Showing titles in 20th Century

Brought to you by Penguin THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE BBC DRAMA THE CRIMSON FIELD 'On the face of it,' writes Lyn Macdonald, 'no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifest horrors of the First...

More than fifty years on, the Cultural Revolution's scar runs through the heart of Chinese society, and through the souls of its citizens. Stationed in Beijing for the Guardian, Tania Branigan came to realise that this brutal and turbulent decade continues to propel and shape China to this day. Yet official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists, for the most part, as an absence.

This remarkable account has had an enduring influence on social and economic studies and has remained in print since its first English publication in 1885. It was written, in German, by a youthful Friedrich Engels, the son of a German industrialist, who was already concerned - even angered - by...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of The Spy and the Traitor comes the ultimate true-life Cold War thriller: a “page-turning masterpiece” (The Guardian) about a Russian double agent with a desperate secret—and the key to stopping a nuclear apocalypse. “Ben Macintyre has a...

LRPs were all volunteers. They were in the spine-tingling, brain-twisting, nerve-wracking business of Long Range Patrolling. They varied in age from eighteen to thirty. These men operated in precision movements, like walking through a jungle quietly and being able to tell whether a man or an animal is moving through the brush without seeing the cause of movement. They could sit in an ambush for hours without moving a muscle except to ease the safety off the automatic weapon in their hand at the first sign of trouble. These men were good because they had to be to survive.

The breathtaking memoir by a member of "Nicky's family", a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton's Kindertransport project. My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning humanitarian and former Episcopal priest Ivan Backer.

Brought to you by Penguin. SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NONFICTION A FOYLES TOP TEN READ FOR FEBRUARY | A 2026 HIGHLIGHT IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES, EVENING STANDARD AND THE BOOKSELLER A meeting place for Europe’s bohemian artists. A headquarters of the Nazi occupation. A shelter for...

A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING FINALIST SHORTLISTED FOR THE WESTMINSTER BOOK AWARDS 'One of the best memoirs I've read in years’ SATHNAM SANGHERA ‘Beautifully written, emotional and deeply personal, yet universal … One can't help but be moved by this...

Brought to you by Penguin. Read by the author, with Christine Kavanagh, Rosina Aichner, Laurence Dobeisz, Joe Jameson, Conor Macleod, Jamie Zubairi, Ayesha Antoine, Naruto Komatsu, Alfie Thompson, Chris Thompson, Nile Faure-Bryan, Sam Heaton, Michael Pender, Brónagh Grace and Ru Merritt. There...

In this brilliant, myth-busting account, Rodric Braithwaite, the former British ambassador to Moscow, challenges much of what we know about the Soviets in Afghanistan. He provides an inside look at this little-understood episode, using first-hand accounts and piercing analysis to show the war as it was fought and experienced by the Russians.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. Listen to this bite size audiobook about Hitler's experience as a soldier during World War One, the Nazi Party's climb to power, the elimination of their political opponents and the Weimar constitution. Learn about life in Nazi Germany, for...

The Apollo Moon Programme has been called the last optimistic act of the twentieth century. Over a strange three-year period between 1969 and 1972, twelve men made the longest and most eccentric journey ever undertaken by human beings, to the surface of the moon, and all were indelibly marked by it. Only nine moonwalkers were left by the time a chance encounter forced Andrew Smith to consider that one day soon there would be none: that no one on Earth would have seen us from afar as they alone had.

For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.

Brought to you by Penguin. The definitive new history of East Germany by an acclaimed historian In 1990, a country disappeared. For the previous forty-one years, East Germany had existed in Western minds as more of a metaphor than a place, more of a grey communist blur than a land of real people...

Hugo Vickers's adventures in the world of Cecil Beaton: an unputdownable portrait of a vanishing age, featuring untold anecdotes and thrilling titbits of royal gossip 'A fascinating document, a window on to a lost world of glamour, grandeur and snobbery . . . an elegy, sad and comical, to a...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Four years of war turned Ypres into a ghost town. Not a leaf grew on a tree. Scarcely one stone stood upon another. From the battered ramparts the eye swept clean across a field of rubble to the swamp-lands beyond . . .' The Third Battle of Ypres, ending in a...

In this disturbing exposé, journalist Paul L. Williams describes a secret alliance forged at the close of World War II by the CIA, the Sicilian and US mafias, and the Vatican to thwart the possibility of a Communist invasion of Europe. Williams presents evidence suggesting the existence, in many European countries, of "stay-behind" units consisting of 5,000 to 15,000 military operatives.

‘Lucid and damning … an absorbing – and infuriating – tale of complicity, coverup and denial’ PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of EMPIRE OF PAIN A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II – and...

Stephen E. Ambrose’s D-Day is the definitive history of World War II’s most pivotal battle, a day that changed the course of history. D-Day is the epic story of men at the most demanding moment of their lives, when the horrors, complexities, and triumphs of life are laid bare. Distinguished...

From organising the school summer fete - 'Because of our inability to recognise our climatic shortcomings from the outset, arrangements for outdoor jollities get completely out of hand' - to the sometimes rather odd passions of childhood - 'I collect stones with holes in them' - Miss Read captures the essence of rural life, and in particular of village schools, as only she can.