His mistakes as well as his achievements, and a fascinating post- Brexit look at our history since WW2, in which our leaders still vye for Churchill's mythic mantle to legitimize their polit... read more
Macartney's 1793 mission was a failure, but the Dutch were better informed. This new study argues that the Qing court was not arrogant and narrow-minded, as the English concluded, but was in... read more
This remarkable volume was published by the Memorial Human Rights Centre, a Russian civil rights group . It tells the stories of 16 men - mostly members of the intelligentsia, and loyal Sovi... read more
From the author of the excellent 'The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are', an account of the dazzling city that was the hub of the known world in the C16th.
By the author of 'The Moor's Last Stand', a biography of Boabdil, whose sigh, looking back at the beautiful Granada he had fled, still resonates. Illustrated.
Not so much a sequel to 'The Hare with Amber Eyes', this short, superb and immensely powerful book is nevertheless complementary to his earlier book. Read it, give it, think about it; read i... read more
FSS is an excellent and varied writer. In this new book, she looks at her father's life through the papers in a suitcase revealing how he was exiled from Romania during the war, to Turkey th... read more
CN was a poet, pamphleteer and general dazzler, whose husband took the Prime Minister (Melbourne) to court for 'criminal conversation' with his wife - and lost. Old age has not dulled the pe... read more
A biography of the man so vividly presented in Robert Edric's 2008 novel 'In Zodiac Light': the poet and composer who, following his experiences as a soldier in WW1, was confined to an asylu... read more
Traces Napoleon's accrual of the spoils of war: the negotiated, carefully targeted removal of Renaissance masterpieces including works by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as the ... read more
JR wrote a superb novel ('Kozlowski') about the Katyn massacre. This book uses the testimonies of survivors and investigators to understand how the effects of the massacre rippled on for de... read more
Explores the interaction of mass-market diamonds and German colonialism in Africa. Or how the new American fashion for diamond engagement rings funded Germany in two world wars.
An immense and authoritative account that draws attention to Stalin's similarities with Hitler; their primary difference being that Stalin was a more successful murderous predator.
How the rise of antiquarian interests between the Fall of the Bastille and the Great Exhibition promoted the rediscovery of national history in Britain, France and Germany. From the author o... read more
Fabric - and our hunger for it - as the mother of invention, the driver behind technology, agriculture, trade, politics, culture... it funded the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal empire. H... read more
In 1849 Garibaldi gave up the defence of Rome to the besieging French troops and made his way northwards with a few thousand volunteers; this is an earlier phase of the attempt at Italian li... read more
A panoramic account by the distinguished Harvard historian of five generations of a French provincial family originally from Angouleme, crammed with stories and archival research. ER has a d... read more
Joan Leigh Fermor's biographer turns to Eddy Sackville-West, Desmon Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys and the unusual salon they created at Long Crichel in Dorset, where Nancy Mitford, Benjam... read more