relationship of humans on the cusp of being and animals that were also bein... read more
Its second subtitle is "an adventurous history of botany". JG is a scientist and an historian of exploration (his "The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea" was excellent).
An incisive post-mortem on the state of the Victorian union, told (with a gossipy thrill) through the lives of five couples - Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, John Ruskin and Effie Gray, Charl... read more
She arrived in America in 1807 as a refugee from Napoleonic France. Her sketches of the world she encountered there must show what Madame de la Tour du Pin a decade earlier. A lovely book.
An exuberant account of the importance to Modernism of what Truman Capote called "the all-time ultimate gallery of famous dykes" in Paris between the wars.
PP has written numerous books on Fascist Spain. No one is better qualified to write this big history - why corruption has been so tenacious, and the continuing conflict between centrism and ... read more
This slim volume came out in the autumn and has been picked up so swiftly each time it arrives in the shop that we've hardly been able to keep it in stock...
A superb narrative of the 'underside' of the Italian Renaissance: the Genoese and Neapolitans; the women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, engineers, prostitutes, farmers and citizens ... read more
A fascinating account of the gradual triumph of one method of sorting data, from the Great Library of Alexandria to the present decline in our digital age.
A labour of love and scholarship, this is a study of the extraordinary Royal Library of Dom Joao V (1706-1750) of Portugal that was destroyed in 1755 in the Lisbon earthquake. The library co... read more
This is the first publication of Hugh Trevor-Roper's private journal of his visit to the People's Republic of China in 1965, shortly before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. It also d... read more
A meticulous history of a Highland family that acquired huge estates in Pembrokeshire by marriage and in Carmarthenshire by an inheritance. Undoubtedly academic, rather disappointingly illus... read more
Cairncross differed from the other Cambridge spies in his political outlook and motivation; he didn't work closely with any of them. Suspected as the 'Fifth Man', his identity was confirmed ... read more