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...

On 24th February 2022, the first day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, armoured vehicles approached the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. It was the most direct way for them to reach the capital - and an extraordinarily reckless plan after the disaster that had taken pl...

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched...

In 2021, Sarah Rainsford set out to write a book about how Russians who dared to think differently to the Putin regime were being labelled as enemies, foreign agents and even traitors. It began as the story of Russia's slide from democracy and a warning of where the crushing of liberties could le...

History belongs to the heroes. But to get the full story, sometimes you have to ask the side characters. The lives of Leonardo da Vinci, Henry VIII and Queen Victoria fill bookshelves and fascinate scholars all over the world. But little attention is given to the ferret who posed for the renaissa...

In the summer of 2006, Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve and occupy a police compound in the town of Now Zad in Helmand. He was told to prepare for a forty-eight hour operation. In the end, he and his men were under siege for thirty-one days - one of the longest such sie...

An essential guide to the extraordinarily complicated and developing situation in Israel/Palestine. Fully updated to reflect the tense and troubling changes in the region since 7 October 2023, this book puts the present situation into its broader context and, examining all perspectives, it unrave...

'Land Between the Rivers' is the result of ten years of research, writing, and thinking about the subject. It is an enormous topic: five thousand years, beginning with Gilgamesh at the edge of historical time. We begin the story with ancient Sumer, and Gilgamesh building the walls of Uruk ('Iraq'...

Britain's landowners, we are told, are the rightful stewards of the countryside. They care for the land, they nurture it for future generations and for the good of all. But this is not true. In 'The Lie of the Land', Guy Shrubsole shows that a handful of large landowners are responsible for the d...

In August 2021 a women's creative writing group in Afghanistan shared news of political turmoil and the Fall of Kabul. These women were in the process of publishing a short-story collection when their world was turned upside down by the Taliban. In staying connected via WhatsApp messages, they es...