Social History

'Those left cold by the sober tones of scholarship will find this voice liberating and intoxicating. Its energy is boundless and its range immense.' Wall Street Journal In Ancient Rome all the best stories have one thing in common - murder. Romulus...

The definitive history of coronations and the Royal Family, from acclaimed writer Roy Strong. 'What is the finest sight in the world? A Coronation.What do people talk most about? A Coronation.What is delightful to have passed? A...

'A fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book...I lost count of the times I exclaimed with delight when I read a nugget of information I hadn't encountered before' Val McDermid, The TimesMost of what we say about books is really...

'You may never have been, may never go, may never even have heard of the place - but Malawi will repay your attention. It is one of the smallest, poorest countries in Africa, often overlooked; but its relationship with us in the West has been...

With an introduction by Colm Toibin.Ten years ago, I began to explore the country on which I was supposed to be an authority . . .France is a country famous for its intellectuals, its philosophers and writers, its fashion, food and wine. And yet the...

SHAKESPEARE: increasingly irrelevant or lone literary genius of the Western canon? 'Powerful and illuminating' James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, winner of the Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' 2023 ...

When Joanna Wolfarth was pregnant with her first child, she assumed she would breastfeed, as her mother had fed her. Yet she was unprepared for the startling realities of new motherhood. Then, just four weeks after the birth, she found herself back in...

In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most...

With an Introduction by Rosemary O'Day. London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait...

'At least in The Handmaid's Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here' Margaret Atwood '[A] furious, necessary book' Sinead GleesonUntil alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church, acting in concert with the Irish state, operated a...

'An extraordinary history' PETER ACKROYD, The Times'A lively account of (Bazalgette's) magnificent achievements. . . graphically illustrated' HERMIONE HOBHOUSE'Halliday is good on sanitary engineering and even better on cloaca, crud and putrefaction . . ...

'The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, 1850-1925' is a groundbreaking book that considers trade union emblems and banners as art objects in their own right. It studies their commissioning, their designers and the social conditions and gender...

A fascinating, lively account of the making of the King James Bible. James VI of Scotland - now James I of England - came into his new kingdom in 1603. Trained almost from birth to manage rival political factions, he was determined not only to...

Freemasonry is part of a long tradition of Western mysticism, steeped in an enduring and eclectic mixture of historical fact and legend. Much of the ritual and symbolism prevalent in Freemasonry has developed over many centuries and relies heavily on...

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...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR'A dazzlingly brilliant book' Hannah Dawson'Fascinating, often exhilarating ... Albinia is an intrepid, imaginative guide' TLSThe Britannias tells the story of Britain's islands and how they are...

'One of the greatest codebreakers of the twentieth century' Suzannah Lipscomb An astounding story of codebreaking, personal sacrifice and a life lived in the shadows. The history of British codebreaking is often considered a men-only preserve, ignoring...

Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People's Tragedy is the most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today.'A modern masterpiece' Andrew MarrOpening with a panorama of Russian society, from the...

Shortlisted for the EAA Book Prize and the Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award The Picts have fascinated for centuries. They emerged c. ad 300 to defy the might of the Roman empire only to disappear at the end of the first millennium ad, yet...

A wooden box holds the buttons of three generations of women in Lynn Knight's family - each one with its own tale to tell...Tracing the story of women at home and in work, from the jet buttons of Victorian mourning, to the short skirts of the 1960s,...

Bringing together multidisciplinary scholars from the growing discipline of food studies, Food Mobilities examines food provisioning and the food cultures of the world, historically and in contemporary times. The collection offers a range of fascinating...

'Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans - our willingness...

An epic journey through sea shanties, high tides and seven seasFrom the international bestselling singer comes The Book of Sea Shanties.The world sang in harmony with Nathan Evans, the Glaswegian postie turned singer of sea shanties. Join him as he takes...

'Magnificent ... this book is unlikely to be surpassed' TelegraphThis is the first major history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains.SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 DUFF COOPER PRIZEAn epic...

**An Economist Book of the Year**** A Critic Book of the Year**A trail-blazing book about women's fights to access the great outdoors - and a very personal book about how running through the landscape helped the author in her journey from bereavement...

Sing As We Go is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cultural history of the country from 1919 to 1939.It explores and explains the politics of the period, and puts such moments of national turmoil as the General Strike of...

This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the reader into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. This is not a book to leave the reader standing in...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARD 2023 'Exceptionally well-written and intelligent ... if you are interested in this remarkable microcosm of England, the book will grip you; if you aren't, it will make you realise that you jolly well should...

The Sunday Times bestseller THE STORY OF BRITAIN during the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Find out how Britain changed in this entrancing, lively portrait of Britain's Elizabethan Age by bestselling writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr ...

Shortlisted for the PEN Hessel-Tiltman Prize'A terrific book, rich and endlessly thought provoking. . . If you are looking for one book to understand the core ideas of Chinese civilisation, read this' - Michael WoodAn engrossing history of ancient...

In this ground-breaking work, Paul Gilroy proposes that the modern black experience can not be defined solely as African, American, Carribean or British alone, but can only be understand as a Black Atlantic culture that transcends ethnicity or...

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2020 At the dawn of the twentieth century, black women in the US were carving out new ways of living. The first generations born after emancipation, their...

THE CRIMES. THE STORIES. THE LAW 'Fascinating' - Sunday Times 'Masterful' - Judith Flanders 'A page-turning read' - Prof. David...

This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . . .Why do we dance...

A 1970s childhood was, for many, a life of happy-go-lucky freedom set against a soundtrack of pop music played on a transistor radio dangling from the handlebars of a Raleigh Chopper. It was a playground battlefield of Sindy versus Action Man or a...

More Letters of Note is another rich and inspiring collection, which reminds us that much of what matters in our lives finds its way into our letters.These letters deliver the same mix of the heartfelt, the historically significant, the tragic, the comic...

"A beautiful, beguiling journey to the ultimate queer utopia" - Olivia Laing "Clued-up but insatiably thirsty, poignant, packed with literary intrigue, Fire Island is a beaming beach read" - Jeremy Atherton Lin --- Fire Island: a slim strip of...

The Underground Sea is a succinct, urgent collection of writing from John Berger's archive. It brings together for the first time his work on mineworkers and the miners' strikes and has been edited as a set of actions for today. Publication of The...

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...

SPACE. THE FINAL FRONTIER. THESE WERE ALMOST THE VOYAGES OF THE STARSHIP ENTERPRISE. We think we know the history of Star Trek. Born at the height of 1960s popular culture, the five-year mission of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew faced early...