Showing titles in Historical

The 1929 collection of short and exquisitely written biographical essays on the lives of such famed adventurers as Alexander the Great, Casanova, Christopher Columbus, Napoleon, and Isadora Duncan. The author, William Bolitho, celebrates the contradictions and bipolar tensions that live inside and often drive even history's most celebrated heroes. Although all the greats featured in the book lived ages ago, the principles by which they lived their lives hold valuable lessons for those of us in contemporary times.

Few families can boast of not one but two saints among their ancestors, a great-aunt who was the last tsarina of Russia, a father who was Grace Kelly's pinup, and a grandmother who was not only a princess but could also argue the finer points of naval law. Pamela Mountbatten entered a remarkable family when she was born at the very end of the Roaring Twenties.

Winner of the Costa Biography Award What makes a Stalin? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's bandit? Was he to blame for his wife's death? When did the killing start? Based on revelatory research, here is the thrilling story of how a charismatic cobbler's son became a student priest, romantic poet...

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, his own, part of both the Linen Triangle–heartland of the North's defining industry–and the Murder Triangle–the Badlands roamed by the Glenanne gang of security forces colluding with loyalist paramilarites. He lifts the veil of silence drawn over the horrors of the past, recording in heartrending detail the terrible toll the conflict took–more than 20 violent deaths in a few square miles–and the long tail of trauma it has left behind.

Brunhild was a Visigothic princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law, Fredegund, started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet - in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport - these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes.

Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.

Brought to you by Penguin. Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong. As Brendan Simms's major new biography shows, Hitler's main preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism, but that of...

**MiCannes Award Music Book of the Year** The first full-length biography of Mal Evans, the Beatles’ beloved roadie, assistant, confidant and friend A towering figure in horn-rimmed glasses, Malcolm ‘Mal’ Evans was an invaluable member of the Beatles’ inner circle. Serving as their...

The compiling of the OED was a monumental task. It took 50 years, even with the help of numerous contributors. Among the most prolific was William Chester Minor, who sent editor James Murray thousands of extracts. On many occasions, Murray invited this mysterious correspondent to Oxford, but the invitation was always declined. Finally stirred by curiosity, Murray himself went to visit Minor. What he found was shocking: Minor lived in Broadmoor asylum.

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, this astounding autobiography brings to life a remarkable man changed the world —and still inspires the desires, hopes, and dreams of us all. Martin Luther King: the child and student who rebelled against segregation. The dedicated minister who...

It’s the unfathomable modern legend that has become a testament to the resilience of the human spirit: the 1972 Andes plane crash and the Uruguayan rugby teammates who suffered 72 days among the dead and dying. It was a harrowing test of endurance that ended in a miraculous rescue. Now comes the unflinching and emotional true story by one of the men who found his way home. Four decades after the tragedy, a climber discovered survivor Eduardo Strauch’s wallet and returned it to him. It was a gesture that compelled Strauch to finally “break the silence of the mountains.”

Benjamin Harris was a young shepherd from Dorset who joined the army in 1802 and later joined the dashing 95th Rifles. His battalion was ordered to Portugal, where he marched under the burning sun, weighed down by his kit and great-coat, plus all the tools and leather he had to carry as the battalion's cobbler—'the lapstone I took the liberty of flinging to the Devil'. Rifleman Harris was a natural storyteller with a remarkable tale to unfold, and his recollections have become one of the most popular military books of all time.

The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe – these...

Ramesses II ruled the Nile Valley and the wider Egyptian empire from 1279 to 1213 B.C., one of the longest reigns in pharaonic history. He was a cultural innovator, a relentless self-promoter, and an astute diplomat—the peace treaty signed after the Battle of Kadesh was the first in recorded history. He outbuilt every other Egyptian pharaoh, leaving behind the temples of Abu Simbel; the great hypostyle hall of Karnak; the tomb for his wife Nefertari; and his own memorial, the Ramesseum.

‘An exemplary work of investigative journalism that is also a wonderfully colourful book of history and travel’ Observer, Books of the Year ‘A piece of postmodern historiography of quite extraordinary sophistication and ingenuity… [written with] exceptional delicacy and restraint’ TLS...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this 'riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult' (Los Angeles Times). On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln...

At one time, Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that she had a story to tell. For the first 50 years of her life, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to her. She was a spinster watchmaker living contentedly with her sister and their elderly father in the tiny house over their shop in Haarlem. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, revolved around their abiding love for one another. But with the Nazi invasion and occupation of Holland, everything changed....

"Cette nuit-là, rassemblés tous les trois autour de notre mère, nous avons pour la dernière fois fait Kolkhoze ." " Kolkhoze " est le roman vrai d'une famille sur quatre générations, qui couvre plus d'un siècle d'histoire, russe et française, jusqu'à la guerre en Ukraine. Emmanuel Carrère s'en empare personnellement, avec un art consommé de la narration qui parvient à faire de leur histoire notre histoire. Denis Podalydès nous emporte avec un talent immense dans cette saisissante fresque familiale, où l'intime se mêle brillamment à l'universel. Couverture : collection privée Emmanuel Carrère

In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident—unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of the hikers, and elevated levels of radiation found on some of their clothes—have led to decades of speculation over what really happened.

Brought to you by Penguin. For the first eighteen years of Simon Weisz’s life his parents were at pains to keep their past concealed from him. All he knew for sure was that they had grown up in Hungary and that they had arrived in Britain after the Second World War. It was only as he reached...