History

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...

Shaun Pinner was a retired and decorated British soldier, living a peaceful and happy life in Mariupol with his Ukrainian family. What follows is the true story of his six months spent imprisoned in Russian-occupied Ukraine. After the horrors of frontline fighting, Shaun had to survive his captur...

From the majestic beauty of the wild Scottish landscape to the hidden traces of its history waiting to be uncovered in every town and village, Andrew McAlindon is enthralled by the country he is lucky enough to call home. As one of Scotland's busiest tour guides in real life and online, Andy trav...

For over two decades, Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the tidal Thames looking for objects - lost or discarded - that tell forgotten stories. In this sequel to 'Mudlarking', Lara reflects on life lived post-pandemic, widens her search beyond the river and reminds us that it's possible to dr...

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...

The untold history of the Western invasion of Soviet Russia - and the tragedy it created. In the closing months of WW1, with the world exhausted by a long, brutal war, 15 nations cobbled together an army of 180,000 men and embarked on one of the most extraordinary and ambitious military ventures ...

How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from...

Amidst a landscape of economic turmoil, eroding freedoms and deepening societal fractures, one thing is clear: Britain is in a mess. Instead of serving the common good, our politicians seem fixated on personal gain, while certain segments of the media only seek to divide us further. But who is re...

On Saturday 29 September 1923, the Palestine Mandate became law and the British Empire reached what would prove to be its maximum territorial extent, covering a scarcely credible quarter of the world's land mass, containing 460 million people. But the tide was beginning to turn. This book is a ne...

This is a heart-stopping countdown narrative recreating the liberation of Paris in 1944, one of the great and most dramatic hinge moments of WW2. When the Germans marched in and the lamps went out in the City of Light the millions who loved Paris mourned. Liberation, four years later, triggered a...