Using West's 1930s masterpiece Black Lamb, Grey Falcon as a vade mecum, Allan has written a wonderful, personal portrait of the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia.
A broad survey that considers the roles of individual leaders in C20th European history. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini of coures, but also Tito, Adenauer, Thatcher, Kohl, Gorbachev and others... read more
Travelling five thousand miles from the Arctic Circle to the eastern border of Turkey, the author examines the C20th faultline laid down in the Cold War and its legacy.
The title could pass off as a short story by M.R. James or as one of the exploits of Robert Louis Stevenson's little-known, rather Ruritanian sleuth called Prince Florizel. It is in fact a d... read more
A splendid illustrated book on the dramatic figures in wood and stone that started appearing in the palaces and churches of the German-speaking lands in the C17th.
The European revolutions of 1848 and their aftermath, explored through a series of set-pieces by the renowned historian, author of The Sleepwalkers and Iron Kingdom.
Following his outstanding book 1913: The Year Before the Storm, , Illies looks at the affairs of de Beauvoir, Sartre, Dietrich, Mann (both T & K), Nabokov and others, set against the looming... read more
In less than a month in 1870, the Prussian army invaded France, captured Napoleon III and changed the balance of world power. Its success had far-reaching effects...
The daughter of Russian immigrants in Leeds, Simpson made it her life's mission to help academic refugees. During WW2 alone, she saved 16 future Nobel Prize winners, 74 future Fellows of the... read more
Where did refugees from the American and French Revolutions go? This remarkable historical perspective shows how opening doors can be more profitable than closing borders.
In a particularly elegant diplomatic gesture, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Aachen in 802 AD. This fresh perspective draws on many Arabic sources.
The great historian of late antiquity mixes the personal with the scholarly in telling the story of his life and work. Engagement with the non-European world has been intrinsic to his work.
A huge work of scholarship that brings the late C5th/early C6th world to life. Theoderic stabilised Italy and extended his kingdom to include parts of France, the Iberian peninsula and the w... read more
Brilliant detective work by this French paleoanthropologist, who has studied Neanderthal traces from the Arctic to the Mediterranean and argues that their intelligence was different from our... read more
Whether in music, architecture, economics, art, mathematics, physics or philosophy - Vienna in the early C20th led the world. This astonishing vibrancy was dispersed by Nazism and WW2 to the... read more