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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Pascal Hughes

'Packed with more detail and colour than many books twice its size, Hughes brings the epic story of Rome vividly to life.' 
PAUL COOPER, HOST AND AUTHOR OF FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS 
 
Experience the sights, sounds and smells of the Roman world, and meet its most intriguing and influential characters, as this immersive account brings 1000 years of history to life. 
 
Immerse yourself in the dramatic and thrilling thousand-year story of Ancient Rome. Combining impeccable research with action packed storytelling, this riveting short history explores the inception, expansion and ultimate fall of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. 
 
Walk Rome’s bustling streets, witness the fearsome exploits of its all-conquering army and step into the opulent corridors of its palaces and pioneering building projects. Follow Hannibal as he crosses the snowcapped Alps with elephants in tow, shadow Julius Caesar as he ponders whether to cross the Rubicon river, and look on as Cicero delivers an impassioned speech to the Senate. 
 
In a Bacchanalian feast of despotic rulers, colossal conquests, visionary women, gladiator games and the daily life of Roman citizens and subjects, A Short History of Ancient Rome charts the dramatic twists 
and turns of the kingdom, the republic, the empire and its decline, as you navigate this crucial period in history.

A Short History of Ancient Rome

Terry Deary

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the rich and powerful always look after their own and the working people are always revolting. But every now and again, a new group actually manages to seize power, and it changes history. 
 
Few enjoy the success of Ivaylo, the Bulgarian swineherd who managed to fight off the Mongols, slay the Tsar and marry his widow in the space of a year. But then, some rebels have more modest aims: Spartacus mainly wanted to go home to see his mum. Either way, we have much to learn from the tactics of revolutionaries gone by, like the two suffragists who posted themselves by Royal Mail to see the prime minister. (A first-class idea, though Downing Street declined the parcel.) 
 
From the peasants to the slaves, the martyrs to the mutineers, Revolting celebrates the resilience and determination of those who dared to challenge the status quo.

Revolting

A riotous history of rebellions and revolutions

Paul Coulter

We all make mistakes, but rarely do they change the course of human history. From break-ups that ended empires to naps that sank ships, 10 Mistakes That Changed History is the hilarious retelling of some of the greatest episodes in the story of humankind. 
 
 Looking at many of the biggest characters and events of the last two and a half thousand years, from Cleopatra to the sinking of the Titanic, historian and comedian Paul Coulter explores how, despite the glamour, entourages and deity-sized egos, historical turning points were often the result of very human errors. 
 
 Blending history, storytelling and comedy, 10 Mistakes That Changed History is history as you wish you had learned it back at school: a greatest-hits of bad leadership decisions, misguided acts of heroism and catastrophic lapses of judgement. 
 
 These are the stories that have shaped our world, all with monumental consequences. Because sometimes it's nice to know that, no matter how bad your day is, the greatest names in history stuffed up too.************** 
 
Praise for the hit live show: 
Top pick of the Edinburgh Fringe 2024, credited as one of the best shows by Scottish Herald, Mervyn Stutter and the Edinburgh Reporter.Theatre Weekly “So engaging and entertaining that forgot I was there to review it”Edinburgh Reporter “Entertaining and informative”Corr Blimey “The perfect balance between entertaining and educating"Glam Adelaide “Coulter cleverly weaves the well-researched facts with modern day parallels; turning historical figures into relatable misfits”Edinburgh Fringe Review “Coulter’s storytelling unmatched, and his references to current pop culture relevant and hilarious”LondonTheatre1 “Infectiously charming”On the Record “A hilarious blend of storytelling, facts and comedy”

10 Mistakes That Changed History

The Reckless Rulers, Monumental Mishaps and Disastrous Decisions That Have Shaped Our World.

David Hepworth

When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was forty-three years old. 
 
As the forty years since have shown he - and many others of his generation - were just getting started. 
 
This was the time when live performance took over from records. The big names of the 60s and 70s exploited the age of spectacle that Live Aid had ushered in to enjoy the longest lap of honour in the history of humanity, continuing to go strong long after everyone else had retired. 
 
Hence this is a story without precedent, a story in which Elton John plays a royal funeral, Mick Jagger gets a knighthood, Bob Dylan picks up the Nobel Prize, the Beatles become, if anything, bigger than the Beatles and it's beginning to look as though all of the above will, thanks to the march of technology, be playing Las Vegas for ever.

