Great Britain

An invigorating journey through Britain's prehistoric landscape, and an insight into the lives of its inhabitants. 'Highly compelling' Spectator, Books of the Year 'An evocative foray into the prehistoric past' BBC Countryfile Magazine 'Vividly...

Since its purchase in 1604 by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, the house at Knole, Kent, has been inhabited by thirteen generations of a single aristocratic family, the Sackvilles. Here, drawing on a wealth of unpublished letters, archives and...

'A rollicking adventure [with] the inventive twists and turns of a satisfyingly bustling plot.' New York Times 'Fantastic... Gerard Fox could be Jack Reacher's ancestor, 700 years ago. Highly recommended!' Lee Child First in a fast-paced historical...

On 23 May 1988, Paul Baker sat down with his family to eat cake on his sixteenth birthday while The Six O'Clock News played in the background. But something was not quite right. There was muffled shouting - 'Stop Section 28!' - and a scuffle. The morning...

The 1950s was a time of great change in Britain - especially after the immediate post-war austerity years. In Liverpool, massive slum clearance programmes started to change the face of the city, television began to infiltrate people's lives, and the...

The first history of all the English cathedrals, from Birmingham and Bury St Edmunds to Worcester and York Minster England's sixty-two Anglican and Catholic cathedrals are some of our most iconic buildings, attracting millions of worshippers and...

DAILY MAIL, GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017Winner of the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science WritingShortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book PrizeShortlisted for the 2018 Wolfson PrizeThe story of a visionary British surgeon whose...

The Gaelic pharmacy was rich, the sources of which lay almost entirely in nature and were subject to the minimum of preparation. Much of the rich store of material comes from the great legacy of medieval Gaelic manuscripts. In more recent times, papers...

REBEL. LEADER. BROTHER. KING.1179. Henry II is King of England, Wales, Ireland, Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine. The House of Plantagenet reigns supreme.But there is unrest in Henry's house. Not for the first time, his family talks of rebellion.Ferdia -...

'Inspired . . . encourages us to take a fresh look at the familiar' - The TimesEngland's cathedrals are the nation's glory. They tower over its landscape, outranking palaces, castles and mansions. They attract roughly half the nation's population each...

Explore new places with this up-to-date map of Scotland. Best-selling map of Scotland. More than 1,000 places of tourist interest plotted and named on the map. The features have been plotted onto an up-to-date and attractive Collins map of...

John Tye's job at British Airways was supposed to be only temporary, a way for him to pass the summer before starting university. Instead, it would kickstart a forty-six-year career in aviation and take him all over the world.Told in an irrepressible and...

There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today which must change.Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies' reliance on companies such as McKinsey, Boston...

This fully revised paperback edition of the complete chronological record of VC holders is an essential work of reference for every student of military history. All the British and Commonwealth servicemen who have been awarded the highest honour for...

HERALD BOOKS OF THE YEAR and NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 Part of a trilogy on Scottish history, T.M. Devine's The Scottish Nation: A Modern History traces the epic story of a nation from the Union with England to today's debates on the...

'Historical fiction at its most sumptuous' Rory Clements'S. J. Parris fans will be pleased' Publishers WeeklyFrom the bestselling, CWA Historical Dagger Award-nominated author of The Angel's Mark comes a gripping and atmospheric new mystery . . ...

'A fresh and funny book that wears its learning lightly' IndependentDiscover the era of William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I through the sharp, informative and hilarious eyes of Ian Mortimer. We think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING SEQUEL TO THE BLACKHOUSEBOOK TWO IN THE MILLION-SELLING LEWIS TRILOGY'One of the best regarded crime series of recent years' IndependentA MAN WITH NO NAMEAn unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only...

‘A brilliant book about another side of working-class life, not a tower block in sight. Clever and honest, tackling slavery, loss and aspiration with humour and candour. I loved it’ KIT DE WAAL ‘A wonderful book, beautifully conceived’ ADAM NICOLSON...

