Showing titles in Modern

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Yasmin Mwanza. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Sarah Salih. Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to...

Antonia Fraser deals with each woman in turn with sympathy - the sympathy they deserve for having had the unenviable fate of being Henry's wife. Inevitably, there was great rivalry between them; there was jealousy too: the desperate jealousy of queens who found themselves abandoned, but also the sexual jealousy of the king who discovered himself betrayed. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling. This is historical biography at its best.

Col. Mike Hoare tells how his force of mercenaries, 5 Commando, put down a Comunist-backed rebel uprising in the Congo. As they restored law and order, town by town, he and his men freed 1800 nuns and priests. His men also learned what it means to be real soldiers.

Francis Foley is a proud, stubborn man, and cannot stand to be beholden to anyone. Quick to anger and slow to forgiveness, it is his temper that, one day, costs his sons their home -- and their mother. This will not be the last of their losses however: as the four boys and their father embark on...

A uniquely intimate account of ordinary men and women who rose to the challenge of war with acts of great heroism and humanity. War Stories is a fascinating account of ordinary men and women swept up in the turbulence of war. These are the stories - many untold until now - of 34 individuals who have pushed the boundaries of love, bravery, suffering and terror beyond the imaginable. They span four centuries and four continents.

On the day that Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, Germany invaded Holland and Belgium. Despite all the efforts of the Allied armies, Hitler's powerful Panzer divisions smashed their way through to the French coast. For the retreating British Expeditionary Force, Dunkirk was the only practical point of departure, and on May 26, the order for total evacuation, Operation Dynamo, was given.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ‘Hums with living history, human warmth and indignation’ New York Times Less a mystery unsolved than a secret well kept The mystery has haunted generations since the Second World War: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why? Now, thanks to radical new...

There can be few more exciting or frightening moments in European history than the spring of 1848. Almost as if by magic, in city after city, from Palermo to Paris to Venice, huge crowds gathered, sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, and the political order that had held sway since the defeat of Napoleon simply collapsed. Christopher Clark's spectacular new book recreates with verve, wit and insight this extraordinary period.

On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside - so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: that day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. 

From best-selling and award winning author of A Brilliant Little Operation comes the long neglected D-Day story of the Resistance uprising and subsequent massacre on the Vercors massif – the largest action by the French Resistance during the Second World War. In early 1941, three separate...

Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured.

Brought to you by Penguin. A vivid portrait of the world in 1966, centred around the storied World Cup tournament and its backdrop, published to mark the 60th anniversary. 1966, with London declared ‘a swinging city’ and John Lennon proclaiming the Beatles ‘more popular than Jesus’, the...

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. London was still recovering from the devastation...

Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.

*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* A GUARDIAN AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘An astonishing book’ James O’Brien ‘A gripping, devastating read’ Sunday Times The inside story of the UK’s response to the pandemic from the Insight investigations unit at The Sunday Times Failures of State...

From the winter of 2006 through the spring of 2007, 250 marines from Echo Company, Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, fought daily in the dangerous, dense city streets of Ramadi, Iraq, during the Multi-National Forces Surge ordered by President George W. Bush. The marines' mission: to kill or capture anti-Iraqi forces. Their experience: like being in hell. Now Major Scott A. Huesing, the commander who led Echo Company through Ramadi, takes listeners back to the streets of Ramadi in a visceral, gripping portrayal of modern urban combat.

It was the divorce that scandalised Georgian England. She was a spirited young heiress. He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. Their marriage had the makings of a fairy tale but ended as one of the most salacious and highly publicised divorces in history. For over 200 years the story of Lady Worsley, her vengeful husband, and her lover, George Maurice Bisset, lay forgotten. Now Hallie Rubenhold throws open a window to a rarely seen view of Georgian England, one coloured by passion, adventure and the defiance of social convention.  

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban...

The sensational true story behind the major TV drama series, The Trial of Christine Keeler, performed by Sophie Cookson In her own words, the life of the beautiful young model and dancer who helped to bring down the Tory government of Harold Macmillan - the 'Profumo Affair' remains the greatest...

An account of the last three hundred years of Scottish history offers a look at Scottish identity and culture.