History

At 18, your life is full of possibility. You have everything to look forward to - unless you've got the plague. In this unconventional and witty history, award-winning writer and broadcaster Alice Loxton delves into Britain's past, exploring the country though 18 notable figures at that most form...

When cycling commentator Ned Boulting bought a length of Pathé news film featuring a stage of the Tour de France from 1923 he set about learning everything he could about it - taking him on an intriguing journey that encompasses travelogue, history and detective story. In the autumn of 2020 Ned ...

The story of Hebden Bridge, told through the experiences of three generations of the prosperous Spencer family who made clothes for working men in the nineteenth century.

'The Army That Never Was' tells the remarkable story of the deceptions, hoaxes and misdirections carried out by the Allies ahead of the most pivotal moment of the Second World War - the D-Day invasion. The most audacious of these schemes aimed to convince German forces that plans to storm Normand...

Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, stat...

This volume is a wide-ranging synthesis of the history of the 1850s and the Civil War. It effectively integrates social, political and military events from the immediate aftermath of the Mexican War through the secession movement and Civil War. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History'Read it. It...

When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I's first ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent. Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was sketchy at best, and, to the Mughals, they were minor players on a very large stage. Roe was re...

D-Day was bloody, chaotic and frequently terrifying. Its outcome was far from certain. And at its epicentre were tens of thousands of young men, many seeing their first active service. It was a single day that changed millions of lives. A critical turning point of the Second World War. Using audi...

Mary Beard shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). 'Emperor of Rome' is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the ph...

June 1944: In Operation Bagration, more than two million Red Army soldiers, facing 500,000 German soldiers, finally avenged their defeat in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The same month saw the Allies triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but, despite the myths that remain, it was the events on the ...