-
From 1945 to the present. This is also a defence of the unprecedented progress of the last decades, faltering now.
-
A cultural history of twelve flowers - but this is not a flimsy loveliness but full of fascination and bite. Radioactivity, the slave trade, global warming, that old charmer Henry VIII, all ... read more
-
A powerful portrait of the Roma since their appearance in Medieval Europe, and of the many forms of persecution they have suffered.
-
Country houses were repositories of the finest food in the land, but their tables fell into decline around WW1. Chapters examine all parts of food production (including the game, fish, cerea... read more
-
-
From the author of 'Ma'am Darling' and other hoots, a ragbag of tales and thoughts about the Beatles and their circle which somehow adds up to a wonderful account of their charisma and influ... read more
-
Despite its often fraught encounters with democracy, science and secular culture, the Catholic Church's story in the modern era is one of remarkable survival.
-
A thematic approach combining social history with the political: the household as well as nationhood.
-
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
-
The pioneering struggle of early C20th women gardeners, who were excluded from the profession on account of their sex by such august bodies as the RHS. Fiona Davidson's previous book was The... read more
-
Neutral for fifty years in his work for the BBC, now he tells us what he thinks and thought about all those prime ministers, presidents, elections and scandals.
-
A fascinating examination of how the prevailing causes of death have changed through history. It is a story of growing medical knowledge and social organisation, and is refreshingly optimist... read more
-
The heady world described by Waugh - but, besides the fun and aristocrats, there were men with shellshock, women reading for degrees, and a false sense of security as Hitler rose to power.
-
A deeply personal social history. From ancient Greece to 70s' New York, from Diogenes to her father, Eberstadt explores how people have used their bodies to challenge the world around them.
-
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'.
-
The whys and wherefores of frivolities in stone, shells, plaster, even glass and steel. An illustrated survey.
-
A portrait of the scandalous Oxford club, of which EW was briefly secretary, and looks at the lives of several of his contemporaries too. Seven of them found their way into Brideshead... The... read more
-
-
Barbara Cartland's daughter, Princess Diana's stepmother, who is said to left the Althorp estate with just a few bin bags of clothes. She was irrepressible, controversial - and perfectly man... read more
-
Looks back to a group of brave women in the later C18th and onwards - at a time when women had no property and no rights: Elizabeth Montagu, who took on Voltaire and won; Catherine Macauley,... read more
-
The brilliant Princeton historian guides us through the relationship between magic and the Renaissance, demystifying the Magus' relationship with science, art, and engineering in early-moder... read more
-
Through numerous interviews, the author of the bestselling 'Terms & Conditions' looks at mid-C20th Britain through the prism of summer holidays.
-
A characteristically particular and original look at social change from the author of the hugely successful Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding Schools, 1939-1979 and others.
-
Where Tillyard's brilliant The Elizabethan World Picture looked outwards, this looks inwards. A deeply fascinating and empathetic study.
-
-
Following High Minds, The Age of Decadence and Staring at God, this is the fourth in his series on the changing face of Britain. It covers the period 1919-1939.
-
The post-war eclipse of the rural by the urban. Joyce interweaves his own Irish family history into wider story of European peasantry to create a rich and varied cultural account of what it ... read more
-
The rise and fall of the Bacris and Busnachs, two Jewish families whose prominence in trade and banking led them to play a small but crucial diplomatic and logistical role in the Napoleonic ... read more
-
So many of K-S's photographs have been misattributed to Cecil Beaton that she has been neglected. She was admired by Man Ray and Paul Nash; her circle included Cocteau, Connolly and Fonteyn.
-
Subtitled 'Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries', this is an illustrated study of the rare, the wonderful, the bizarre and the delightfully batty... read more
-
Already receiving praise for revolutionising the history of sexuality, this book is bound to be a fascinating analysis of sex and identity in early-modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
-
By looking at the work and methods of thirteen C20th anthropologists, LM shows how they ended by changing how we see ourselves as much as the 'primitive' societies they were studying.
-
A retrospective of Maier's extraordinary body of work, arranged thematically - self-portraits, the street, portraits, gestures, cinematography, children, etc.
-
"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!" grumbled Mrs Elton at the marriage of Emma and the divine Mr Knightley. How times have changed!