Europe

Join Stephen Fry as he delves in to the secrets of one of the most extraordinary monarchs in one of our most extraordinary eras in English history. A woman in a man’s world. And not just any woman – but Elizabeth I, one of the greatest and most secretive monarchs of all time. This queen realised that her sex, far from being a weakness, could be deployed as a strength. It’s not an overstatement to say that England’s politics, religion, and culture have all been shaped by what she did and said. And what she kept secret. This wasn’t just a time of poets, playwrights and poachers.

Read by the author, Johnny Mercer. Brutally honest, insightful and darkly funny, No Way To Run A Country is former Cabinet minister Johnny Mercer’s account of a tumultuous nine years in Parliament, under five prime ministers, including Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. In this deeply personal...

Bloomsbury presents Deep Into the Sixties by David Kynaston, read by Mark Meadows and David Kynaston. ‘This glorious historical monument slows, expands and luxuriously stretches to encompass one of the defining moments of change in our history’ PHILIP HENSHER, SPECTATOR 'The poet of postwar...

Based on a comprehensive, landmark investigation, this ground-breaking history reveals the true significance of the trade in enslaved Africans in Britain’s development as a modern nation. *ACCOMPANIED BY A MAJOR BBC DOCUMENTARY* They came from a wide range of backgrounds: plumbers as well as...

Bloomsbury presents Warsaw: A City at War, 1939–45 by Prit Buttar and Lottie Taylor read by James Parsons Discover the history of Warsaw’s six-year struggle through the devastation of war and the city’s enduring spirit. In Warsaw: A City at War 1939–45, historians Prit Buttar and Lottie...

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of Billion Dollar Whale and Blood and Oil, and co-host of the Whale Hunting podcast, comes a dazzling true story of how a lost masterpiece came home and of the remarkable, flawed man who made it happen. British art dealer Oliver Hoare had spent his life...

"A compelling page-turner" about the medieval English baron who invaded his own country and deposed a king (Alison Weir, author of Queen Isabella). One night in August 1323, a captive rebel baron, Sir Roger Mortimer, drugged his guards and escaped from the Tower of London. With the king's men-at-arms in pursuit he fled to the south coast and sailed to France. There he was joined by Isabella, the French-born queen of England, who threw herself into his arms. A year later, as lovers, they returned with an invading army: King Edward II's forces crumbled before them and Mortimer took power.

Bloomsbury presents Hunt the Bismarck: The pursuit of Germany's most famous battleship by Angus Konstam, read by David Monteath Hunt the Bismarck tells the story of Operation Rheinübung, the Atlantic sortie of Nazi Germany's largest battleship, Bismarck, in May 1941 and her subsequent pursuit...

The #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful. Beloved. Hunted. The extraordinary life and death of Diana, as told by her brother, Charles. “A brotherly tribute to the People’s Princess, no holds barred . . . Full of love and vengeance.” —The New York Times “Charles Spencer was there for...

A thought-provoking take on the common myths and misconceptions about one of the most popular philosophical movements, Stoicism Stoicism is one of the world’s most popular – and misunderstood – traditions. We all know what it means to be ‘stoical’: to have a stiff upper lip, to hide or...

A drowned prehistoric land, a flying monk, a Roman admiral who crowned himself emperor of Britain. The true, forgotten stories that never made it into the history books. What if the most fascinating stories in English history were the ones nobody ever told? Everyone knows about William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, and the Black Death. But England's past is filled with remarkable people and extraordinary events that rarely make it into the history books. Did you know Britain was once connected to Europe by a vast land now hidden beneath the North Sea?

An ancient Greek in a traveling cloak stood on the plain at Giza, in the shadow of the pyramids, and had many questions. He wanted to know how the great stones had been raised, how many men had labored on them and for how long, what the workers had eaten, and what the marks carved into the casing recorded. Egyptian priests gave him answers, an interpreter turned their words into Greek, and the traveler wrote everything down, the plausible and the fantastic side by side, because he had come a very long way to learn it. He had no intention of leaving anything out.

In September 1714, the elector of Hanover crossed the North Sea to be crowned king of Great Britain. His reign as George I marked the beginning of a close yet fraught relationship that would shape the destinies of both Britain and Germany, with profound consequences for Europe and the modern...

Bloomsbury presents The Stay Behinds: Sweden's Cold War Guardians written and read by Johan Wennström Packed with first-hand accounts and previously classified government documents, this book reveals the secrets of Sweden's resistance network, created to deter a potential Soviet occupation...

From an award-winning historian, the gripping, singular story of the destruction of Jewish Vienna as seen through the letters and diaries of an extraordinary woman who witnessed it all. In 1922, Hugo Bettauer published the novel The City Without Jews, a satirical critique of Austrian...

Stalingrad was one of the largest, bloodiest, and most famous battles in history as well as one of the major turning points of World War II. For four winter months during the battle, German and Soviet forces fought over a single factory inside the city of Stalingrad. Lavishly illustrated with...

In 1914, the Post Office was the largest employer in the world, with a quarter of a million people on the payroll. So it was no surprise that, when the call went out for volunteers, thousands of postmen, filing clerks and messenger boys soon signed up to join the fight. Many of them ended up in the two battalions of the Post Office Rifles, serving on the Western Front and seeing action at the Somme and Passchendaele.

What was it like to be a citizen in the Third Reich? What were the concerns and hopes of Germans who lived through the insanity of the years under Hitler? These questions and many others have been difficult to answer ever since the collapse of the Reich in 1945. Though some Germans wrote memoirs...

Using historical documents and translated by Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc seeks to answer the questions asked by Joan's contemporaries as well as us: Who was she? Whence came she? What had been her life and exploits? First published in the United States in 1966 by Stein and Day, this book...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. What if a life in music were not merely remembered, but staged like a drama of ambition, exile, genius, and destiny? In *My Life*, Richard Wagner offers one of the most revealing autobiographical documents in the history of music. Dictated over many...

Bloomsbury presents Unfinished Empire by John Darwin, ready by Michael Hajiatonis. John Darwin’s After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of “massive erudition” (the Guardian) and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he...

Only 40 years after the Spanish arrival in Cusco, Peru, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532–1592) was commissioned in 1572 by Francisco de Toledo, the fifth Viceroy of Peru, to write a history of the Incas. Toledo intended this history to justify Spanish colonization by documenting the violent and...

From the skies above Europe to the beaches of Normandy, the Allied air campaign of 1943-44 orchestrated one of history's most decisive military victories. In this groundbreaking analysis, retired Air Force Colonel Joseph T. Molyson reveals how a year of strategic bombing and aerial warfare...

The remarkable Sorraia horse – a resilient breed that shaped American history from Spanish conquest to the modern West – now fights for survival in a contentious battle between preservation and progress. In 1519, when indigenous peoples first encountered Hernán Cortés's mounted army, they...

Discover how an underdog alliance of steppe warriors forged a medieval empire to rival Byzantium. Perfect for your daily commute, this epic historical narrative transports you to the late antique Balkans where crumbling Roman authority birthed a new superpower. Immerse yourself in the dramatic...