History

  • If you ask me

    £9.99

    The timeless wit and wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt, captured in this annotated collection of the monthly magazine advice columns that she wrote for more than twenty years.

  • The Great Mughals

    £40.00

    The Great Mughals presents, for the first time the opulent, internationalist culture of Mughal Hindustan in the age of its greatest emperors: Akbar (r.1556-1605), Jahangir (r.1605-1627) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658).

  • Isle of Dogs

    £10.99

    Every dog must have his day. There’s nothing the British love quite as much as their dogs. From hunting to our hearths, and from herding sheep to guiding humans, our dogs have accompanied us through centuries of change, and that special relationship is still evolving today. So, just what is it that makes our bond so special? In this adventure across Britain, Clare Balding explores our unique heritage of canine tradition and meets just some of the many people who live, work, and innovate with their dogs. From the mysteries of extinct breeds to the ancient dogs still thriving today, and adventuring from Battersea Dogs Home to Shetland via Buckingham Palace, we journey through the beloved canine story of our nation.

  • Power & pleasure

    £25.00

    The celebration of Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne was carefully positioned to highlight the country’s strength. Extraordinary pageantry, parades and royal receptions served to dramatise the unparalleled significance of the event. The most important occasion, however, was the Devonshire House Ball, given at huge expense by the Hanover-born German ‘Double Duchess’ of Devonshire. The Duchess took to the task with alacrity, hosting the most famous party of the century: a fancy-dress ball with a guest list of the 700 social, cultural, political, and prominent ‘celebrities’ of the day. A specially commissioned tent – equipped with hand-painted backdrops, the most technically advanced cameras and lighting, along with realistic props – was set up in the magnificent gardens to capture the glamorous guests. Many of the exquisite costumes were preserved by photograph and are shown here, colourised for the first time.

  • Holding the line

    £16.99

    It was the summer of 1983. Barbara Kingsolver had a day job as a scientific writer spending weekends cutting her teeth as a freelance journalist when she landed an assignment at a constellation of small, strike-gripped mining towns strung out across southern Arizona. Her mission was to cover the Phelps Dodge mine strike. Over the year that followed Kingsolver stood with those miners and their families, increasingly engaged and heartbroken, as they cried out to a wide world that either refused to believe what was happening to them, or didn’t care, or simply could not know. Kingsolver recorded stories of striking miners and their stunningly courageous wives, sisters, daughters. Sometimes visiting them in jail, witnessing the outrageous injustices they suffered. She saw rights she’d taken for granted denied to people she had learned to care about.

  • The penalty kick

    £15.99

    ‘Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win.’ Gary Lineker

  • Predator of the seas

    £25.00

    The dramatic biography of a slaveship turned freedom-fighter-which brings new insights into Britain’s involvement in the end of the trade in enslaved people

  • Under cover of darkness

    £22.00

    A gripping new history of London during the Blackout-revealing the violent crime that spread across the capital under the cover of darkness

  • Black angels

    £12.99

    ‘Black Angels’ tells the true story of 300 black nurses who helped prevent a public health crisis in New York. In 1929, when white nurses staged a walk out at Staten Island’s 2000-bed TB sanatorium, health officials made the decision to sanction a national call for ‘coloured nurses’. Lured by the promise of good pay, education, housing, and the opportunity to work in a hospital free of quotas and segregated wards, ‘Black Angels’ from all over the country boarded trains and buses to enter wards. This book tells a ‘triumphant story’, bringing together medicine, politics, racial strife, women’s rights, and cutting-edge science.

  • Jane Austen at home

    £26.00

    This telling of the story of Jane’s life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the way in which home is used in her novels to mean both a place of pleasure and a prison.

  • Republic

    £25.00

    Events moved fast in the 1650s. Something cataclysmic happened every year, something that would thrust the newly formed republic, its people, and its eventual ‘Lord Protector’ Oliver Cromwell, in an entirely new direction. It was a time of bewildering change and uncertainty, but it was also a time of innovation and opportunity. And, for the men and women who lived through these years, this period was certainly not an ‘interregnum’. Here, in thrilling detail, Alice Hunt brings the republic and its extraordinary cast of characters, from politicians to poets and prophets, back to life.

  • Behind closed doors

    £12.99

    With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Thévoz tells the fascinating story of the rise, decline and resurgence of London’s private members’ clubs, from the late-18th century to the present day. In doing so, he looks at cultural and political developments beyond the clubs, revealing how while the clubs may have been products of their city and country, they also exerted significant influence on London, Britain and places far beyond. This is a chronicle, as informative as it is entertaining, of the ups and downs of London clubland, and how it had an impact on parts of the world far from London. It is packed with anecdotes and illustrative examples of the growth of this quirky, unique institution, which grew to spread around the world. London, though, with its 400 clubs, was always at its heart. Thévoz reveals how everything we might have thought we knew about these clubs is wrong.