Hope I Get Old Before I Die

Why rock stars never retire

Alicia Appleman-Jurman

'This memoir is heartbreaking.' Elie Wiesel, author of Night 
 
Alicia Jurman is five-years-old when her story begins. It is 1935 and she is living in the East Polish town of Buczacz. Although brought up in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism, nothing could have prepared her for the Russian invasion of Poland and the full horror of the Nazi Occupation. 
 
At thirteen, while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland, Alicia began saving the lives of strangers. Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother's brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child's faith in human goodness - or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds. 
 
After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine. She swore on her brother's grave that if she survived, she would speak for her silenced family. This book is the eloquent fulfilment of that oath.

Alicia

Memoirs of A Survivor

'The story of Truman’s accession to the presidency is worthy of a Hollywood melodrama, and A J Baime’s zippy, well-judged and hugely readable book more than does it justice...' - Dominic Sandbrook, SUNDAY TIMES 
 
Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who find themselves facing extraordinary circumstances and, through courage and a dash of luck, cement their place in history. Chosen as President Roosevelt's fourth term Vice President for his admired work ethic, good judgement and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man from small-town America. That is, until he was thrust in over his head following the sudden death of Roosevelt. 
 
With the world still caught up in the inferno of the Second World War, Truman found himself playing the roles of both judge and jury during the founding of the UN, the Potsdam Conference, the Manhattan Project, the German surrender, the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the decision to drop the Bomb and bring the war to the end. 
 
Tightly focused, meticulously researched and drawing on documentation not available to previous biographers, The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during this tumultuous, history-making four months - when the stakes were high and the challenges even higher . . .

The Accidental President

Allan Mallinson

‘Mallinson . . . combines the authority of a soldier-turned-military historian with the imaginative touch of the historical novelist.’ Lawrence James, THE TIMES 
 
We remember months, because months have names, because they are linked to the seasons, and because they have their own character. Looking at the First World War month by month reveals its complexity while preserving a sense of time. 
 
From the opening shots to the signing of the armistice, the First World War lasted almost 52 months. It was fought on land, sea and in the air. It became industrial, and unrestricted: poison gas, aerial bombing of cities, and the sinking without warning of merchantmen and passenger ships by submarines. 
 
Casualties, military and civilian, probably exceeded 40 million. Four empires collapsed during the course of the war – the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman. 
 
The First World War is almost impossible to comprehend. Day-by-day narratives can be dizzying for the reader wanting to make sense of the conflict as a whole. Freer-flowing accounts, while helping to understand the broader trends and factors, can give less of a sense of the human dimension of time. The month is a more digestible gauge. 
 
Based on the Allan Mallinson’s monthly commentaries in The Times throughout the centenary, Fight to the Finish is a new and original portrait of “The War to End War.”

Fight to the Finish

The First World War - Month by Month

Tony Hannan

**Shortlisted for the 2018 General Outstanding Sports Book of the Year** 
 
One of the founder members in 1895 of what became the Rugby League, Batley was once a thriving centre of commerce, one of the bustling mill towns in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire. More than 120 years on, times have changed, even if the town's Victorian buildings remain, but one constant is the importance of the club as the centre of the community. And in 2016, the Batley Bulldogs brought more than their fair share of pride to the town. They were Underdogs, but gave their professional Super League rivals a run for their money in a season that surpassed all expectations. 
 
Given unprecedented access to the team - players, staff and fans - Tony Hannan charts a fascinating year in the life of a lower-league club, of labourers spilling blood and guts on to Batley's notorious sloping pitch before getting bruised bodies up for work on a Monday morning, of hand-to-mouth existence at the unglamorous and gritty end of British sport. And at their centre is the Bulldogs captain Keegan Hirst, the first rugby league player to come out as gay, and inspirational coach John Kear, just two men in the most colourful cast of characters. It was also a year when the town was plunged into tragedy by the brutal murder of local MP Jo Cox, a great supporter of the club. 
 
Underdogs is more than just a book about Batley though. It is the story of northern working-class culture, past and present, and a report from the front-line of a society struggling to find its identity in a changing world.

Underdogs

Keegan Hirst, Batley and a Year in the Life of a Rugby League Town

Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts was, for once, almost lost for words as the news sank in. Perennial underachievers Bromley, in the vertigo-inducing fifth tier of English football? It was the greatest achievement in the club's 130-year history and, by extraordinary coincidence, Dave had decided to spend the next 12 months in the UK, after an absence of 35 years, deciding whether he and his wife Liz could live there. And what better way to explore modern day Blighty than by following a roadmap based on the fixtures in the Vanarama National League? It was like the ultimate package holiday; well, for Dave at least. 
 