UPDATED FOR THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF PARTITION 'Puri does profound and elegant work bringing forgotten narratives back to life. It's hard to convey just how important this book is' Sathnam Sanghera 'The most humane account of partition I've read ....

Few have written more beautifully about the British countryside than Francis Kilvert. A country clergyman born in 1840, Kilvert spent much of his time visiting parishioners, walking the lanes and fields of Herefordshire and writing in his diary. Full of...

Discover hidden gems around Bristol and Bath with 20 walking routes. Featuring 20 walks, including lesser-known circuits and details on popular walks. Accompanied by guided walking instructions and written by a local expert, A-Z Bristol & Bath...

September 1613.In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England's great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is 'tormented' with violent convulsions. Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. Soon the whole family...

The Convoy represents a fresh approach to the story of the Battle of the Atlantic. It is also the first to deal with the more spectacular story of HG-76, a major turning point in the naval war. HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be given your own remote islands? Thirty years ago it happened to Adam Nicolson. Aged 21, Nicolson inherited the Shiants, three lonely Hebridean islands set in a dangerous sea off the Isle of...

New updated edition of the seminal work by Catherine Dunne, which charted the multifarious lives of the London Irish, in all their variety and colour, now with a brand new foreword by Diarmaid Ferriter. Before the 'Ryanair Generation', leaving home...

A genuinely new Second World War story, The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram by David M. Guss is a riveting account of the wartime exploits of the Scotsman. It is a tale of courage in the face of extraordinary odds and a testament to one man's dogged...

In Concorde, Jonathan Glancey tells the story of this magnificent and hugely popular aircraft anew, taking the reader from the moment Captain Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947 through to the last commercial flight of the supersonic...

Whether it is Hadrian's Wall, Kendal Castle or the beautiful fells of the Lake District - for thousands of years people have found a certain elegance and utility in stone. Nestled amongst these common relics are a multitude of massive stone monuments,...

Winston Churchill began his career as a junior officer and war correspondent in the North West borderlands of British India, and this experience was the beginning of his long relationship with the Islamic world. Overturning the widely-accepted consensus...

*As featured in the landmark BBC2 documentary Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story*Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands war'There was a time when we did extraordinary things.' On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the...

Winner of the Man Booker Prize The first book in Hilary Mantel's award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, with a new cover design to celebrate the publication of the much anticipated The Mirror and the Light From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is...

Did Jesus really visit the Holy Isle of Avalon as a young man? And did Joseph of Arimathea really found the first church here too? Is King Arthur really buried with Guinevere in the Abbey grounds? In this small guide book, local historian George...

For more than two thousand years the people of St Kilda remained remote from the world. Their society was viable, utopian even; but in the nineteenth century the islands were discovered by missionaries, do-gooders and tourists, who brought with them...

Samuel Pepys is famous for the diary he wrote 400 years ago. The diary tells us about lots of important events such as the Great Fire of London and the Great Plague. Find out why people thought his diary was written in code, why Pepys was known as the...

A Times Best Book on the Royal Family of the Year 2022 This is a biography of the Queen Mother with all the dull bits stripped out. When told that Lady Mountbatten was being buried...

Explore 10 years of British History through key broadcasting moments illuminated by images from the BBC archive. Created 100 years ago, on 18 October 1922, the BBC transformed people's lives at the turn of a dial, bringing voices out of the ether and...

The ground-breaking and bestselling group portrait of London today: a book as rich, dynamic, lively, and diverse as the city itself 'Epic' David Nicholls 'Electrifying' The Times 'This is a book to deepen your relationship with London and make...

The true story of loss of His Majesty's Submarine Thetis is still shrouded in mystery, even now, some seventy-five years after her sinking. On 1st June 1939, HMS Thetis sank in Liverpool Bay on her maiden dive, with the loss of ninety-nine lives; the...

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two 'dirty centuries'? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint?...