England Britain

Barrow's Boys is a spellbinding account of perilous journeys to uncharted areas under the most challenging conditions. Fergus Fleming captures the passion for exploration that led a band of men into situations that would humble today's bravest adventurers.

A definitive new edition of a classic memoir, published in association with the RAF Museum. Guy Gibson was the leader of the famous Dambusters raid and Enemy Coast Ahead is a vivid, honest account, widely regarded as one of the best books on World War II. It is also an insider's account that sets down in clear, honest detail the challenges that the RAF faced in the war against Germany's Luftwaffe.

The green fields, rugged highlands, and rolling hills of England, Scotland, and Wales are commonly associated with adventure, romance, and seclusion as well as literary figures like Jane Austen and William Wordsworth. But in reality, many of these rural places—with their country houses, lakes, and shorelines—were profoundly changed by British colonial activity. Even hamlets and villages were affected by distant colonial events.

The thrilling true account of Hitler's first defeat. One of Britain's most remarkable victories of the Second World War. In the summer of 1940, the Nazi war machine was at its zenith. France, Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries were all under occupation after a series of lightning military campaigns. Only Britain stood in the way of the complete triumph of Nazi tyranny. But for the first time in the war, Hitler did not prevail.

Twitter hero James Felton brings you the painfully funny history of Britain you were never taught at school, chronicling 52 of the most ludicrous, weird and downright 'baddie' things we British* have done to the world since time immemorial - and then conveniently forgot all about, of course.

Lusitania: She was a ship of dreams, a microcosm of the last years of the waning Edwardian Era and the coming influences of the 20th century. When she left New York on her final voyage, she sailed from the New World to the Old. Yet an encounter with a primitive German U-Boat sent her and her gilded passengers to their tragic deaths.

Four Chancellors and a Funeral delivers more of Russell Jones's signature scathing wit, combining a detailed historical record of 2021 and 2022, with acerbic commentary, all of it leavened by jokes at the seemingly endless maelstrom of failures, nincompoops, and hypocrisies.

In a riveting daily diary, written in his trademark ebullient style, Salmond takes us into the heart of the YES campaign, revealing what was said and done behind the scenes as the vote reached its nail-biting climax. He explains how the YES campaign energised the entire Scottish nation and rewrote the rulebook for grassroots political campaigning, not just in the UK but throughout the world.

The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, to the Wars of the Roses, the chaos of the Civil War, the fall of Charles I and Cromwell's emergence as Lord Protector – all the way up until the Victorian era when Britain’s monarchs came face-to-face with modernity.

Yorkshire, it has been said, is 'a continent unto itself'. It is southern Britain in microcosm, where mountain, plain, coast, downs, fen and heath lie side by side. Richard Morris weaves history, travelogue and ecology to explore this landscape in legend, literature and popular regard. Morris considers different ways to come to Yorkshire - in a poem, through an image, on holiday.

At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the British Empire withdrew from India, igniting the exhilaration and turmoil of a newly free society. In this vivid, atmospheric popular history, Alex von Tunzelmann chronicles these times through the most prominent figures.

London, 1857: Two teenage girls holding a sign that says "Fugitive Slaves" ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where newspapers pick up their story. Are the girls truly escaped slaves from Kentucky? Or will the city's dystopian Mendicity Society catch them in a lie, exposing them as born-and-raised Londoners and endangering their safety? With its many accounts of people like these who lived and made their living on the streets, Vagabonds forms a moving picture of London's most compelling period.

A completely original history of one of the most extraordinary movements in the world – the Girl Guides – and how they helped win the war.Mention Girl Guides to any woman and the reaction will be strong.

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left behind a wealth of papers that, when examined, gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed, hinting at a Newton altogether stranger and less palatable than the one enshrined in Westminster Abbey as the paragon of English rationality. These manuscripts had the potential to undermine not merely Newton's reputation, but that of the scientific method he embodied.

Maya Jasanoff won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her groundbreaking work Liberty's Exiles. After the American Revolution, 60,000 British loyalists fled the U.S. for Canada, the Caribbean, India, and other points abroad. Jasanoff traces their harrowing journeys across the globe, shedding light on their ambitions, the post-revolutionary world they encountered, and their legacies.

In this remarkable book, Alison Weir recounts one of the greatest and most remarkable love stories of medieval England. It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress, and later the wife, of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. But Katherine Swynford was much more than that.

The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’s magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. Huge in scope and ambition, it is always personal and immediate, bringing the story vividly to life. Pax Britannica, the second volume, is a snapshot of the Empire at the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. It looks at what made up the Empire —from adventurers and politicians to communications and infrastructure, as well as anomalies and eccentricities.

Richard II was young, handsome, and elegant. Last living child of the brilliant Black Prince, he came to the throne bearing the hopes of his people on his shoulders. His court glittered; his tastes were refined; his portraits shone with gold. Regal, composed, aloof, he was the very picture of majesty. He became a murderous, capricious tyrant. His favorites plotted against his family. He rewrote the laws of England to give himself absolute power. He raised an army against his own subjects. His subjects deposed him.

Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Celts, then keep reading...while Celtic culture has stayed alive in Ireland, its roots run much deeper, and they extend much farther than the small island nation off the coast of modern-day Great Britain. The story of the Celts is one of a rapid rise to prominence followed by a slow decline due to the influence of the Romans. But even so, Celtic culture has remained strong in Europe and has been able to persist to this day.