The awakening
£16.00A popular telling of the story of the revival of European intellectual life after the collapse of civilisation that followed the fall of the Roman empire in the West.
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Dark brilliance
£25.00Between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment, Europe lived through an era known as the Age of Reason. This was a period which saw advances in areas such as art, science, philosophy, political theory and economics. However, all this was achieved against a background of extreme turbulence in the form of internal conflicts and international wars. While the ‘land of liberty’ was beginning to import slaves from Africa. Focusing on key characters from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Louis XIV and Charles I, ‘Dark Brilliance’ is a fascinating and wide-ranging history that explores the human costs of imposing progress and modernity.
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Iron and blood
£18.99For most of its existence German-speaking Europe has been splintered into innumerable states – some substantial (such as Austria and Prussia) and some consisting of just a few Alpine meadows. Its military experience has also been extraordinarily varied: threatened and threatening; a mere buffer-zone, and a global threat. ‘Iron and Blood’ is a startlingly ambitious and absorbing book. It encompasses five centuries of political, military, technological and economic change to tell the story of the German-speaking lands, from the Rhine to the Balkan frontier, from Switzerland to the North Sea. Wilson’s narrative considers everything from weapons development to recruitment to battlefield strategy.
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Adventurers
£11.99The unlikely beginnings of the East India Company–from Tudor origins and rivalry with the superior Dutch–to laying the groundwork for future British expansion
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Alexandria
£30.00Inspired by the tales of Homer & his own ambitions of empire, Alexander the Great sketched the idea of a city onto the sparsely populated Egyptian coastline. He did not live to see Alexandria built, but his vision of a sparkling metropolis that celebrated learning & diversity was swiftly realised & still stands today. Situated on the cusp of Africa, Europe & Asia, great civilisations met in Alexandria. Together, Greeks & Egyptians, Romans & Jews created a global knowledge capital of enormous influence: the inventive collaboration of its citizens shaped modern philosophy, science, religion & more. In pitched battles, later empires, from the Arabs & Ottomans to the French & British, laid claim to the city but its independent spirit endures. In this biography of the great city, Islam Issa takes us on a journey across millennia, rich in big ideas, brutal tragedies & distinctive characters, from Cleopatra to Napoleon.
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Normal women
£25.00‘A GENUINELY NEW HISTORY OF OUR NATION’ DAN JONES
‘A LASTING WORK OF SOCIAL HISTORY’ THE TIMES
***** FIVE STARS FROM THE INDEPENDENT *****
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Hunting the falcon
£30.00The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is one of the most remarkable in history: a long courtship followed by a shotgun wedding and then a coronation, ending just short of three years later when a husband’s passion turned to such hatred that he simply wanted his wife gone. Missing from most accounts is how the turbulent nature of Anne and Henry’s relationship was tied almost completely to the major events of international politics at one of the great turning points of British and European history. Drawing on new archival documents, John Guy and Julia Fox unearth the truth of these two extraordinary lives and their tumultuous times.
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Pure wit
£27.99A biography of the remarkable, and in her time scandalous, seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
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A history of water
£10.99A Times History Book of the Year 2022
A TLS Book of the Year 2022
‘Exhilarating and whip-smart’ THE SUNDAY TIMES
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The great defiance
£25.00From ill-advised ventures in Ireland to the failure to curtail North African Corsair states all the way to the collapse of commercial operations in East Asia, British attempts to create an imperial enterprise often ended in embarrassment and even disaster. In this book, David Veevers looks beyond the myths of triumph and into the realities of British misadventures in the early days of Empire, meeting the extraordinary people across the world who were the real forces to be reckoned with.
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Young queens
£25.00‘Young Queens’ tells the story of three women who would become some of the most powerful figures in Renaissance Europe. But at what cost? Sixteenth-century Europe: Renaissance masters paint the ceilings of Florentine churches, kings battle for control of the Continent, and the Reformation forever changes the religious organisation of society. Amidst it all, three young women come of age and into power in an era of empires and revolutions.
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The worst in the world
£7.99The Worst in the World is packed full of the foulest gold, silver and bronze medal winning entries in horrible categories such as diseases, battles, emperors, punishments, schools and more. Read all about the most horrible top threes across history (in one man’s opinion), they’re the absolute worst!