British Politics

A secret prisoner holds the key to a 30-year old crime. Sam Williams was meant for great things, until a fatal misstep crashed his career. Trying to salvage the remnants is a path which leads him to the wrong place at the worst time - a high security prison in the middle of a riot, and face to face with a man the world believes is long dead. Sam quickly learns someone is willing to do whatever it takes make sure things stay that way. The truth to a decades old mystery might save Sam’s skin, but the clock is ticking.

“The time of reckoning is here, Gorilla Grant.” Jack “Gorilla” Grant, retired assassin and former spy, is living a new life as a peaceful, successful businessman. But when his daughter is kidnapped in Rome, it is just the opening gambit in a series of events that pushes him back into the “redaction” business that he once walked away from. Unseen forces are moving against Gorilla and dangerous enemies from his past are threatening his future, intent on turning a cold war into a hot war. But Gorilla has one rule: Don’t mess with my family.

Towards the end of 1906, a meeting took place between two emerging giants of the age, Mohandas K. Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts. United under the same empire, but separated by distance and culture, Smuts was born in the Cape Colony, and Gandhi in Porbandar, a duchy of the Indian province of Gujarat. Both, however, went on to study law in Britain, and while developing a great admiration for the institutions of empire, each man also suffered his own particular crisis of faith.

The American Revolution is replete with seminal moments that every American learns in school, from the "shot heard 'round the world" to the Declaration of Independence, but the events that led up to the fighting at Lexington and Concord were borne out of 10 years of division between the British and their American colonies over everything from colonial representation in governments to taxation, the nature of searches, and the quartering of British regulars in private houses.

Over 40 years, two British police units acted undercover to infiltrate activist groups. At least 20 of those officers deliberately targeted women and entered relationships with them. One of those women was me. This is my story.

That the early United States was (or were) referred to as the New Empire would seem nonsensical or flatly erroneous today on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, Europeans and Americans alike viewed the United Colonies as a potential empire existing uneasily within an empire, the British Empire. This perspective impacted the crafting of the Continental Congress and the US government, whereas the governments of the member states were viewed as commensurate with the contemporary kingdoms in Europe.

Gina Gray is just about to move into a small but perfect flat in Bloomsbury and DCI David Scott has come back into her life. But a family crisis brings her daughter and son-in-law to share her flat and, in the rash of hate crimes that follow the Brexit referendum, a young Indian woman is strangled just doors away from Gina’s new home. David Scott wants Gina’s help with an investigation which takes her into the world of barristers’ chambers in Gray’s Inn, a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and a clash with her difficult younger daughter.

From an acclaimed military historian, a bold reappraisal of young George Washington, an ambitious if reckless soldier destined to become the legendary general who took on the British and, through his leadership, defined the American character.

Most of us have enjoyed walking on a bridleway at some time, but we rarely stop to think about how these old routes came to be. These ancient networks criss-cross the British countryside and are so familiar to walkers and riders that they have become almost invisible as we meander our way along them. From atop a horse and on foot, Tiffany Francis-Baker provides listeners with a new perspective on bridleways and a glimpse into their intriguing history.

Featuring: Oh, Jeremy Corbyn; Danny Dyer turning out to be good; Fortnite; hipster pies; The Independent Group; reviews for items on supermarket delivery sites; even Mark Zuckerburg saying the internet needs regulating; new football stadiums; old football stadiums; feeling a bit sorry for Theresa May; Elon Musk; Christopher Nolan films that aren't Memento; TED Talks; Irish passports - this year's must-have accessory!; Airbnb obsessives; woke one-upmanship; Vladimir Putin; how many f*cking platforms am I supposed to have to pay for just to watch the f--king telly?

Stanley Featherstonehough Ukridge is positively convinced that his complete ignorance of chicken farming gives him a particular advantage in the subject. A bombastic blowhard, he persuades his wife and his mild-mannered chum to start a chicken farm with him. What could go wrong?

During a holiday with his wife in Crete, the celebrated diarist and playwright Simon Gray recalls the scans and consultations that have dominated the previous months in this frank, moving, and often painfully funny account of what Gray refers to as "the beginning of my dying". Wonderfully comic depictions of the medical team are interrupted by unforgettable portraits of fellow tourists, digressions on everything from crimes of passion to a brief history of his athletic career, and a masterfully tense distraction, composed while waiting for his final prognosis - and smoking one last cigarette.

When an MI6 operation in Belarus goes wrong and a key asset is killed, Agent Blackhawk has to go under cover to break a crime and espionage ring in Eastern Europe. Then an expert in biological warfare disappears from a British safe house in Denmark and needs to be found before a Russian assassination team finds him. The attacks are coming from all sides—but will she and her team all survive?

A strong emotional attachment to the memory of empire runs deep in British culture. In recent years, that memory has become a battleground in a long-drawn ideological war, inflecting debates on race, class, gender, culture, the UK’s future and its place in the world. This provocative and passionate book surveys the scene of the imperial memory wars in contemporary Britain, exploring how the myths that structure our views of empire came to be, and how they inform the present.

Sunder Katwala grew up with some identity questions to work through. As a half-Indian, Irish Catholic kid, the chequered history of post-imperial Britain seemed very personal. Yet he came to realise that, with that background, he could hardly be anything but proudly British. This book moves from a personal journey to navigate the state of the nation, and the many identity crises of this increasingly disunited Kingdom. And as Scotland decides whether to vote to end the Union, Sunder tries to find out if he might now find himself doomed to be the last British patriot of them all.

From a hunchbacked dwarf to a paranoid poet-assassin, a history of Victorian England as seen through the numerous assassination attempts on Queen Victoria while she ruled the British empire. During Queen Victoria’s 64 years on the British throne, no fewer than eight attempts were made on her life. Murphy follows each would-be assassin and the repercussions of their actions, illuminating daily life in Victorian England, the development of the monarchy under Queen Victoria, and the evolution of the attacks in light of changing social issues and technology.

There's a mole in MI6. Gabby Lane is a Senior Field Agent in British Intelligence. She is suspected of being the traitor and she has to go off-grid when she is framed by the real double agent. Her undercover life has given her a dangerous enemy who is out to kill her. She must contact the people she trusts and bring them together to clear her name and stay alive before her luck runs out. This is the first Blackhawk novel in the series. Follow Gabby's adventures in MI6 across Europe.

In June 1798, President John Adams signed the now infamous Alien & Sedition Acts to suppress political dissent. Facing imminent personal risks, a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor ran the first editorial denouncing the law's attempt to stifle the freedom of the press. Almost immediately, government lawyers recommended his arrest and prosecution.

When the leaders of the French Revolution executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1793, they sent a chilling message to the hereditary ruling orders in Europe. Believing that monarchy anywhere presented a threat to democratic rule in France, the leaders of the revolution declared war on European aristocracies, including those of Great Britain. For more than 20 years thereafter, France and England waged a protracted war that ended in British victory.

A provocative, progressive rejoinder to the status quo, from the perspective of a disrupter and global leader in the museum world. The challenge to transform museums is unapologetically real and complicated. But everything we learn about reconciliation, science and biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability gives us the confidence and freedom to break through the conventions of the past. Each essay in this collection emphasises key features that are driving change in museums, such as globalization, society, authenticity, and technology.