Home and Away takes Dave - and occasionally Liz too - the length and breadth of the land on a journey of discovery, with Bromley games thrown in. So from the White Cliffs of Dover and the English Riviera (Torquay) through the timeless charm of the Cotswolds (Forest Green, Cheltenham) to towns steeped in history (Lincoln, Chester), faded seaside resorts (Southport, Barrow) and fallen giants of the game (Grimsby, Wrexham, Tranmere - OK, pushing it there), the season unfolds, and the ultimate 'home or away' decision approaches. 
 
Against the odds, the season also proves not to be full of the endless disappointments football fans are conditioned to expect. Unfancied Bromley are on a mission, they have a man called Moses up front, and the promised land of the Football League might not be beyond their capabilities...

Home and Away

Round Britain in Search of Non-League Football Nirvana

‘No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening’, wrote Churchill. ‘The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed…in fact the War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of fate.’ 
 
On of Britain's foremost military historians and defence experts tackles the origins - and the opening first few weeks of fighting - of what would become known as 'the war to end all wars'. Intensely researched and convincingly argued, Allan Mallinson explores and explains the grand strategic shift that occurred in the century before the war, the British Army’s regeneration after its drubbings in its fight against the Boer in South Africa, its almost calamitous experience of the first twenty days’ fighting in Flanders to the point at which the British Expeditionary Force - the 'Old Contemptibles' - took up the spade in the middle of September 1914: for it was then that the war changed from one of rapid and brutal movement into the more familiar vision of trench warfare on Western Front. In this vivid, compelling new history, Malliinson brings his experience as a professional soldier to bear on the circumstances, events, actions and individuals and speculates – tantalizingly – on what might have been...

1914: Fight the Good Fight

Britain, the Army and the Coming of the First World War

Guy Walters

In early 1942 the Germans opened a top-security prisoner-of-war camp in occupied Poland for captured Allied airmen. Called Stalag Luft III, the camp soon came to contain some of the most inventive escapers ever known. They were led by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, code-named 'Big X', who masterminded an attempt to smuggle hundreds of POWs down a tunnel built right under the noses of their guards. 
 
The escape would come to be immortalised in the famous film The Great Escape, in which the ingenuity and bravery of the men was rightly celebrated. The plan involved multiple tunnels, hundreds of forged documents, as well as specially made German uniforms and civilian clothing. In this book Guy Walters takes a fresh look at this remarkable event and asks the question, what was the true story, not the movie version? He also examines what the escape really achieved, and the nature of the man who led it. 
 
The Real Great Escape is the first account to draw on a newly-released cache of documents from Roger Bushell’s family, including letters from Bushell, that reveals much about this remarkable man, his life and experiences during the war, and the planning of the escape attempt that was to make him famous. The result is a compelling and authoritative re-evaluation of the most iconic escape story of the Second World War.

The Real Great Escape

Cherry Simmonds

NOBODY IN PARTICULAR is the hand-on-heart, honest, charming and occasionally tear-inducingly tragic, often laugh out loud funny story of what it was like to grow up in Liverpool in the 1950s and '60s as the youngest child in a large and somewhat eccentric Anglo-Irish family: Cherry's father would while away the hours playing his guitar in the outside loo until the pubs opened while her mother seemed to be either menopausal or depressed or both, and devoted most of her energies into saving for a divorce or her own business - whichever came cheapest! Capturing the despondency and deprivations of post-war England as embodied in the back streets of Liverpool and the subsequent vibrancy and liberation of the swinging sixties - the decade of the Beatles, national strikes and Liverpool FC winning the FA cup for the first time - this is an ebullient tale told by a natural storyteller. NOBODY IN PARTICULAR is not only a funny, affecting and nicely self-deprecating personal story (peopled by some splendidly observed larger-than-life characters - her family) but also a rather wonderful slice of social history, evoking a bygone yet still familiar and fondly remembered era.

Nobody In Particular

Robert Winston

We are born with the instinct to create and invent. Indeed, our ability to do so is what separates us from the rest of the animal world. But have our creative ideas always produced desirable results? Have they always served us well? 
 
Bad Ideas? traces the fascinating history of our attempts at self-improvement but also questions their value. The dubious consequences of the development of weaponry, for example, is self-evident. But what of apparently more innocuous advances such as farming, writing and medicine? Science has produced huge good but has also had unforeseen consequences. Can science and scientists find solutions to the perils that now menace us? 
 
