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