Great Britain

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly—and yet strangely familiar.

After the fall of France in June 1940, all that stood between Adolf Hitler and total victory was a narrow stretch of water and the defiance of the British people. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart, and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination. By early 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place.

Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, What Matters in Jane Austen? solves the mysteries of Austen’s fictional world. Jane Austen’s novels have been a staple of the English canon since the nineteenth century. Yet critics of the time did not appreciate the true complexity of her work. Nothing, John Mullan argues, is accidental or coincidental in Austen. As Austen herself said, she wrote for readers who have "a great deal of ingenuity themselves."

Sunset, 8 June 1982, East Falkland. Eight specially trained Royal Marines infiltrate Goat Ridge, a long rocky hilltop between Mount Harriet and Two Sisters which are occupied by a battalion of 600 Argentine infantry. Their daring mission was to hide out in hostile territory, reconnoiter the Argentine position and then report back. From their hiding place just metres away from the enemy, they note and sketch the Argentine positions, then withdraw as stealthily as they had come.

The first of its kind, Three Weeks in July provides the definitive narrative on the harrowing events of 7th July 2005 and the aftermath, where chaos, confusion and terror reigned on the streets of London. A true-crime investigation woven together with high-politics and seminal history, the book will intricately explore the untold accounts of the Met’s and Government’s response to 7/7, and their desperate attempts to prevent a possible second wave.

Popular culture has mythologised the Dunera Boys–but who were the real men who sailed on the infamous ship, and how did the voyage transform their lives? Art historian Tonia Eckfeld draws on a deeply personal history to tell the story of her father and her uncle, Jewish refugees whose lives were shaped indelibly by their wartime experiences and internment–each to very different outcomes.

On November 29, 1943, as the Allies’ primary leaders met in Tehran, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin his idea for the organization that would become the United Nations. The American president suggested that the active arm of the organization be “the Four Policemen”: the U.S., USSR, UK, and China. Stalin agreed with much of the framework in principle, but asserted that China likely would not possess the strength after the war to assist.

The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was the largest attack on Britain since World War Two. 259 passengers and 11 townsfolk of Lockerbie were murdered. Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime. He maintained his innocence until his death in 2012.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in "the Big Hop": an audacious race to be the first to fly, nonstop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.

The extraordinary story of the theft of priceless Chinese antiques around the world and the connection to crimes spanning more than two centuries—with present-day implications.