British Science

Founded in 1922, over the last century the BBC has become Britain’s most influential broadcaster. Its programs have been part of everyday life in the UK and around the world, from Its That Man Again to Life on Earth, Doctor Who, and Eastenders, reflecting social change and reshaping our culture. However, the BBC now faces significant challenges, which may even jeopardize its continued existence. This new book draws out these issues and looks at how similar threats—including hostile governments, management failures, and new technologies—were met and overcome in the past.

The second installment of the British Empire of Magic trilogy finds Jacob, now king of the British Empire of Magic, and his imperial city still under siege from Thomas, king of the Dark Knights and his American allies. Jacob devises a plan to rescue his father from the White Islands and sends his partner, Co-Regent Lord Elliot, to Dover Cliff to retrieve the members of Parliament before King Thomas can find them and take complete control of the empire, but Jacob and Elliot grow suspicious that a traitor could be at the highest level within the Royal Council.

This audiobook is a stunning guide to the world's most famous royals, from the queen's Norman predecessors to her great-grandchildren. It features events such as the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and profiles on key people such as Princess Diana and Prince Harry. This new edition is revised to include the most recent events and milestones, such as the retirement of the Duke of Edinburgh, the birth of Charlotte, Louis, Archie, and other new family members, Harry and Meghan's wedding, and their decision to step back as senior members of the royal family.

In the summer of 2014 the world watched in horror as the black flag of ISIS swept all before it. Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, fell, ISIS proclaimed the caliphate and the horror mounted: from the mass murder, rape and enslavement of the Yazidis to the public beheading of journalists by British jihadis. For Macer Gifford it wasn't enough to ask why more wasn't being done; he knew he had to act.

The Napoleonic Wars radically altered the old, established European power dynamics, and in 1795, the British, now emerging as the globe’s naval superpower, assumed control of the Cape as part of the spoils of war. In doing so, they recognized the enormous strategic value of the Cape as global shipping routes were developing and expanding. Possession passed back and forth once or twice, but more or less from that point onward, the British established their presence at the Cape, which they held until the unification of South Africa in 1910.

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

In The War We Never Fought, Hitchens uncovers the secret history of the government's true attitude and the increasing recruitment of the police and courts to covert decriminalisation initiatives and contrasts it with the rhetoric. Whatever and whoever is to blame for the undoubted mess of Britain's drug policy, it is not prohibition or a war on drugs, for neither exists.

An examination of British politics and politicians from 1945 to 2023.

Although he hasn’t seen Robert Bergin for 40 years, Ishmael feels duty bound to respond when his old friend calls for help. Robert’s daughter Gillian is about to be married, and he is afraid she’ll fall prey to the ancient family curse. Arriving in rural Yorkshire, Ishmael and his partner Penny learn that the vicar who was to perform the ceremony has been found dead in the church, hanging from his own bell rope. With no clues, no evidence, and no known motive, many locals believe the curse is responsible. Or is someone just using it as a smokescreen for murder?

Dave Marwood is trapped in a soul-crushing dead-end job. He's in love with his work colleague Melanie and his only friend Gary is a conspiracy theory nut. His life is going nowhere until he has a Near Death Experience—though Death thinks of it as a Near Dave Experience. He discovers gifts he never knew he possessed and a world he never dreamed existed. A world where the Grim Reaper is a hard-drinking, grumpy Billy Joel fan and the undead are bored, lonely, and dangerous.

The Right to Rule is the full story of what has just happened in British politics, and how it has shaped Westminster and, by extension, the nation. Over the last decade, we have seen five different Conservative Prime Ministers, with five different missions and messages to the nation. Not for two centuries has such political turnover been seen. From the ashes of a financial crisis, to a break from the UK's biggest trading block, to a global pandemic, governments - and ideologies - have changed, but the Conservative party's power has remained.

The Wang family is hiding a secret—they all have the ability to time travel. When parents Joshua and Lily depart for the past and never return, their children Tommy and Eva are forced to deal with their grief alone. Eva tries to find her place in the present, while Tommy is pulled further and further into a past that he hopes holds the truth. When he falls in love with a woman from 1930s London Chinatown, his inability to confront his own history has serious ramifications for the people who can truly bring him happiness.

On August 1, 1990, Flight 149 was scheduled for its routine London-to-Kuala Lumpur run. But when the plane, carrying 385 passengers and crew, landed at a Kuwait airport to refuel that day, it was surrounded by Iraqi tanks and about to be bombed by fighter jets. The passengers and crew were kept as hostages and suffered brutal treatment including violent attacks, sexual assaults, and mock executions.

Bernard Bailyn gives us a compelling account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.

The British Empire of Magic has fallen and the treacherous Emperor Jean has seized control, claiming it as a state of the newly formed United Empires of Magic while entering into an unstable alliance with the human Queen of England. Held captive on the White Islands, Queen Ellaryne attempts to compromise with Emperor Jean, but her son Jacob openly opposes this action, causing a painful rift to appear between them and engulfing his relationship with Elliot. Meanwhile, Royal Lady Camila Kerr leads a rebellion called the Loyalists in an attempt to retake control of the Empire.

Why is Africa still perceived as a country when there are around 2,000 languages spoken on the continent alone? It's a Continent aims to counter the misconception that Africa is a country by breaking down this vast, beautiful and complex continent into regions and countries. Each of the 54 African countries has a unique history and culture and this audiobook highlights the key historical moments that have shaped each nation and contributed to its global position, as well as within the African continent.

Cosy is “the slacker’s guide to staying at home, an antidote to peak frazzle.” With trademark Anglo cheekiness, Laura Weir perfectly captures the British essence of cosy. She celebrates socks, warms to the joys of toasty open fires, and extols the virtues of a quiet walk, ultimately enticing us all to create the British magic of cosy in our everyday lives.

British statesman Benjamin Disraeli delivered this commanding speech in 1872. His imperialistic ideals informed his Conservative political platform as he advocated for maintaining the British Empire. He asked his audience if they were content to be a “comfortable England,” or if they preferred the glory of remaining “a great country - an imperial country - a country where your sons, when they rise, rise to paramount positions, and obtain not merely the esteem of their countrymen, but command the respect of the world.”

Recognising Black British experience within the Black Lives Matter movement, 19 prominent Black figures explain why Black lives should be celebrated when too often they are undervalued. Drawing from personal experience, they stress how Black British people have unique perspectives and experiences that enrich British society and the world; how Black lives are far more interesting and important than the forces that try to limit it.

Long-term social and demographic changes - and the conflicts they create - continue to transform British politics. In this accessible and authoritative book, Sobolewska and Ford show how deep the roots of this polarization and volatility run, drawing out decades of educational expansion and rising ethnic diversity as key drivers in the emergence of new divides within the British electorate over immigration, identity, and diversity.