Showing titles in Europe

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that interrogates the pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe...

‘Oh my goodness - another girl, Mrs Swain!' Clara's normal iron composure broke, and she screamed, ‘No! That's not the bloody deal!' And that was how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world. When Helen Batten's marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family's past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna's early life. What she unearths is a tale of five feisty redheads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars.

Forgotten Rebels, Fierce Women, and Untold Legends. No king of Scots could be crowned without a MacDuff present. It wasn't just tradition, it was law. So when Robert the Bruce rose to claim the throne, and the noble houses had either fled or bent the knee to England, one woman from Clan MacDuff risked everything. She crowned him herself—defying the English, breaking convention, and altering the fate of a nation. This is just one of many bold, hidden stories waiting to be uncovered.

Rhyme and Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, through Byromania and the Victorian hearth, understanding why people simply enjoyed poetry. From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.

Paris—city of love, food, culture—is steeped in a rich history known the world over. From the creative minds of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who both frequented the world-famous Moulin Rouge at the turn of the twentieth century, to the many historic changes that saw Paris expand into the city of twenty arrondissements that residents and tourists flock to every year. In A Brief History of Paris, historian Cecil Black entertainingly details the stories behind the culture, locations, architecture, people, food and more that keeps visitors enchanted.

From the bestselling author of Beethoven: The Man Revealed, In Search of Beethoven is John Suchet’s latest and most personal book dedicated to the life of this extraordinary composer. Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign...

In the autumn of 1988, in a New York City courtroom, two video game giants faced off over a question as simple as it was explosive: who invented video games? For more than a decade, Magnavox had used a set of foundational patents to extract more than $100 million from its rivals. The patents...

From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled.

Mary Boleyn was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In this astonishing and riveting biography, Alison Weir’s extensive research gives a new and detailed portrayal, in which she recounts that, contrary to popular belief, Mary was entirely undeserving of her posthumous notoriety as a great whore.

An engaging, wide-ranging exploration of the end of Roman Britain and the beginnings of England In 410 CE, Roman rule of Britain collapsed, bringing a centuries-long occupation to an end. A century later, Britain was dividing into two areas with contrasting cultures, an expansive "Anglo-Saxon"...

Paris is one of the most recognisable cities on the planet. Its skyline is etched into our minds with the Eiffel Tower rising above the rooftops, the Arc de Triomphe commanding the Champs-Élysées, and the Louvre guarding masterpieces beneath its glass pyramid. Yet for all its fame, Paris holds secrets—curious, quirky, and quietly astonishing facts that even many Parisians don’t know.

Read by the author, Robert Hardman. An intimate, authoritative, richly entertaining new portrait of Elizabeth II in her centenary year from the Sunday Times number 1 bestselling author of Charles III. Biographer and royal commentator Robert Hardman has had unique access to the world of the late...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE The original bestseller from the beloved author of UNDERLAND, LANDMARKS and THE LOST WORDS - Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape 'The Old Ways...

Best-selling author Christopher Winn explores Britain's royal past, unearthing a rich legacy of castles and palaces, cathedrals and country retreats, battlefields and monuments where kings and queens lived and died. In this exploration of royal British history, discover whose heart is buried near the Tower of London, which palace was built on top of a mulberry garden, the world's oldest and largest occupied castle, and the first building in Britain to have latrines.

The Fens is Britain's most distinctive, complex, man-made and least understood landscape. Francis Pryor has lived in, excavated, farmed, walked and loved the Fen Country for more than 40 years: its levels and drains, its soaring churches and magnificent medieval buildings. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist.

The fighting that raged in the East during the First World War was every bit as fierce as that on the Western Front, but the titanic clashes between three towering empires - Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany - remains a comparatively unknown facet of the Great War. With the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war in 2014, Collision of Empires is a timely expose of the bitter fighting on this forgotten front - a clash that would ultimately change the face of Europe forever.

The definitive account of Germany's malign transformation under Hitler's total rule and the implacable march to war. This magnificent second volume of Richard J. Evans's three-volume history of Nazi Germany was hailed by Benjamin Schwartz of The Atlantic Monthly as "the definitive English-language account... gripping and precise." It chronicles the incredible story of Germany's radical reshaping under Nazi rule.

Bloomsbury presents The Hitler Years by Frank McDonough, read by Paul McGann. Bestselling historian Frank McDonough tackles the subject in the same way as his brilliantly reviewed and bestselling titles in this series. The penultimate title in the Hitler's Germany series, the book marks the end...

Why didn't the ancient Greeks or Romans wear pants? How did they shave? How likely were they to drink fine wine, use birth control, or survive surgery? In a series of short and humorous essays, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants explores some of the questions about the Greeks and Romans that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has answered in the classroom and online. Unlike most books on the classical world, the focus is not on famous figures or events, but on the fascinating details of daily life.

In this last book of a three-volume series, William L. Shirer recounts his return to Berlin after the Third Reich’s defeat. Having fled Berlin and imminent arrest by the Gestapo in 1940, Shirer returned to Europe in October 1945 to verify the facts of the Fuhrer’s death, thus bringing to a close - or so he thought - his involvement with the Third Reich. He describes his return to his homeland and his ensuing careers as a broadcast journalist and author. He describes the McCarthy years and how the blacklist affected his own network, CBS.