We join Robert Winston on a thrilling journey from our earliest days to the present. We meet some key individuals along the way and share quirky anecdotes about their lives and brainwaves. Inspiring, unusual and at times controversial, Bad Ideas? assesses the past and looks forward to the opportunities of the future. In so doing it celebrates man's extraordinary capacity for achievement and offers a hopeful way forward to protect humanity against what sometimes seem like bad ideas.

Bad Ideas?

An arresting history of our inventions

Ian Wilson

Two decades after radiocarbon dating declared the Turin Shroud a mediaeval fake, brand-new historical discoveries strongly suggest that this famous cloth, with its extraordinary photographic imprint, is genuinely Christ's shroud after all. 
 
In 1978 in his international bestseller The Turin Shroud Ian Wilson ignited worldwide public debate with his compelling case endorsing the shroud's authenticity. Now, 30 years later, he has completely rewritten and updated his earlier book to provide fresh evidence to support his original argument. Shroud boldly challenges the current post-radiocarbon dating view - that it is a fake. By arguing his case brilliantly and provocatively, Ian Wilson once more throws the matter into the public arena for further debate and controversy.

The Shroud

Fresh Light on the 2000 Year Old Mystery

Will Davies

'Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - fire! Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it as if the world is spliting apart...' 
 
On 7th June 1917, nineteen massive mines exploded beneath Messines Ridge near Ypres. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that point shattered the landscape and smashed open the German lines. Ten thousand German soldiers died. 
Two of the mines - at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar - were fired by men of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, comprising miners and engineers rather than parade-ground soldiers. Drawing on the diaries of one of the key combatants, Benealth Hill 60 tells the little-known, devastatingly brutal true story of this subterranean war waged beneath the Western Front - a stygian battle-ground where men drowned in viscous chalk, suffocated in the blue gray clay, choked on poisonous air or died in the darkness, caught up up in vicious hand-to-hand fighting...

Beneath Hill 60

Robert Wallace

H. Keith Melton

Henry Robert Schlesinger

Secret instructons written in invisible ink. 
Cigarettes that fire bullets. 
Covert communications slipped inside dead rats. 
Subminature cameras hidden in ballpoint pens. 
 
If these sound like the stuff of James Bond's gadget-master Q's trade, think again. They are all real-life devices created by the CIA's Office of Technical Services. Now, in the first book ever written about this ultrasecretive department, the former director of the OTS gives us an unprecedented look at the devices and operations from the history of the CIA - including many deemed 'inappropriate for public disclosure' by the CIA just two years ago. 
 
Spycraft tells amazing life and death stories about this little-known group, much of which has never before been revealed. Against the backdrop of some of the most critical international events of recent years - including the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the war on terror - the authors show the real techinical and human story of how the CIA carried out its most secret missions.

Spycraft

Christopher Hale

In 1938, on the eve of war, a Nazi expedition set out through British India on a mission sponsored by Himmler himself. Its aim was to trace the origins of the Aryan race, high in the sacred mountains of Tibet. The expedition was led by two complex individuals - Ernst Schäfer, a swashbuckling, gun-toting naturalist for whom Nazism promised a short-cut to personal glory, and Bruno Beger, an anthropologist whose racial theories were taken to their logical conclusion in Auschwitz. 
Schäfer and Beger soon found themselves battling hostility from the British, being manipulated by the Tibetans and struggling with the primitive conditions in the holy city of Lhasa. Every detail of the expedition was recorded in diaries, letters and secret reports. It was also documented in thousands of extraordinary photographs (some of which are reproduced here for the first time in decades) and on film. 
Despite this abundant documentation, the full story of Schäfer's ill-fated expedition has never been told. This encounter between the British and the Nazis so close to the Second World War forms a 'picture in little' of the conflict to come. HIMMLER'S CRUSADE explores the ideological roots of the Nazis' obsession with racial theory and the occult. Using the wealth of primary material as well as his own interviews with Bruno Beger, Christopher Hale has written a fascinating and thought-provoking book that brilliantly evokes this little-known prelude to the unimaginable horror of war.

