Middle England

Brought to you by Penguin. Costa Best Novel Award 2019 Winner. It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people. Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where...

In this masterly work of synthesis, Peter Mansfield, drawing on his experience as a journalist and a historian, explores two centuries of history in the Middle East. He forms a picture of the historical, political, and social history of the meeting point of Occident and Orient, from Bonaparte's marauding invasion of Egypt to the start of the Gulf War. For more than four thousand years, the Middle East has provided a setting for titanic struggles between great civilizations and religions. In this century it became the focus of rivalry between the European powers as the last major Islamic empire of the Ottoman Turks crumbled and collapsed. The discovery of the world's greatest oil reserves gave the region global economic importance as well as a unique strategic value. The foundation of a national state by immigrant Zionist Jews created one of the most insoluble political problems of our era, which is compounded by the reassertion of Islamic consciousness among the great majority of the region's inhabitants. In two penetrating final chapters, Peter Mansfield discusses Saddam Hussein and the prospects for the future.

This audiobook is compellingly read by the author, Jeremy Bowen. A Spectator and New Statesman Book of the Year 'An illuminating and riveting read’ – Jonathan Dimbleby Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of the BBC, has been covering the Middle East since 1989 and is uniquely placed to...

The most famous date in history is 1066, and with good reason, since no battle in medieval history had such a devastating effect on its losers as the Battle of Hastings, which altered the entire course of English history.

From the frenzy of the 2012 Olympics to the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, here Jonathan Coe chronicles the story of modern Britain by way of a cast of characters whose world is being upended. There are newlyweds who disagree about the country’s future and, possibly, their relationship; a political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his lavish town house while his radical teenage daughter undertakes a relentless quest for universal justice; and Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father.

Contains three complete, novel-length books in the Middle Falls Time Travel series: The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon, The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister, and The Changing Lives of Joe Hart.

The proud owner of a sprawling £14 million estate in the Cotswolds, boasting a stable of eventing horses, a fleet of supercars and neighbouring the royal family, Neil Woodford was the most celebrated and successful British investor of his generation. But, in 2019, after a stream of poorly judged investments, Woodford's asset management company collapsed, trapping hundreds of thousands of rainy-day savers in his flagship fund and hanging £3.6 billion in the balance.

The famous conqueror from the European continent came ashore with thousands of men, ready to set up a new kingdom in England. The Britons had resisted the amphibious invasion from the moment his forces landed, but he was able to push forward. In a large winter battle, the Britons’ large army attacked the invaders, but was eventually routed, and the conqueror was able to set up a new kingdom.

If you want to discover the captivating history of Medieval England and Magna Carta, then get England in the Middle Ages - a set of two books about England during the Middle Ages and the influence of the Magna Carta.

The First King of England is a foundational biography of Æthelstan (d. 939), the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the “kingdom of the English.”

The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britain’s greatest and worst dynasty—“a real-life Game of Thrones” (The Wall Street Journal)—by the author of Powers and Thrones. The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into...

A fascinating new portrait of Medieval Britain that brings together the everyday and the extraordinary. Using wide-ranging evidence, Martyn Whittock shines a light on Britain in the Middle Ages, bringing it vividly to life. Thus we glimpse 11th century rural society through a conversation between a ploughman and his master. The life of Dick Whittington illuminates the rise of the urban elite.

William Shakespeare may have been the greatest playwright in the English language, but how does he measure up as a historian? In this brilliant comparison between the events and characters in Shakespeare's history plays and the actual events that inspired them, acclaimed historian John Julius Norwich examines the nine works that together amount to an epic masterpiece on England's most fascinating period.

The history of England can be said to have begun with the arrival of Julius Caesar in 54 BC. Four hundred years later, Romano British civilization came to an end with the withdrawal of Roman military protection and the onslaught by successive waves of Germanic invasions. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Norsemen ravaged Britain for almost 500 years. The native Celtic peoples were displaced and driven westward into present-day Wales, where their descendants dwell to this day.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, a passionate portrait of love’s contradictory power, in five illuminating stories. André Aciman, hailed as a writer of “fiction at its most supremely interesting” (The New York Review of Books), has written a novel that...

Il nuovo romanzo di Jonathan Coe: un quadro molto comico, ma ahinoi anche molto serio, della vita pubblica e privata in Gran Bretagna, dal 2010 al 2018. Del pubblico, copre le elezioni del primo governo di coalizione di tutta la storia britannica, le rivolte violente del 2011, i Giochi olimpici del 2012 e, naturalmente, il tellurico referendum per la Brexit del 2016. Del privato, mostra come questi eventi impattino sulle vite dei Trotter, una tipica famiglia delle Midlands inglesi.

Medieval England’s history starts with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. In the 11th century, the Anglo-Saxon elite was completely replaced by the invading Normans. William the Conqueror and his successors brought novelties to England such as castles and cavalry. The last phase of Medieval England started with the great Famine and Black Death in the 14th century, when millions of lives were lost, resulting in England losing half of its population. In this book, you'll get insights into all of the above events and many more.

With this audiobook, we want to let our listeners know how vibrant and lively (as well as deadly) life in Britain was during the perhaps wrongly-titled “Dark Ages”. With the end of the Roman Empire, the local Britons were left to their devices, and it would be several people groups from a peninsula in Central Europe that would come to dominate the island, making sure their presence was known through a series of kingdoms, battles, clashes, victories, and defeats.

Step into the tumultuous world of early England, where tribal kingdoms battled for supremacy, and a new culture was born from the ashes of Roman rule. The Anglo-Saxons offer a captivating journey through centuries of history, from the dawn of the Early Middle Ages to the defining Battle of Hastings. This audiobook is your gateway to understanding the intricate events, people, and legacies that shaped England as we know it today.

There are very few national relationships quite as complicated and enigmatic as the one that exists between the English and the Irish. For two peoples so interconnected by geography and history, the depth of animosity that is often expressed is difficult at times to understand. At the same time, historic links of family and clan, and common Gaelic roots, have at times fostered a degree of mutual regard, interdependence, and cooperation that is also occasionally hard to fathom. During World War I, for example, Ireland fought for the British Empire as part of that empire.