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Britain Since 1918: Strange Career of British Democracy

The history of democratic politics in Britain since the coming of universal male suffrage in 1918 is a dramatic one, crowded with events and colourful figures. As well as the great events of war and economic crises,...

Call Midwife: True Story of East End in 1950s

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their...

Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes

Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle`s name is recognised the world over, for decades he was overshadowed by his creation, Sherlock Holmes - one of literature`s most enduring characters. Conan Doyle was a man of many...

Coronation

Grand Duke Georgii Alexandrovich arrives in Moscow for the coronation, with three of his children. During an afternoon stroll, daughter Xenia is dragged away by bandits, only to be rescued by an elegant gentleman and...

Dante Trap

Dark places

Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over twenty years on...

Dark Matter

The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favours of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret...

Dark Voyage

Death of Achilles

Erast Fandorin returns to Moscow after an absence of six years, only to find himself instantly embroiled in court politics and scandal. His old friend General Sobolev - the famous "Russian Achilles" - has been found...

Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley & Fate of Amy Robsart

Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 a 25-year-old virgin - the most prized catch in Christendom. For the first ten years of her reign, one matter dominated above all others: the question of who the queen was to marry...

Diaries 1969-1979: Python Years

Michael Palin has kept a diary since newly married in the late 1960s, when he was beginning to make a name for himself as a TV scriptwriter (for the Two Ronnies, David Frost etc). Monty Python was just around the...

Elizabeths Spymaster

Francis Walsingham was the first `spymaster` in the modern sense. His methods anticipated those of MI5 and MI6 and even those of the KGB. He maintained a network of spies across Europe, including double-agents at the...

Farewell to the East End

Getting Our Way: Inside Story of British Diplomacy

GETTING OUR WAY recounts nine stories from Britain`s diplomatic annals over the last five hundred years, in which the diplomats themselves are at the centre of the narrative. It is an inside account of their...

Gone Girl

Who are you?What have we done to each other?These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick....

Halfway to Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988

The second volume of Michael Palin`s diaries covers the 1980s, a decade in which the ties that bound the Pythons loosened as they forged their separate careers. After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, they...

Hammer & Tickle: History of Communism Through Jokes

Q: Why, despite all the shortages, was the toilet paper in East Germany always 2-ply? A: Because they had to send a copy of everything they did to Moscow. Communist jokes are the strangest, funniest, most enchanting...

He Lover of Death

Senka Skorikov, orphan and urchin, has been abandoned to the murky world of Moscow`s gangster district. While picking a pocket or two, he glimpses the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and joins the gang of her...

Hedgehog and Fox: Tolstoys View of History

`The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.` This fragment of Archilochus, which gives this book its title, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin`s masterly essay on Tolstoy. There have...

History of English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 (TPB)

Winston Churchill`s History of the English-Speaking Peoples ended in 1900. Andrew Roberts, Wolfson History prizewinner has been inspired by Churchill`s example to write the story of the 20th century. Churchill wrote:...

In Bunker with Hitler

The last survivor of the end days of Hitler`s bunker tells his story publicly for the first time. Von Loringhoven was aide-de-camp to Hitler`s last two chiefs of staff, Guderian and Krebs, and the link between the...

Last Days of Newgate (Pyke Mystery)

St Giles, London, 1829: three people have been brutally murdered and the city simmers with anger and political unrest. Pyke, sometime Bow Street Runner, sometime crook, finds himself accidentally embroiled in the...

Lavinia

`Like Spartan Helen, I caused a war. She caused hers by letting men who wanted her take her. I caused mine because I wouldn`t be given, wouldn`t be taken, but chose my man and my fate. The man was famous, the fate...

Life: Keith Richards

With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances he wanted, speaking his...

London: A Short History

The structure of the book is chronological, with digressions. From Roman and then Norman London, we move on to Chaucer`s London - the city of the Peasants Revolt, Dick Whittington and the great Livery Companies. In...