Social History

Born in 1928 in a tent on the shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Duncan Williamson (d. 2007) eventually came to be recognized as one of the foremost storytellers in Scotland and the world. Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson,...

The fascinating true history of ghosts - how we see them and why we believe in them, from Roger ClarkeWhat explains spectral sightings? Why do we fear the supernatural? What proof is there? Growing up in a haunted house, Roger Clarke spent much of his...

Winner of The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2022Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2022A The Times Books of the Year 2022Three thousand years ago, in the Southwest Asian lands we now call Israel and Palestine, a group of people worshipped a complex...

Spanning decades and encompassing war, mass exodus, epic migrations and the search for individual and collective identity, The Last Earth tells the story of modern Palestine through the memories of those who have lived it. Ordinary Palestinians have...

'I loved every page, and ended up admiring David Kynaston, our greatest social historian, even more than I already did' Nick Hornby Brimming with wisdom and humour, David Kynaston's diaries written over one football season offer up his most personal...

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE'Alex Renton has done Britain a favour and written a brutally honest book about his family's involvement with slavery. Blood Legacy could change our frequently defensive national conversation about slavery/race'...

Steeped in honey, Juventius, your golden eyes, and as sweet too when I press my lips to them - three hundred thousand kisses is not close to enoughFor centuries, evidence of queer love in the ancient world was ignored or suppressed. Even today, only a...

The Sixties will be remembered for mini skirts and mini cars, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, boutiques and discotheques, and England winning the World Cup. But The 1960s Scrapbook also covers much more with its 1400 colourful items. Television...

The creation of large new tracts of forest, together with the development of a modern wood processing sector, was the single biggest transformation to occur in the Scottish countryside during the twentieth century. While the environmental and landscape...

From spooky stories and real-life ghost hunting, to shows about murder and serial killers, we are fascinated by death - and we owe these modern obsessions to the Victorian age. Death and the Victorians explores a period in history when the search for...

FOREWORD BY ADAM KAY, AUTHOR OF THIS IS GOING TO HURTPortion of proceeds go to NHS Charities Together.A beautiful and heart-warming collection of stories, this landmark publication tells, for the first time ever, the rich history of the NHS through the...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023 (FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR) ------------ A club on the rise. A city in flux. This is Union Berlin. No football club in the world has fans like 1. FC Union Berlin. The underdogs from East...

'A gripping story about the personalities who initiated the mapping of Britain and their extraordinary skill and endurance' Max Hastings, Sunday Times The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, but in our modern map-obsessed world how...

'This fascinating history of how, where and why humans swim...is perfect reading for those missing a splash-about during the lockdown.' GuardianFrom the first recorded dip into what's now the driest spot on earth to the recreational swimmers in your...

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing AwardsIn The Hidden Ways, Alistair Moffat traverses the lost paths of Scotland - its Roman roads tramped by armies, its byways and pilgrim routes, drove roads and railways, turnpikes and sea roads - in a...

The publication of "Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy" fifteen years ago sparked off a storm of controversy with many historians publically deriding the divisive and groundbreaking study. Dissatisfied with the counter-explanations of these...

Arriving at the great houses of 1920s London, fifteen-year-old Margaret's life in service was about to begin... As a kitchen maid - the lowest of the low - she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed,...

'Who would ever think that a book on cod would make a compulsive read? And yet this is precisely what Kurlansky has done' Express on SundayThe Cod. Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been triggered by it, national diets have been based on...

Forging our identities, setting our moods and impacting our culture, any music admirer understands there's a sheer breadth of musical tastes. From the classical era to modern day, here you will discover a curation of lines from composers, musicians and...

As dazzling as the decade they dominated, The Beatles almost single-handedly created pop music as we know it. Today, their songs are cited as seminal influences by stars like Oasis and Blur. Eloquently giving voice to their time, The Beatles quite simply...

- 'Illuminating . . . an important book' Sunday Times- 'A fascinating journey through the social, cultural and historical meanings of breastfeeding. A sublime book' Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women- 'Erudite, intimate and compelling . . . a...

A magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world- soldiers, sailors and airmen;...

A celebration of Ukraine's rich cultural heritage, drawing on over 100 of the country's most important works of art and architectural monuments from prehistory to the present. Showcasing more than one hundred objects and buildings - from Byzantine icons...

In 1969, among Harlem's Rabelaisian cast of characters are bandleader King Curtis, soul singers Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway, and drug peddler Jimmy 'Goldfinger' Terrell. In February a raid on tenements across New York leads to the arrest of 21...

In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing 'an art without a history'. 'No-one', it went on, 'has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.' Until now. Painted People is a...

Christmas in Tudor times was a period of feasting, revelry and merrymaking 'to drive the cold winter away'. A carnival atmosphere presided at court, with a twelve-day-long festival of entertainments, pageants, theatre productions and 'disguisings', when...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title 2012.Book InformationISBN 9780767929714Author Candice MillardFormat PaperbackPage Count 432Imprint Random House...

- What is the significance of holly at Christmas?- When should you make your figgy pudding?- Why was the Old Lad's Passing Bell rung on Christmas Eve? - And who was Good King Wenceslas?Did you know that, long before turkey arrived on our shores, it was...

***A Waterstones Best Books of 2022 pick***Book of the Year in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and New Statesman'A powerful illumination of a lost world that is nevertheless part of living memory.' Simon Heffer, 'Books of the Year' , Daily Telegraph'A...

Mixing bold journalism with bolder allegories, Mr Szablowski teaches us with witty persistence that we must desire freedom rather than simply expect itTimothy Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of ON TYRANNYA devastatingly original look at the...

This rich and enjoyable book by the acclaimed author of Japan Story explores the many ways in which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries of tangled, dynamic encountersFrom the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780380715435Author Bill BrysonFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Avon BooksPublisher HarperCollins Publishers IncWeight(grams) 249gDimensions(mm) 198mm *...

How well do you know Star Trek? Lifelong science fiction fan, podcaster and author Tom Salinsky decided that the answer was “not well enough”, and so at the beginning of 2022, he embarked on a two-year mission to watch everything from the start of The...

In this poignant and personal tribute, Roger Scruton gives an account of England which is both an illuminating analysis of its institutions and culture, and a celebration of its virtues. Covering all aspects of the English inheritance, and informed by...

In another surreal and unprecedented year in which even the most seasoned commentators have struggled to keep pace with the news cycle, letter writers to The Daily Telegraph have once again provided their refreshing and witty take on events. Now in its...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590176191Author Paul HazardFormat PaperbackPage Count 480Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams) 510gDimensions(mm)...

WINNER OF THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 'Brilliantly summons up one girl's life, dreams and suffering. It's ingenious history writing' Mail on Sunday 'A gripping, unputdownable masterpiece' - Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five ...

From 1649-1660 England was ruled by a standing army for the only time in its history. In The Army in Cromwellian England Henry Reece describes the nature of that experience for the first time, both for officers and soldiers, and for civilian society. ...

'Compassionate and thought-provoking history' Daily Telegraph'Superb on the human consequences of war, ravishing in its evocations of wartime life' The Times'Fresh and compelling ... a tour-de-force' David A. BellLess than a month after it marched into...