European History

The author argues against the orthodox interpretation of the changing nature of the relief and administration of poverty from the 17th century to the reform of poor law administration in...

This account describes the daily struggles of women under the Marxist regime in the former republic of Yugoslavia. It contains 19 essays, comprising reportage through personal experience by Croatia's leading...

'Queen Victoria had a very complicated and psychologically fascinating personality and only a very talented biographer could get to the key of her character. Fortunately in Matthew Dennison's pithy, well-researched,...

The masterpiece of Britain's leading Renaissance scholar, winner of the Time-Life Silver Pen Award and The Royal Society of Literature Award, beautifully reissued in Harper Perennial. The Civilisation of Europe...

A vital history from the award-winning Financial Times journalist Philip Stephens on the dramatic century since the Anglo-Irish Treaty and partition. These Divided Isles tells the story from both sides...

'I need to ride now, to explore, to uncover more life; to reach strangers, to feel danger and to learn; to share this old, slow way, with man's patient, most...

'B eautifully written and deeply moving' CLARE BALDING 'An important voice' CATHY RENTZENBRINK 'I devoured it in a day . . . An open-hearted book' CLOVER STROUD The Corner is...

A sharp-sweet memoir of change, identity and hybridity. I loved it - KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering The orange we know, waxed in vats, gathered in red netting and stacked...

Many now claim that Western countries should pay reparations to former colonies for the lasting damage they caused, especially through slavery. To what extent is the argument about damage correct...

"Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour." -Jhumpa Lahiri "One of Italy's most accomplished novelists." -The Guardian Imagine a child, a daydreamer, always gazing out of...

Judged by contemporaries to be a 'perfidious rogue', Sir George Downing rose to prominence during the English Civil War as Oliver Cromwell's chief of military intelligence. In the Interregnum he...

From the moment they met in 1940 in Ravensbruck concentration camp, Milena Jesenska and Margarete Buber-Neumann were inseparable. Czech Milena was Kafka's first translator and epistolary lover, and a journalist...

'Tom Bower is the Inspector Morse of investigative biographers, a fluent, phlegmatic story-teller and a master of intricacies.' Sunday Times The British Crown is in crisis, with constitutional threats at...

By 1914 Australia's German immigrants were well-regarded in their communities and made up (after Irish and Scots) the fourth-largest white ethnic community in Australia. This thoroughly readable history, with lively...

The First World War was a conflict in which personality and character mattered. Its course and outcome were decided by determined individuals who had to make momentous decisions in very...

During the Second World War, there were over 100 instances of naval engagements between ships, submarines and aircraft of the same side. In the past there has often been a...

A vital history from the award-winning Financial Times journalist Philip Stephens on the dramatic century since the Anglo-Irish Treaty and partition. These Divided Isles tells the story from both sides...

"In the tradition of Alison Weir's "New York Times "bestselling "Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley, "comes the most sensational crime story of Tudor England. "On...

This book begins by considering responses by French artists to the First World War, showing how Purism, Dada, and early Surrealism are related to the ethos of post-war reconstruction. The...

Generations of readers have found Pepys' diaries one of the best ways to vicariously experience the tumultuous world of seventeenth century London, the time of Restoration, the Plague, and the...

When asked about the greatest difficulty of being Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan famously replied 'events, dear boy, events'. Kevin Jefferys authoritative and entertaining book recreates and then assesses the key...

From the dawn of history to the decline of the Celtic Tiger - how Ireland has been shaped over the centuries. Ireland has been shaped by many things over the...

Great Irish Documents presents the most momentous and stirring documents in the history of Ireland. From St Patrick's confession, via the harrowing reports of the Famine Relief Commission, the dramatic...

Sometimes when you are looking for the dead, you find the living. When Irene joins the International Tracing Service, she becomes consumed by a singular obsession: returning the belongings confiscated...

Judged by contemporaries to be a 'perfidious rogue', Sir George Downing rose to prominence during the English Civil War as Oliver Cromwell's chief of military intelligence. In the Interregnum he...

Simple food, well prepared, is one of life's great pleasures and when friends and family are part of the equation, cooking and sharing becomes all the more enjoyable. In a...

Agreement and the withdrawal of British troops from regular patrols in Northern Ireland, this new edition of a perennial bestseller narrates and interprets Irish history as a whole. Designed and...

The instant Swedish cult classic for fans for readers of Fredrik Backman and cozy fiction THE INSTANT SWEDISH CULT CLASSIC 'Clever, funny and tender' FREDRIK BACKMAN, bestselling author of My...

Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. Naples is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. Their ancestors...

Bigger than The Great Escape. The story of the first successful mass tunnel escape from a POW camp in First World War Germany. Bigger than The Great Escape. The story...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * This "excellent, all-embracing" ( The New York Times ) biography of Queen Elizabeth II is a magisterial study of the woman known only from a...

'I was so thirsty for the prize of academia, so thrilled to defy the fates, that I suffocated my own history and culture, my Burmese heritage and my mother's language....

A journey to the grim Soviet hospitals and new Russian sex clinics, old communal apartments and shaky new suburbs. The author visits decaying Soviet schools and new private academies, families...

To read the history of ancient Greece as it has been written for centuries is to enter a thoroughly male world. This book, a comprehensive history of women in the...

This book presents a geographical analysis of the new Russia which has emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union since 1991.

This new biography of Bunyan, published to celebrate the tercentenary of his death, offers a reassessment of the man against in the context of his times. Bunyan is usually studied...

First time in Penguin Classics for this single-volume edition of Churchill's most famous speeches The most eloquent and expressive statesman of his time - phrases such as 'iron curtain', 'business...

Written by a former Irish cabinet minister, this book presents a detailed contemporary portrait of where power and authority lie in the country. Section headings include: politics, government, industry, money,...

For over 50 years one family dominated England's high offices of state. William and Robert Cecil, father and son, held unparalleled power as statesmen, diplomats, counsellors and spymasters throughout Elizabeth's...

In 1842, five years before they would become bestselling authors, Charlotte Bronte and her sister Emily arrived in Brussels. They were there to improve their French and German, but the...

From New York Times bestselling author Ayana Gray comes a new kind of villain origin story, reimagining one of the most iconic monsters in Greek mythology as a provocative and...

"It's a nice piece of pageantry. . . . Rationally it's lunatic, but in practice, everyone enjoys it, I think."-HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Founded by Edward III in...

Napoleon may have caused more men's deaths than any martial leader before him. Indeed, "the paths of glory Napoleon trod," biographer Timothy Wilson-Smith estimates in his introduction, "led possibly one...

Like an angry lion, the Turkish menace growled at the frontiers of Europe. In 1453, the last remnant of the mighty Roman Empire was obliterated when Turkish forces overran Constantinople....

Following the Reformation, bonfires and bells were the most public markers of a new calendar that was uniquely English and that developed in the 200 years following it. David Cressy...

In the 19th and early 20th century, painters and photographers from many countries travelled for inspiration to the Islamic worlds of Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Palestine. Published...

The author emphasizes the selected nature of the facts provided by historical texts, and demonstrates the historicity of fiction. She calls into question assumptions about the end of nationalism implicit...

Established as a standard work - covers the whole of Italy not just the Risorgimento itself.