“A History of the World in 51 Heroes and Villains” has been added to your basket.
View basket
Showing all 13 resultsSorted by latest
-
£25.00
The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. ‘Redwood’ is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.’Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets, compelled to swap sides by a shaming secret of his own. Facing exposure, with both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and his own KGB colleagues closing in, he demanded that MI6 try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape pla
-
£22.00
The multiple Sunday Times bestselling brand and creators of the #1 podcast sensation return with a hilarious deep dive into history's biggest heroes and most infamous villains
-
£11.99
In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its doors: a glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world. Lyse Doucet first checked into the Inter-Continental on Christmas Eve 1988. In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors. Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days – an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Central Asia’.
-
£25.00
Warsaw, 1949: freedom fighter and journalist, Kazimierz Moczarski is horrified to find himself locked up in a cell with the notorious Nazi official responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the death of over 50,000 people: Jürgen Stroop. This is the extraordinary insight into the mind of one of history’s most brutal war criminals.
-
£30.00
Putin’s Russia is reshaping the world stage. But how can you understand a country that silences its citizens and targets foreign journalists – a nation that has gone so far as to declare it illegal to say they are at war? The answer, for bestselling author and journalist Âsne Seierstad, began with young Russian soldier Andrey Medvedev, who defected from the infamous Wagner Group and sought asylum in Norway in January 2023. He was three years old when Putin rose to power and through his life story we can follow the transformation of his country. And as Âsne dug deeper into his family and connections, more and more of Russian society opened up to her, from teachers and taxi drivers to homemakers and women left behind by soldiers at war. Drawing upon Âsne’s deep knowledge of Russia and her unparalleled access to the country, ‘Unpeace’ paints an intimate yet epic portrait of a much-mythologized and little-understood country.
-
£25.00
The Lifesavers were a small number of men and women who during WW2 were at the forefront of global progress in saving lives through collecting, preserving and courageously delivering blood – trailblazers whose work was then adopted around the world. This tiny and short-lived service (1939-45) created ground-breaking advances to improve survival rates with an impact comparable to the discovery of penicillin. In this compelling story from historian Roderick Bailey, we meet the nurses who built and tapped the bank of volunteer donors (1.5m registered by the end of the war); the unsung technicians responsible for storing, preserving and moving the blood; and the specialist medical officers who risked their lives in traversing battlefields across the globe to give transfusions.
-
£12.99
A vivid and authoritative account of the Middle East's recent history to the present day, from the BBC’s long-serving correspondent in the region.
-
£10.99
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A Times and Waterstones Book of the Year
‘The messy, dirty, bloody reality of Operation Overlord comes alive in Sword, Hastings’s portrait of the individual soldiers who risked their lives on the beaches of Normandy. He brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose' THE TIMES
-
£25.00
A Times and Waterstones Book of the Year
‘A superb work of history’ JAMES HOLLAND
‘A thrilling account from a master of Second World War history’ DAN SNOW
A landmark history of the U-Boat war told through the experiences and recollections of the U-Boat crews themselves.
-
£25.00
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.
-
£10.99
Make room Herodotus, stand down Bede, pipe down Pepys – there’s a new history book in town. From the chart-topping podcast The Rest is History, a whistle-stop tour through the past – from Alexander the Great to Tolkien, the Wars of the Roses to Watergate. The nation’s favourite historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook take on the most curious moments in history, answering the questions we didn’t even think to ask: Did the Trojan War actually happen? What was the most disastrous party in history? Was Richard Nixon more like Caligula or Claudius? How did a hair appointment almost blow Churchill’s cover? Why did the Nazis believe they were descended from Atlantis?
-
£12.99
From the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Politics on the Edge.
-
£10.99
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Now an FX TV series streaming on DISNEY+
‘Unquestionably one of the greatest literary achievements of the 21st century’ Nick Hornby
A History of the World in 51 Heroes and Villains 
