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In his inimitable fashion, Turtle Bunbury explores the lives of 40 men and women – great and otherwise – whose pioneering journeys beyond the Irish shore played a profound role in world history. Whether driven by faith, or a desire for riches and adventure – or purely for survival – they have all left their mark on the world.
Bob Gilbert is a detective of the natural world. He’s motivated by the curious, everyday phenomena found in wild places and by what these stories tell us about our relationship with nature. Mixing history, memoir and nature writing, ‘The Missing Musk’ takes the reader on a journey of discovery, uncovering the truth behind mysteries and myths from across the natural world.
In June 1992 Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not (as other British colonies over the decades) for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. Over the next five years he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997.
The story of the most successful political party in the world, and a nation made in its image.
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We tend to think about the Middle Ages as a dark, backward and unchanging time characterised by violence, ignorance and superstition. By contrast we believe progress is the consequence of science and technological innovation, and that it was the inventions of recent centuries which created the modern world. We couldn’t be more wrong. As Ian Mortimer shows in this fascinating introduction to the Middle Ages, people’s horizons – their knowledge, experience and understanding of the world – expanded dramatically. All aspects of life were utterly transformed between 1000 and 1600, marking the transition from a warrior-led society to that of Shakespeare.
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘An absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year’ Sunday Telegraph
‘On nearly every page a random passage takes one’s breath away’ The Times
Have you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road?
‘Scotland’s Forgotten Past’ takes a charming, lively and often amusing tour of 36 forgotten episodes and overlooked people and places of Scottish history.
In 1923, four short years since the end of the First World War, and after the passing of the Act which gave all men the vote, an inconclusive election result and the prospect of a constitutional crisis opened the door for a radically different sort of government: men from working-class backgrounds who had never before occupied the corridors of power at Westminster. ‘The Wild Men’ tells the story of that first Labour administration – its unexpected birth, fraught existence, and controversial downfall – through the eyes of those who found themselves in the House of Commons, running the country for the people. Blending biography and history into a compelling narrative, David Torrance reassesses the UK’s first Labour government a century after it shook up a British establishment still reeling from the War – and how the establishment eventually fought back.
A history of Britain told through the stories of twenty-five notable structures, from the Iron Age fortification of Maiden Castle in Dorset to the Gherkin. ‘Building Britannia’ is a chronicle of social, political and economic change seen through the prism of the country’s built environment, but also a sequence of closely observed studies of a series of intrinsically remarkable structures: some of them beautiful or otherwise imposing; some of them more coldly functional; all of them with richly fascinating stories to tell. Steven Parissien tells both a national story, tracing how a growing sense of British nationhood was expressed through the country’s architecture, and also examines how these structures were used by later generations to signpost, mythologise or remake British history.
What is heritage? When was it invented? What is its place in the world today? What is its place tomorrow? Heritage is all around us: millions belong to its organisations, tens of thousands volunteer for it, and politicians pay lip service to it. When the Victorians began to employ the term in something approaching the modern sense, they applied it to cathedrals, castles, villages and certain landscapes. Since then a multiplicity of heritage labels have arisen, cultural and commercial, tangible and intangible – for just as every era has its notion of heritage, so does every social group, and every generation. In ‘Heritage’, James Stourton focuses on elements of our cultural and natural environment that have been deliberately preserved: the British countryside and national parks, buildings such as Blenheim Palace and Tattershall Castle, and the works of art inside them.
Whose responsibility is it to make sure there is something to eat on every table? To make sure that children get milk and cereal, eggs and toast to keep hunger at bay? To feed key workers, whether they be NHS nurses, or soldiers fighting abroad? And do we all have the right to good food? This story of our changing customs and laws around our food, from prehistory to the present, reveals how every generation has fought to feed the family and the nation.
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