Social History

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother. In the late nineteenth century, Queen Victoria had over thirty surviving grandchildren. To maintain...

The Beatles landing in New York in February 1964 was the opening shot in a cultural revolution nobody predicted. Suddenly the youth of the richest, most powerful nation on earth was trying to emulate the music, manners and the modes of a rainy island...

Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's foray into one of London's most fascinating boroughs'As detailed and as complex as a historical map, taking the reader hither and thither with no care as to which might be the most direct...

The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life told through her unique scrapbook.In 1838, Anne Sykes was given a diary on her wedding day. Using it to collect snippets of fabric, she created a record of her life and times. Nearly two hundred years later,...

Paul Jennings traces the history of the British pub, and looks at how it evolved from the eighteenth century's coaching inns and humble alehouses, back-street beer houses and 'fine, flaring' gin palaces to the drinking establishments of the twenty-first...

Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Is your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Are you curious (perhaps about this book)? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok? Or giddy with...

"Fascinating."-Thomas W. Hodgkinson, The Guardian "Richly detailed and frequently illuminating."-Rhys Blakely, Times (UK) "Excellent."-Clare Bucknell, New Yorker A New Yorker Best of the Week PickA provocative and original history of the scientists and...

A delightfully captivating journey across the medieval world, seen through the eyes of those who travelled across it. History readers will love this gift!'Rich and wonderful . . . This is the world as you've never seen it before' Ian Mortimer'A joyful,...

Jerry White's London in the Twentieth Century, Winner of the Wolfson Prize, is a masterful account of the city's most tumultuous century by its leading expert.In 1901 no other city matched London in size, wealth and grandeur. Yet it was also a city where...

Discover Amos Oz's most iconic work in this extraordinary memoir that is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation*OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE*'A hero of mine, a moral as well as...

'A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter' New York Times 'An ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and...

This book is the first detailed discussion of the political history of the Scottish Church in the reign of James VI (1567-1625). It offers a refreshing new perspective on the Reformed Kirk during the crucial period in its development. It is an...

The Black Death is the name most commonly given to the pandemic of bubonic plague that ravaged the medieval world in the late 1340s. From Central Asia the plague swept through Europe, leaving millions of dead in its wake. Between a quarter and a third of...

Acclaimed naturalist and birdwatcher Stephen Moss brings us a year in the life of Britain's favourite bird - the robin. In The Robin Moss records a year of observing the robin both close to home and in the field to shed light on the hidden life...

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...

Separated by a narrow stretch of swamp-like waters, and distinguished by the colour of their skin, the Black Jews and the White Jews have been locked in a rancorous feud for centuries. Only now, when their combined number has diminished to fewer than...

This book brings together Dorothy Thompson's most important essays on English social history, written over the last 25 years, many previously unpublished. Thompson analyzes the Chartist movement, not simply as a political programme, however significant,...

75th Anniversary Special Edition The largest ever explosion in Britain was colossal - and it was accidental. On 27 November 1944 almost 4 kilotons of bombs rocked the heart of England - three times greater than fell on London during the worst night...

Learn about how we organise our society in The Sociology Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Sociology in this overview guide to the subject,...

Despite the all-pervading influence of television ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. It's a background to all our lives: we wake up to our clock radios, we...

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'He writes with a tremendous sense of fun. The result is a rare thing: not just a serious work of contemporary history, but an unashamed, 24-carat hoot' - Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'Up there with the...

In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension was high in Northern Ireland, Colm Toibin walked along the border from Derry to Newry. Bad Blood is a stark and evocative account of this journey through fear and hatred, and a report on...

'A history of modern Spain told through one of world football's most intense rivalries' Independent'Sports Book of the Year' Sunday TimesIt's Messi vs Ronaldo, it's Catalonia vs Castilla. It's the nation against the state, freedom fighters vs Franco's...

The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it. But, as Judith Flanders shows in this revealing book, 'home' is a relatively new...

It was not so long ago that the belief in witchcraft was shared by members of all levels of society. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, diseases were feared by all, the infant mortality rate was high, and around one in six harvests was likely to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9783905829556Author Daniel BirnbaumFormat PaperbackPage Count 200Imprint JRP RingierPublisher JRP Ringier

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780399582677Author Joe GillardFormat HardbackPage Count 192Imprint Ten Speed PressPublisher Ten Speed Press

This book discusses developments in the history of British house names from the earliest written evidence (Beowulf's Heorot) to the twentieth century. Chapters 1 and 2 track changes from medieval naming practices such as Ceolmundingchaga and...

Sir John Betjeman was born at the start of the twentieth century, and lived to become Poet Laureate, an accomplished writer and campaigner, and something of a national treasure. All his life he loved churches, which are woven into his poetic output. He...

THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ALL BIBLIOMANIACS A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, SPECTATOR AND DAILY MAIL A WATERSTONES BEST POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK Plunge into this rich and thought-provoking A-Z compendium to discover how our fixations...

This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of 'basic stories' in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays...

Japanese mythology is filled with stories of larger-than-life characters that shaped the landscape of Japan. They are the folk heroes who slayed monsters, fought in epic battles and reflected the most complicated emotions of the people who created them...

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024**'A classic ... wonderfully enjoyable' WILLIAM DALRYMPLEThis is the authoritative history of South Asia in the 20th century.Shadows at Noon tells the subcontinent's story from the British Raj...

BY THE WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR JOURNALISM 2023A powerful collection of journalism on race, racism and Black life and death from one of the nation's leading political voices.'An outstanding journalist and chronicler.' BERNARDINE EVARISTO'Fused with...

'Turner's seductive blend of political analysis, social reportage and cultural immersion puts him wonderfully at ease with his readers' David Kynaston 'Reading Alwyn Turner's account of life in the first two decades of the 21st century is a bit like...

Distilling a decade of research by leading experts on the Venerable Bede, Bede the scholar investigates the Northumbrian monk's place within the wider intellectual developments of the early medieval world. Demonstrating the centrality of the Bible to his...

'Football is a pleasure that hurts'This unashamedly emotional history of football is a homage to the romance and drama, spectacle and passion of a 'great pagan mass'. Through stories of superstition, heartbreak, tragedy, luck, heroes and villains, those...

*Winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize 2022*'This is family history at its best... the words fizz off the page and flutter in the mind' Sunday TimesIf you open that suitcase you'll never close it again.Ten years ago, Frances Stonor Saunders was handed an old...

This book reveals the impact of wartime and austerity on British fashion and tells the story of how a spirit of patriotism and make-do-and-mend unleashed a wave of new creativity among women who were starved of high fashion by shortages and rationing...

'There is more history in a bowl of pasta than in the Colosseum', writes Andreas Viestad in Dinner in Rome. From the table of a classic Roman restaurant, Viestad takes us on a fascinating culinary exploration of The Eternal City, and global civilization...