Himmler's Crusade

E P F Lynch

'It's the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying...' 
Edward Lynch enlisted when he was just 18 - one of thousands of fresh-faced men who were proudly waved off by the crowds as they embarked for France. It was 1916 and the majority had no idea of the reality of the Somme trenches, of the traumatised soldiers they would encounter there, of the innumerable, awful contradictions of war. Private Lynch was one of those who survived, and on his return home, wrote Somme Mud in pencil in over 20 school exercise books, perhaps in the hope of coming to terms with all that he had witnessed there? 
Written from the perspective of an ordinary 'Tommy' and told with dignity, candour and surprising wit, Somme Mud is a testament to the human spirit: for out of the mud that threatened to suck out a man's soul rises a compelling story of humanity and friendship. 
For all who are marking the centenary of the Great War, it is a rare and precious find.

Somme Mud

John Man

The name Attila the Hun has become a byword for barbarism, savagery and violence. His is a truly household name, but what do we really know about the man himself, his position in history and the world in which he lived? This riveting biography reveals the man behind the myth. 
 
In the years 434-454AD the fate of Europe hung upon the actions of one man, Attila, king of the Huns. The decaying Roman empire still stood astride the Western World, from its twin capitals of Rome and Constantinople, but it was threatened by a new force, the much-feared Barbarian hordes. It was Attila who united the Barbarian tribes into a single, amazingly-effective army. He launched two violent attacks against the eastern and western halves of the Roman empire, attacks which earned him his reputation for mindless devastation, and brought an end to Rome's pre-eminence in Europe. 
 
Attila was coarse, capricious, arrogant, ruthless and brilliant. An illiterate and predatory tribal chief, he had no interest in administration, but was a wily politician, who, from his base in the grasslands of Hungary, used secretaries and ambassadors to bring him intelligence on his enemies. He was a leader whose unique qualities made him supreme among tribal leaders, but whose weaknesses ensured the collapse of his empire after his death.

Attila The Hun

Martin Booth

To some it's antisocial anathema, to others it is a harmless way to relax, or provides relief from crippling pain. Some fear it is a dangerous drug that leads to 'reefer madness' and addiction; to others still it is a legal anomaly and should be decriminalized. Whatever the viewpoint, and by whatever name it is known, cannabis - or marijuana, hashish, pot, dope, kif, weed, dagga, grass, ganja - incites debate at every level. 
 
In this definitive study, Martin Booth - author of the acclaimed OPIUM: A HISTORY - charts the history of cannabis from the Neolithic period to the present day. It is a fascinating, colourful tale of medical advance, religious enlightenment, political subterfuge and human rights; of law enforcement and customs officers, smugglers, street pushers, gang warfare, writers, artists, musicians, hippies and pot-heads. 
 
Booth chronicles the remarkable and often mystifying process through which cannabis, a relatively harmless substance, became outlawed throughout the Western world, and the devastating effect such legislation has had on the global economy. Above all, he demonstrates how the case for decriminalization remains one of the twenty-first century's hottest topics.

Cannabis: A History

Tim Richardson

It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves sweets. However keen we might be on fine cheese, vintage wine or acorn-fed Iberian ham, much of the time we'd be happier with a Curly-Wurly. But why do we like sweets so much? Why is there such an enormous variety of types, a whole uncharted gastronomy in itself? And where do they all come from? 
Many of the sweets we recognize today have a lineage going back hundreds of years. Sugar was first transported around the world with the exotic herbs and spices used by medieval apothecaries. By association, the confectioner's art was at first medical in nature and many sweets (such as aniseed balls, which were a medieval cure for indigestion) were originally consumed for reasons of health. 
Other sweets came in-to being in the worlds of ritual and magic. Chocolate, for example, was mixed with chilli and used as a libation by the Aztecs. It subsequently appeared in other rather more palatable drinks around the world, but not in the solid form we now recognize until about 150 years ago. But the special significance of a gift of chocolate remains . . . 
Whatever their manifold origins, sweets are still a feature of every human society around the world. Tim Richardson's book tells the extraordinary story of comfits and dragées, lozenges and pastilles, sherbets and subtleties. Like a box of chocolates, it's something you can just dip into - or scoff all at once.

Sweets: A History Of Temptation

Gavin Menzies

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the world in Confucian harmony. 
Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook... 
The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind - from sunken junks to the votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea. 
Already hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding of world exploration but also rewrites history itself.

1421

The Year China Discovered The World

L A Carlyon

'Because it was fought so close to his old home ground, Homer might have seen this war on the Gallipoli Peninsula as an epic. Brief by his standards, but essentially heroic. Shakespeare might have seen it as a tragedy with splendid bit-parts for buffoons and brigands and lots of graveyard scenes. Those thigh bones you occasionally see rearing out of the yellow earth of Gully ravine, snapped open so that they look like pumice, belong to a generation of young men who on this peninsula first lost their innocence and then their lives, and maybe something else as well...' 
 
