Social History

***By the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FIVE***'A fascinating expose of the seamy side of eighteenth century life' MAIL ON SUNDAY'Rubenhold's pages practically reek with smelly, pox-ridden Georgian Soho'...

The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook.If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It is the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London; bawdy comedy and...

Revolt and upheaval in medieval Britain by a brilliant new narrative historian, 'Summer of Blood' breaks new ground in its portrayal of the personalities and politics of the bloody days of June 1381. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 is one of the...

Few people rode the popular wave of the sixties quite like Tara Browne. One of Swinging London's most popular faces, he lived fast, died young and was immortalized for ever in the opening lines of 'A Day in the Life', a song that many critics regard as...

Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the human spirit and the competence of ordinary people by the bestselling author of The Case for Working with Your Hands.Once we were drivers on the open road.Today we are more often in the back seat...

***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4******WINNER OF THE NEW ANGLE PRIZE FOR LITERATURE******LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA AWARDS***A beautifully written exploration of the world of Edwardian folk music, and its influence on the composer Ralph Vaughan WilliamsIn January...

What is it like to radically change your life? Writer Alec Ash meets the Chinese who are doing just this, 'reverse migrating' from the cities to the remote countryside of southwest China - and joins them himself, in an extraordinary and inspiring journey...

Dickensian London is brought to real and vivid life in this Wolfson History Prize-shortlisted portrait by a rising-star historian and New Generation Thinker Until now, our view of bustling late Georgian and Victorian London has been filtered through...

Do you think the world of the Eurovision Song Contest, with its crazy props, even crazier dancers and crazier still songs has nothing to do with serious European politics? Think again. The contest has been a mirror for cultural, social and political...

Historians relying on written records can tell us nothing about the 99.9% of human evolution which preceded the invention of writing. It is the study of genetic variation, backed up by language and archaeology, which provides concrete evidence aboutthe...

A biography of the boldest and most unsettling of the early modern philosophers, Spinoza, which examines the man's life, relationships, writings, and career, while also forcing us to rethink how we previously understood Spinoza's reception in his own...

'Marvellously engaging' The Times'Brisk, informative and eye-opening' Daily TelegraphIn the 1600s, vast numbers of people left England for the Americas. Crossing the Atlantic was a major undertaking, the voyage long and treacherous. Why did they...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING - HIGHLY COMMENDED'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane'Beautiful' Amy Liptrot'Powerful, unflinching . . . Part hymn to nature, part Troubles memoir' GuardianKerri ni Dochartaigh was born in Derry at the...

How does France reconcile the modern movement toward pluralism and decentralization with a strong central governing power? One of the country's most distinguished political historians offers a radical new interpretation of the development of democracy in...

When the brilliant classical architect Charles Barry won the competition to build a new, Gothic, Houses of Parliament in London he thought it was the chance of a lifetime. It swiftly turned into the most nightmarish building programme of the century...

From the bestselling author of The Long Weekend: a wild, sad and sometimes hilarious tour of the English country house after the Second World War, when Swinging London collided with aristocratic values.'Preposterously entertaining' Observer'Brilliant'...

WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018A SUNDAY TIMES PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR 2019'A masterpiece of history and memoir' Evening Standard'Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing,...

Newly opened by Queen Elizabeth II herself, discover the history and secret stories of the people who've lived above London's newest trainline.Crossrail, or the 'Elizabeth' line, is just the latest way of traversing the very old east-west route through...

Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the'male breadwinner marriage' is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We...

For most of recorded history, women have been sidelined, if not silenced, by men who named the built environment after themselves. Now is the time to look unflinchingly at Scotland's heritage and bring those women who have been ignored to light. Can...

'London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you're lost.' Robert Elms has seen his beloved city change beyond all imagining. London in his lifetime has morphed from a piratical, bomb-scarred...

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations.Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse...

'A landmark piece of non-fiction' Janet Maslin, The New York TimesFrom the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is one of the great untold stories of American history: the migration of black citizens who fled the south and went north in search of a better...

It is said that the skull is the only human body part that is as powerful dead as it was when living. Skulls takes the reader on an eerie journey through history seen through the hollow eye sockets of this crown jewel of the human skeleton. The book is...

British Summer Time Begins is about summer holidays of the mid-twentieth century and how they were spent, as recounted to Ysenda Maxtone-Graham in vividly remembered detail by people who were there. Through this prism, it paints a revealing portrait of...

'Uproarious . . . [Phillips and Elledge] pair the abundant good humour of this book with a warning about the corrosive effects of conspiracy theories' The TimesFrom the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, the moon landing to Pizzagate, it's always...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023 A WATERSTONES BOOK OF YEAR FOR POLITICS 2023 'I learned something new on every page of this totally essential book'...

'Illuminating' TIM MARSHALL, bestselling author of The Future of Geography'Refreshing' THOMAS HALLIDAY, bestselling author of OtherlandsOur biology will change how you see the world. Lewis Dartnell explores how human biology has shaped relationships,...

The Women's Land Army was actually founded in 1917, but it was during the Second World War that it attracted the kind of attention which assured its place in the annals of the British war effort. The Services' demands on manpower created a gap which the...

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of...

***WINNER OF THE NEW ANGLE PRIZE FOR LITERATURE******WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION AWARD***A beautifully written exploration of the world of Edwardian folk music, and its influence on the composer Ralph Vaughan WilliamsIn January 1905 the young Vaughan...

THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED FOLLOW-UP TO INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE - essential reading ahead of the 2024 US election'Just like their previous work, this book is concise, readable, and convincing' Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of...

The Death of Christian Britain examines how the nation's dominant religious culture has been destroyed. Callum Brown challenges the generally held view that secularization was a long and gradual process dating from the industrial revolution. Instead, he...

THE BOOK THAT EXPOSED THE HEARTBREAKING SCANDAL OF BRITAIN'S FORGOTTEN AND ABUSED CHILD MIGRANTS - now a film, Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson.In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged...

John Hopkins brings back to life all the decadence and flamboyance of Tangier in the 1960s and 1970s. Tangier in the 1960s and '70s was a fabled place. This edge city, the 'Interzone', became muse and escapist's dream for artists, writers,...

A leading public critic reminds us of the compelling reasons people throughout time have found to stay alive Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide...

This book is a vivid account of life in Moscow, "the most Russian of Russian cities," in the year 1903, a year before Russia's disastrous war with Japan and two years before the momentous Revolution of 1905. Though the undercurrents of social change were...

A celebration of over 100 years of queer creativity, featuring 70 outstanding works of drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and installation. Over the last century, many artists have made works that challenge dominant models of gender and...

The Roman army was the greatest fighting machine the ancient world produced. The Roman Empire depended on soldiers not just to win its wars, defend its frontiers and control the seas but also to act as the engine of the state. Roman legionaries and...

In The Book of the Courtier (1528), Baldesar Castiglione, a diplomat and Papal Nuncio to Rome, sets out to define the essential virtues for those at Court. In a lively series of imaginary conversations between the real-life courtiers to the Duke of...