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This data-rich sociological study uses everything from census figures to Who’s Who to analyze how, over 125 years, the British elite have used status, elite education, and powerful social networks to shape politics and cultural values. But what happens when elites begin to change-in what they look like, value, and how they position themselves?
The Hitler Years: Holocaust 1933 to 1945 provides a year-by-year narrative, fully illustrated, of the road Adolf Hitler mapped out to achieve his dream – the destruction of the European Jewish population.
Filled with the sights, sounds, smells and characters that shaped Rome, this book brings the ancient world to life and tells you everything you need to know about this crucial period in history.
*PLUTARCH AWARD FOR THE BEST BIOGRAPHY OF 2024*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE*
‘SUBLIME‘ A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
‘STUNNINGLY GOOD‘ THE TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOKS 2024
‘COMPULSIVE‘ A PROSPECT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
‘BRILLIANT’ A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
How have secrets changed over the generations, and what does that tell us about ourselves and our world? In her intimate new book, bestselling social historian Juliet Nicolson uncovers one of the most enigmatic yet revealing aspects of human behaviour. According to a leading American psychotherapist most of us are keeping 13 secrets at any one time. Secrets can thrill, but they are just as likely to torment; and the deepest ones echo far down the generations. The secrets we keep inside reflect the conventions and taboos of the world outside. As women traditionally sit at the heart of family life, their secrets can open a unique window onto wider society. ‘The Book of Revelations’ unlocks a period of significant transformation for women, from the restrictions just after WWII, through the emancipation of the 1960s and 1970s, to the opportunities and dangers women meet online today.
Richard of Bordeaux & Henry Bolingbroke were first cousins, born just three months apart. Their two lives were from the beginning entwined. When they were still children, Richard was crowned King Richard II with Henry at his side, carrying the sword of state: a ten-year-old lord in the service of his ten-year-old king. Yet, as the animals on their heraldic badges showed, they grew up to be opposites: Richard was the white hart, a narcissist, & Henry the eagle, a chivalric hero, a leader who inspired loyalty where Richard inspired only fear. Henry had all the qualities Richard lacked, all the qualities a sovereign needed, bar one: birth right. Increasingly threatened by his cousin, Richard became consumed by the need for total power, in a time of constant conspiracies, rebellions & reprisals. When he banished Henry into exile, the stage was set for a final confrontation, as Richard became the tyrant & Henry his usurper.
When the Inter-Continental Hotel opened in Kabul in 1969, it reflected the hopes of the country – a glistening white edifice that embodied Afghanistan’s dreams of becoming an affluent, modern power. Five decades later, and the Inter-Continental is a dilapidated, shrapnel-damaged shell. It has endured civil wars, terrorist attacks, the US occupation, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. But its decaying grandeur still hints at ordinary Afghans’ hopes of stability and prosperity. Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been staying at the Inter-Continental since 1988. She has spent decades meeting its staff and guests, and listening to their stories. And now, she uses their experiences to offer an evocative history of modern Afghanistan.
For the last 100,000 years, humans have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? ‘Nexus’ considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill.
Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo – revealing their secret to the Nazis’ most ruthless detective. They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador’s widow and a pioneering headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer’s rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance. Or so they believe. How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap?
In ‘Tracks on the Ocean’, Sara Caputo tells how our journeys around the globe became fixed lines on maps – and how journey lines themselves reshaped maps and the way that we view the world. From Captain Cook’s route across the South Seas to the disorientating power of digital technology, the tracks we’ve left on the oceans – trading, exploring and conquering – are a hidden record of humanity’s impact on the planet. Revealing their histories, Caputo uncovers a fascinating new history of maritime travel and modernity. Weaving human history, cartography, literature and climate science, ‘Tracks on the Ocean’ reveals how, on the path to discovery, we have changed the world.
Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his book, historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us.
Carthage was a power that dominated the western Mediterranean for almost six centuries before its fall to Rome. The history of the realm and its Carthaginians was subsumed by their conquerors and, along the way, the story of the real Carthage was lost. In this landmark new history, Eve MacDonald tells the essential story of the lost culture of Carthage and of its forgotten people, using archaeological analysis to uncover the history behind the legend. A journey that takes us the Phoenician Levant of the early Iron Age to the Atlantic and all along the coast of Africa, the book puts the city and the story of North Africa once again at the centre of Mediterranean history. Reclaimed from the Romans, this is the Carthaginian version of the tale, revealing to us that, without Carthage, there would be no Rome.
Journeying across Britain, from West Penwith and Avebury to the Lake District and Orkney, ‘Stone Lands’ uncovers the magic and rich history of our incredible prehistoric standing stones. It conveys the delight that lies in tracking them down, as well as the solace these ancient places offer in times of darkness.A few months after discovering that her beloved husband, Stephen, had incurable cancer, Fiona Robertson began to write this book. A long-time megalith enthusiast, she found the ancient stones resonated with her more profoundly than ever as she faced the prospect of losing him.