Gallipoli remains one of the most poignant battlefronts of the First World War and L. A. Carlyon's monumental account of that campaign has been rightfully acclaimed and a massive bestseller in Australia. Brilliantly told, supremely readable and deeply moving, Gallipoli brings this epic tragedy to life and stands as both a landmark chapter in the history of the war and a salutary reminder of all that is fine and all that is foolish in the human condition.

Gallipoli

Jim Smith

Malcolm McConnell

14 August 1945. As Emperor Hirohito recorded a message of surrender for the Japanese people, rebel troops commanded by high-ranking officers from War Minister Anami¹s staff burst into the Imperial palace. Their intention was to stage a coup, destroy the recording and issue forged orders for Japan to continue the war. Had they succeeded, there would have been massive kamikaze attacks on allied forces, causing carnage and possibly provoking America to drop a third atomic bomb on an already devastated Japan... 
 
But on that fateful night, in the skies approaching Tokyo, a stream of B-29B 'Superfortress' bombers were heading towards Japan's last functioning oil refinery. Fearing that the approaching planes could be carrying another atom bomb, Japanese air defences ordered a total black out of the city and the Imperial palace and in so doing completely disrupted the rebels' plans, enabling soldiers loyal to the Emperor to sieze back control. At midday on 15 August 1945, the Imperial message of surrender was broadcast throughout Japan. The Second World War was finally over. 
 
THE LAST MISSION is gripping work of speculative investigation into one of the least known yet profoundly significant episodes of World War II.

The Last Mission

Doug Stanton

On 30 July 1945 the USS Indianapolis was steaming through the South Pacific, on her way home having delivered the bomb that was to decimate Hiroshima seven days later, when she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Of a crew of 1196 men an estimated 300 were killed upon impact; the remaining 900 sailors went into the sea. Undetected for five days, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia and madness. By the time rescue arrived, only 317 men were left alive. 
 
Interweaving the stories of some of these survivors (including the ship's Captain Butler McVay, who would be unjustly court-martialled for the loss of his ship and, twenty years later and tormented by the experience, take his own life), Doug Stanton brings this incredible human drama to life in a narrative that is at once immediate and timeless. The definitive account of a near-forgotten chapter in the history of the last war, In Harm's Way has become a classic. 
 
And, some 72 years later, in August 2017, the USS Indianapolis was once again making international headlines - with the news that a marine archaeology team had located the ship's shattered remains: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/world/asia/uss-indianapolis-paul-allen.html?mcubz=1

In Harm's Way

Michael Calvin

1966. As London is declared ‘a swinging city’ and John Lennon proclaims the Beatles ‘more popular than Jesus’, Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement acts as a beacon of hope and possibility. Yet Cold War tensions, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the space race between America and the Soviet Union project a different image. Meanwhile, China’s Cultural Revolution begins, and talks are initiated to reunify Germany, whilst Lyndon B. Johnson sits in the White House following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. 
 
As tensions build between East and West and the great powers wrestle with the pull of social change, the year’s football World Cup has the potential to unite old rivals, whilst giving nations the opportunity to demonstrate their prowess amongst an international community standing at an inflection point, emerging from the long shadow of the Second World War and hurtling towards the future. 
 
Through the prism of the extraordinary tournament and the eight teams that reached the quarter finals – England, West Germany, Uruguay, Argentina, Portugal, Soviet Union, North Korea and Hungary – Michael Calvin provides a vivid portrait of a critical moment in world history. Examining the sporting, social and cultural significance of the competition and its backdrop, this hugely entertaining book brings to life a world and a sport caught in a tide of change, and shows how this critical year would change both forever.

A Year in Time

Kate Lister

We like to think of the modern ‘sex positive’ movement as being a radical break from the past; that we are finally sorting out the repression and denial of women’s sexual pleasure that has restricted us throughout history. But women demanding better sex did not arrive with modern day feminism or the Rampant Rabbit. It has been a very long fight indeed. 
 
It is true that women’s sexual pleasure has been heavily repressed, stigmatised, and even denied at various points throughout history, but it has also been celebrated, venerated, and thoroughly, THOROUGHLY, enjoyed. Women have been fighting for their right to enjoy sex all along and theirs is a story that needs to be told. 
 
From the Aztec sex goddesses to ivory marital aids, Flick takes us through history to meet the matriarchal minxes who (quite literally) came before us.

FLICK

A history of female pleasure

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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