Showing titles in Europe

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend a boarding school. A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed firsthand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, describing the pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all.

‘A kind of blissography, teeming with bon mots’ Sunday Times A celebrated modern classic that has revolutionised our understanding of the Bloomsbury group and remains the definitive biography of the group’s gloriously eccentric patron, Lady Ottoline Morrell. Met with widespread acclaim and...

In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-14th century rural English village. By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived - and died - during the Black Death (A.D. 1345 - 50), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague.

2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to nearly 1 in 3 driving on the left side of the road, and even shaping the origins of international law. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things.

THE TIMES BIOGRAPHY OF THE DECADE WINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION WINNER OF THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR The story of Gabriele D’Annunzio, poet, daredevil – and Fascist. In September 1919 Gabriele D’Annunzio, successful poet and occasional...

One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans.

What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris during the years 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until, finally, there was renewal and retribution. Even at the darkest moments, dogs and cats might be abandoned howling on the street, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner, but glamour was ever present.

On 11 September 2001 19 al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists hijacked four aircraft and mounted the deadliest terrorist attack in history. The outrage triggered a chain of events that saw British forces drawn into a lengthy military campaign against a fierce insurgency in Afghanistan. Sergio Miller served in Defence Intelligence in Whitehall throughout the campaign, and Pride and Fall answers the many questions surrounding the conflict. Based on abundant open-source material generated by the war and first-hand testimonies, this is the story of the men and women who served.

HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941 and was specially targeted by the Germans. A wolfpack of U-boats was sent against it, and the Luftwaffe was heavily committed too in a rare example of German inter-service cooperation. German intelligence agents in Gibraltar and Spain also knew every detail of HG-76 before it had even sailed, seemingly stacking the odds in favour of the Kriegsmarine. Despite this the convoy fought its way through.

Britain has been defined by its conflicts, its conquests, its men and its monarchs. To say that it's high time it was defined by its women is a severe understatement. Jenni Murray draws together the lives of 21 women to shed light upon a variety of social, political, religious and cultural aspects of British history. In lively prose Murray reinvigorates the stories behind the names we all know and reveals the fascinating tales behind those less familiar.

For centuries the Celts held sway in Europe. Even after their conquest by the Romans, their culture remained vigorous, ensuring that much of it endured to feed an endless fascination with Celtic history and myths, artwork and treasures. A foremost authority on the Celtic peoples and their culture, Peter Berresford Ellis presents an invigoration overview of their world. With his gift for making the scholarly accessible, he discusses the Celts' mysterious origins and early history and investigates their rich and complex society.

Based on a lifetime living in and reporting on Germany and Central Europe, award-winning journalist and author Peter Millar tackles the fascinating and complex story of the people at the heart of our continent. Focussing on nine cities (only six of which are in the Germany of today), he takes us on a zigzag ride back through time via the fall of the Berlin Wall through the horrors of two world wars and the patchwork states of the Middle Ages to the splendour of Charlemagne and the fall of Rome.

In the summer of 1962, one year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of daring young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture and even death to liberate friends, lovers and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the wall. Then, as the world's press heard about the secret projects, two television networks raced to be the first to document them from the inside, funding two separate tunnels for exclusive rights to film the escapes.

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The following day, his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, also killed himself, and the crumbling Third Reich passed to Admiral Karl Dönitz. The Nazis' position seemed hopeless. Yet remarkably, the war in the rest of Europe went on for another 10 days. After Hitler looks at these days as a narrative day-by-day countdown but also as a broader global history of a European war that had seen some of the most savage battles in history.

In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation...

Brought to you by Penguin. SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR A riveting narrative history that shows for the first time how the campaign to end slavery divided Britain, convulsed its politics and was almost thwarted by some of the most...

In the early 1970s, Britain seemed to be tottering on the brink of the abyss. Under Edward Heath, the optimism of the Sixties had become a distant memory. Now the headlines were dominated by strikes and blackouts, unemployment and inflation. As the world looked on in horrified fascination, Britain seemed to be tearing itself apart. And yet, amid the gloom, glittered a creativity and cultural dynamism that would influence our lives long after the nightmarish Seventies had been forgotten.

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

On July 10, 1943, two great Allied armadas of over 2,000 ships readied to invade Sicily. This was Operation Husky, the first step toward winning a toehold in fascist-occupied Europe. Among the invaders were 20,000 Canadian troops serving in the First Canadian Infantry Division and First Canadian Tank Brigade - in their first combat experience. Over the next 28 days, the Allied troops carved a path through the rugged land, despite fierce German opposition.

In a sweeping narrative encompassing political intrigue, illicit love affairs and even a murder mystery, Nancy Goldstone tells the riveting story of a queen who lost her throne, and of her four defiant daughters. Elizabeth Stuart's (1596-1662) marriage to a German count far below her rank was arranged with the understanding that her father, James I of England, would help his new son-in-law achieve the crown of Bohemia. The terrible betrayal of this promise would ruin 'the Winter Queen', as Elizabeth would forever be known, imperil the lives of those she loved and launch a war that would last thirty years.