Acclaimed author of 'Wartime', Juliet Gardiner, brings to life the long neglected decade of the twentieth century – the 1930s.J.B. Priestley famously described the 'three Englands' he saw in the 1930s: Old England, nineteenth-century England and the new, post-war England. Thirties Britain was, indeed, a land of contrasts, at once a nation rendered hopeless by the Depression, unemployment and international tensions, yet also a place of complacent ...
An intensely moving account of George III’s doomed attempt to create a happy, harmonious family, written with astonishing emotional force by a stunning new history writer.George III came to the throne in 1760 as a man with a mission. He wanted to be a new kind of king, one whose power was rooted in the affection and approval of his people. And he was determined to revolutionise his private life too – to show that a better man would, inevitably, ...
In this Samuel Johnson Prize short-listed work of meticulous scholarship, Paul Preston, the world’s foremost historian of 20th-century Spain, charts how and why Franco and his supporters set out to eliminate all ‘those who do not think as we do’ – some 200,000 innocent men, women and children across Spain.The remains of General Franco lie in an immense mausoleum near Madrid, built with the blood and sweat of 20,000 slave labourers. His enemies, ...
‘Leanda de Lisle brings the story of nine days’ queen, Lady Jane Grey and her forgotten sisters, the rivals of Elizabeth I, to vivid life in her fascinating biography’ Philippa GregoryThe dramatic untold story of the three tragic Grey sisters, all heirs to the Tudor throne, all victims to their royal blood.Lady Jane Grey is an iconic figure in English history. Misremembered as the ‘Nine Days Queen’, she has been mythologized as a child-woman des ...
‘As gripping as any spy thriller, Hastings’s achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject’ Sunday Times‘Authoritative, exciting and notably well written’ Daily Telegraph‘A serious work of rigourous and comprehensive history … royally entertaining and readable’ Mail on SundayIn ‘The Secret War’, Max Hastings examines the espionage and intelligence machines of all sides in World War II ...
For the quality of its research and the clarity of its synthesis, The Rise of Respectable Society will gain a reputation as an outstanding reinterpretation of the Victorian period.In the years since the appearance of G. M. Young’s brilliant survey, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age, a mass of new research from new perspectives has entirely changed the landscape of the Victorian era. The Rise of Respectable Society offers a new map of this te ...
From the bestselling author of ‘Fighter Boys’, the true story of two ruthless adversaries and a wartime killing that shook the modern world.On a cold, bright morning in February 1942, fugitive Avraham Stern was cornered in a flat in Tel-Aviv and shot dead. His killer, Assistant Superintendent Geoffrey Morton, claimed Stern was trying to escape. But Stern was no ordinary criminal. And witnesses insisted he was executed in cold blood.Stern was a m ...
Personal stories from the men and women who volunteered to fight for a cause they passionately believed in.The Spanish Civil War, which raged from 1936-9, was a brutal and intense war which claimed well over 500,000 lives. Rightly predicting that the rise of Fascism in Spain could develop into a more global conflict, almost 2500 British volunteers travelled to Spain under the banner of the International Brigade to fight for the Spanish Republic ...
WINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION, THE 2013 DUFF COOPER PRIZE, THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2014 AND THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEARThe story of Gabriele D’Annunzio, poet, daredevil – and Fascist.In September 1919 Gabriele D’Annunzio, successful poet, dramatist and occasional politician with an innate flair for the melodramatic, declared himself the Commandante of the city of Fi ...
