Showing titles in Great Britain

A March Indie Next Pick A Barnes & Noble Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book of 2026 A Barnes & Noble Reads Best Book of February 2026 From the author of the national bestseller The Dark Queens, an incandescent work of true crime and feminist history about Elizabeth Bathory, the woman...

A best-selling novelist since 1921, Georgette Heyer is known across the world for her historical romances set in Regency England. This is the ultimate, definitive guide to Georgette Heyer's novels, her heroines, her villains and dashing heroes, the shops, clubs and towns they frequented, the parties and seasons they celebrated, how they ate, drank and dressed, socialised, shopped and drove. An utterly delightful and fun read, compelling in its historical detail, this is a must-hear for any Georgette Heyer fan.

'A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten...

A remarkable story of high hopes and crushing disappointment, the campaign contains moments of sheer horror and nerve-shattering excitement; pathos and comic relief; occasional cowardice and much selfless courage - all culminating in the climax of the First Battle of Ypres. And yet, as Peter Hart shows in this gripping and revisionary look at the war's first year, for too long the British part in the 1914 campaigns has been veiled in layers of self-congratulatory myth.

Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time.

A queen's death and a king's coronation. Rising mass media and declining public morals. Splits in all the major political parties and a new wave of social activism. War abroad and strikes at home. Welcome to Edwardian England. When Queen Victoria died in 1901 it was the end of an era. Britain's...

The Tudor dynasty died out because there was no heir of Elizabeth I's body to succeed her. Henry VIII, despite his six marriages, had produced no legitimate son who would live into old age. Three of the reigning Tudors (Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I) died without heirs apparent, the most...

As a girl, Mary had been a disappointment from the moment she was born. Deemed utterly useless to inherit the throne of England, Mary soon learns that despite being born the daughter of a king, nothing in her life would come easily. And when Henry VIII divorces his queen in favour of another, Mary’s future takes an uncertain turn. Through lost loves and unbearable grief, Mary fights to hold on to the hope that her life would one day bear some meaning, leading her on a hopeless path to achieve her twisted fate.

After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started a family. But while scraping a living as a charwoman in a rundown north London tenement, she continued to long for her home in the Forest of Dean and the cherished relatives she had left behind. Determined to give their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the young couple moved to an isolated, crumbling cottage not far from the forest. But even in the 1950s, they lacked heating or running water, and money was tight. Food was begged, borrowed or homegrown, and their clothes were hand-me-downs. 

The second volume of Helen Forrester’s powerful, painful and ultimately uplifting four-volume autobiography of her poverty-stricken childhood in Liverpool during the Depression. The Forrester family are slowly winning their fight for survival. But 14-year-old Helen’s personal battle is to persuade her parents to allow her to earn her own living, to lead her own life after the years of neglect and inadequate schooling while she cared for her six younger brothers and sisters.

Twitter hero James Felton brings you the painfully funny history of Britain you were never taught at school, chronicling 52 of the most ludicrous, weird and downright 'baddie' things we British* have done to the world since time immemorial - and then conveniently forgot all about, of course.

Now a major TV series Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 Winner of the 2012 Costa Book of the Year Shortlisted for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction ‘Simply exceptional…I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read it’ Daily Mail ‘A gripping story of tumbling fury and terror’ Independent on...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2017 Born into nobility and married into the royal family, Catherine Howard was attended every waking hour – secrets were impossible to keep. In this thrilling reappraisal of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Gareth Russell’s history...

A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and...

Between dusk and dawn on the night of March 24-25, 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen. The prison break from Stalag Luft III in Eastern Germany was the largest of its kind in the Second World War. Seventy-nine Allied soldiers and airmen made it outside the wire - but only three made it outside Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo.

Christianity in England is in decline. Congregations are dwindling and ever fewer young people believe. Should we merely shrug our shoulders and accept this as inevitable and even healthy, or is something important being lost? Bijan Omrani argues that this decline is the most momentous change to occur in English history. He shows how a religion that has been part of our national story for over 1700 years was instrumental in the creation and development of the English nation, its codes of law and morality, and its structures of government and kingship.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Meticulously sourced, merciless and revelatory. It is a closely observed study of power, and how it is gained, used and lost' FINANCIAL TIMES The unmissable next instalment of Tim Shipman’s #1 bestselling Brexit quartet. To follow his bestselling books...

1657. The youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, 18-year-old Frances is finding her place at England's new centre of power. Following the turmoil of Civil War, a fragile sense of stability has returned to the country. Her father has risen to the unprecedented position of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and Frances has found herself transported from her humble childhood home to the sumptuous palaces of Hampton Court and Whitehall, where she dreams of romance.

1700s. Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work at the home of an English silk merchant. Very soon, she finds herself thrust into a dangerous world, where her talent for herbs and healing starts to attract unwanted attention. Mary-Louise Stephenson dreams of becoming a silk designer, a path that has remained largely forbidden to women. A length of fabric she weaves with a pattern of deadly flowers will have shocking consequences for all who dwell at the Silk House. 

One of Britain's most distinguished biographers turns her focus on one of the most vilified women of the twentieth century. Historian Anne Sebba has written the first full biography by a woman of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. 'That woman', as she was referred to by the Queen Mother, became...