New Releases

The richness of the Irish language is closely tied to the natural landscape and offers a more magical way of seeing the world. Most people associate Britain and Ireland with the English language, a vast, sprawling linguistic tree with roots in Latin, French, and German. But the inhabitants of these islands originally spoke another tongue. Look closely enough and English contains traces of the Celtic soil from which it sprung, found in words like bog, loch, cairn, and crag. Today, this heritage can be found nowhere more powerfully than in modern-day Gaelic.

The Prince is a timeless political treatise that explores how power is gained, maintained, and lost. Written in the early 16th century, Machiavelli offers sharp, practical guidance for rulers navigating unstable political landscapes. Drawing from historical examples and real-world observation, he examines leadership, strategy, diplomacy, and human nature—arguing that effectiveness often outweighs morality in matters of state. Provocative and influential, The Prince remains one of the most important works ever written on politics and power.

An inventive new look at the entwined histories of Britain and Ireland’s nations – and the people who have called them home. Brian Groom, author of the bestselling Northerners, reveals a colourful and often-contested story of the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans and others who...

If you want to understand what the Crusades were, why they happened, and why they still shape the modern world, this book gives you a clear and grounded explanation. It covers Christian crusading, Islamic expansion, Jerusalem, holy war, and medieval power struggles without turning history into propaganda.

Germany one felt the world’s wrath for crimes committed during the Nazi regime. More recently, it received extravagant praise for facing up to the atrocities. The country now boasts of new Jewish museums, Holocaust memorials, restored synagogues, and classroom lessons designed to honor its Jewish heritage and teach tolerance. This effort was led not by politicians or historians, but by local citizen activists, few of them Jewish, almost all of them born after World War II. They could have shrugged off responsibility for evils done before they were born.

Raoul Wallenberg decided to apply his analytical mind and life experience to change a deadly world. The 32-year-old native of Sweden and alumnus of the University of Michigan came to Budapest in 1944 to confront the apparent hopelessness surrounding Jewish survival. This audiobook provides fresh insights into his thinking and actions by walking the listener through a day-by-day chronology of the people he met, based on his personal pocket calendar.

Operation Gold is one of the most extraordinary—and least believed—Cold War operations ever attempted: a secret tunnel dug beneath divided Berlin so Britain and America could listen directly to Soviet communications. It sounds like the plot of a spy thriller, yet it happened in real life, in a city where every street corner had eyes, every building had informants, and every shadow seemed to belong to someone else. This book takes you into that world, where engineering became espionage, and where the ground itself became a battleground.

Written from the midst of the struggle for female suffrage, Constance Elizabeth Maud’s novel No Surrender (1911) is a Call to Arms. It is a dramatic narrative portraying key players and historical events in the battle for the Vote for Women in Britain. Jenny Clegg is a Lancashire millgirl working long, hard hours under unhealthy conditions in order to support her mother and younger siblings, only to have her father take possession of her savings.

Russia's attack on Ukraine marks an epochal break in European and global history. Undoubtedly, the decision to go to war is closely linked to one person, Vladimir Putin, but Russia's war is not driven solely by one man's power calculations. We can only make sense of Russia's actions in Ukraine, argues the distinguished historian Martin Schulze Wessel, by putting them in the broader context of the history of Russian imperialism and the influence it continues to exert today.

The French Revolution in San Domingo by Lothrop Stoddard is a captivating and meticulously researched classic that vividly chronicles the dramatic, horrifying chaos of France's richest colony during the revolutionary pandemonium of the 1790s. Once known as San Domingue (Santo Domingo), the prosperous French-speaking portion of the island eventually became the independent nation of Haiti at the end of the revolutionary period.

In 1814, the Richmond Lunatic Asylum at Grangegorman in Dublin started an extraordinary programme of asylum building across Ireland, aimed at alleviating the suffering of people with mental illness who were homeless, in prison, or confined in appalling circumstances. By the mid-twentieth century, Ireland had proportionately more people in 'mental hospitals' than any other country in the world.

For eighty-two years the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), which in 1918 became the Royal Air Force (RAF), maintained a permanent military aviation presence in the Far East. The first RFC units arrived in India in 1915. RAF India grew substantially in the interwar period and throughout World War Two. Various changes in the command structure finally saw the creation of the Far East Air Force (FEAF) in June 1949, covering South East Asia and Hong Kong.

When the Florentine Diamond, a 137-carat yellow gem once worn by Habsburg emperors and Medici princes vanished in the chaos of WWI only to improbably reappear a century later in Canada, the art world reeled. How did one of Europe’s most storied treasures cross the Atlantic? And why was it hidden away in a battered suitcase belonging to Empress Zita, the last Empress of Austria, Queen Consort of Hungary?

Data has never mattered more. Our lives are increasingly shaped by it and how it is defined, collected and used. But who counts in the collection, analysis and application of data? This important book is the first to look at queer data – defined as data relating to gender, sex, sexual orientation and trans identity/history. The author shows us how current data practices reflect an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and helps us understand how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer people.