History

The legendary 'Red Devils' were among the finest combat troops of the Second World War. Created at Churchill's instigation in June 1940, they began as a single parachute battalion of 500 men and grew into three 10,000-strong airborne divisions: the 1st, 6th and 44th Indian, each composed of parac...

From author and astronaut Tim Peake, this is the captivating story of humans in space. Only 628 people in human history have left Earth. In this book, astronaut Tim Peake traces the lives of these remarkable men and women who have forged the way, from Yuri Gagarin to Neil Armstrong, from Valentin...

Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portu...

The true story of the motley group of Allied men and women who worked to manage Stalin's mercurial, explosive approach to diplomacy during four turbulent years of World War II.

GWR, LMS, LNER and SR: these initials arouse memories of the Cornish Riviera Express, the streamlined Coronation Scot, the streamlined Coronation with its beaver tail, and the Southern Electrics, yet three of these companies only enjoyed a life of 25 years. Colin G. Maggs, who was born in this er...

'Straight Acting' is a surprising portrait of Shakespeare's queer lives - his own and those in his plays and poems. It is a journey back in time and through Shakespeare's England, revealing a culture that both endorsed and supressed same-sex desire. It is a call to stop making Shakespeare act str...

'Chronicles of the Third Reich' charts the rise and fall of Nazi power in a concise and compelling month-by-month narrative of the period 1933-45.

The end of the Second World War is in sight. Following the Western Allies' overwhelming victory on D-Day, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin are all prepared to shape the future, and Operation Market Garden is Britain's attempt to beat the Russians to Berlin and be the first to help craft the new wo...

From the bustling bazaars of Tabriz, to the mysterious island of Caldihe, where sheep were said to grow on trees, Anthony Bale brings history alive in 'A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages', inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world punctuated with miraculous wonders and long-lost landma...

'The Turning Tide' is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints, invasion forces and furtive gun-runners, writers, musicians and fishermen...