Showing titles in Historical

Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche, and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote. Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the most gifted biographers working today and his unprecedented access to the Fleming archives and his nose for a story make this a fresh and eye-opening picture of a man who lived his life in the shadow of his famous creation.

The throne of England hung in the balance, and every prince in Europe wanted to claim it. When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, she became the most eligible woman in Europe. All saw the same prize: marry Elizabeth, rule England. Ambassadors flooded her court with portraits, jewels and...

They are the most chronicled family on the face of the globe. Their every move attracts headlines. Scores of books have tried and failed to penetrate the royal facade. Now Kitty Kelley has gone behind palace walls to provide the first three-dimensional, comprehensive, and evenhanded portrait of the men and women who make up the British Royal family.

Bloomsbury presents Peter The Great by Robert K. Massie, read by Jonathan Keeble. Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great, crowned at the age of 10. A barbarous, volatile feudal tsar with a taste for...

How the monarchs of England and Scotland met their deaths has been a wonderful mixture of violence, infections, overindulgence and occasional regicide. In Mortal Monarchs, medical historian Dr Suzie Edge examines 1,000 years of royal deaths to uncover the plots, accusations, rivalries and ever-present threat of poison that the kings and queens of old faced.

Elizabeth was not just Queen, she was ruler. In an age of male supremacy she, by sheer force of character, became not only the unchallenged leader of the English but also the first leader of an empire upon which the sun never set. Erickson’s biography tells the truth about this extraordinary woman and profiles some amazing people - their personalities and culture.

London's most notorious gangsters, in their own words . . . The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. The Kray twins were Britain's most notorious gangsters. Ruling London's underworld for more than a decade, as gang lords they were among the most powerful and feared men in the city. Photographed by...

The six wives of Henry VIII have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended. But, as Antonia Fraser conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters. They may have been victims of Henry's obsession with a male heir, but they displayed...

John G. Sutton was the son of a Police Officer living in a rough Northern Industrial mining community. The sons of coal-mine workers and local mill hands hated what they called ‘Coppers Kids’. From age 8, thrown in at the deep end of a decrepit Victorian back street primary school, John had to fight to survive. If you ever wondered what it was like to battle for your life on the cobbled back streets, this is the book you need to listen. Violent and, at times disturbing, the development of this young man’s personality will shock you.

An intensely moving account of George III’s doomed attempt to create a happy, harmonious family, written with astonishing emotional force from a stunning new history writer. George III came to the throne in 1760 as a man with a mission. He wanted to be a new kind of king, one whose power was...

A gripping and revealing audiobook that brings to life the rise, power and true character of Henry VIII's most influential servant Known widely as Henry VIII's 'right-hand man', Cromwell has captured imaginations throughout the centuries: but who was he really? In this major new biography...

For all the literature about Adolf Hitler, there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler's childhood, to his failures as a young man in Vienna, to his experiences during the First World War, to his rise as a far-right party leader.

Crusading knights, Tudor monarchs, the D-Day landings and more. Travel back in time with some of the world's most notable historians. Meet the unsung heroes of the past and hear their untold stories. Discover what really happened, despite what the history books tell us.

The unputdownable biography of the enigmatic spy and traitor Guy Burgess: 'More riveting than a spy novel' - Sunday Telegraph Guy Burgess was the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - all brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray...

In the shadowed cells of Nuremberg Prison, twenty-two men awaited judgement for history's greatest crimes. Stripped of their uniforms, power, and myth, the architects of the Third Reich faced something more intimate than the tribunal: the searching gaze of American psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley, M.D. What he discovered was not the comforting legend of pure madness or demonic uniqueness.

Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards 2020 The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days’...

Brought to you by Penguin. There's no pain, no theatrical agony. No screaming, no shouting. The kill shot is catastrophic, yet surgically precise. I slumped silently on to my knees and toppled forward, head first, into the dirt. The lads had seen enough death to assume mine was instantaneous...

The first eyewitness account of the fraught evacuation of Kabul. As a Royal Marine Commando, H. Collins served in Afghanistan in 2001 on combat operations. He took part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and returned for a second tour the following year. In 2005, now a private security contractor...

Bloomsbury presents Forgotten Fatherland, written and read by Ben Macintyre 'Startling, dark and absorbing' Independent 'Excellent travel writing: vivid, sympathetic, humorous' Guardian 'Fascinating, provocative and highly eccentric' New York Times _______________________ In 1886 Elisabeth...

A Times Best Book on the Royal Family of the Year 2022 This is a biography of the Queen Mother with all the dull bits stripped out. When told that Lady Mountbatten was being buried at sea, the Queen Mother replied cheerfully. ‘Dear old Edwina, she always did like to make a splash!’ During...