British Culture

From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realize that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves. Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women’s lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine.

“Strikingly original. . . . Nicolson brings to life superbly the horror, devastation, and gore of Trafalgar.” —The Economist Adam Nicolson takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the...

Sunder Katwala grew up with some identity questions to work through. As a half-Indian, Irish Catholic kid, the chequered history of post-imperial Britain seemed very personal. Yet he came to realise that, with that background, he could hardly be anything but proudly British. This book moves from a personal journey to navigate the state of the nation, and the many identity crises of this increasingly disunited Kingdom. And as Scotland decides whether to vote to end the Union, Sunder tries to find out if he might now find himself doomed to be the last British patriot of them all.

Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry’s last great charge and inventor of the tank—Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. Like no other portrait of its...

Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Love and Let Die is the story of a clash between working class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond, and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Gorky Park and Havana Bay comes another gripping novel of loyalty, betrayal, and intrigue on the eve of the greatest military conflict in the history of mankind...December 6. Amid the imperialist fervor of late 1941 Tokyo, Harry Niles is a man with a...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this “beautifully written and superbly researched dual biography” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham “paints a powerful portrait of the enormous friendship between World War II allies [Franklin] Roosevelt and...

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 10 BEST BOOKS THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 2011 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post The New Yorker Chicago Tribune The Economist Nancy Pearl, NPR Bloomberg.com Library Journal Publishers Weekly...

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi one of the greatest men to walk this earth, begins the story of his life with descriptions of his childhood in Porbandar and Rajkot in Gujarat, his schooldays, his early marriage, the lessons he learnt when he tried stealing, told lies and smoked cigrattes, and his...

The final volume in A History of the Plantagenets covers the century from 1377 to 1485 when civil war ravaged England, rebellious peasants marched on London and wandering preachers sowed dissent in the credulous poor. The last Plantagenet monarchs governed in violence and confusion. Kings came...

Globally famous and yet universally misunderstood – these are the complex and utterly engrossing stories of Britain's royal women behind the public façade. Look closely at the narratives about contemporary royal women and you will see a repeating pattern, each characterised as the...

*National Bestseller* "This is a funny and beautiful book. What a little bastard." --Russell Brand "Every paragraph is like doing a shot with a friend. A double." --Caitlin Moran Joel Golby's writing for Vice and The Guardian, with its wry observation and naked self-reflection, has brought him a...

These twenty superbly crafted linked stories navigate the difficult realm of friendship, charting its beginnings and ends, its intimacies and betrayals, its joys and humiliations. A mother learns something of the nature of love from watching her young daughter as she falls in and out of favour...

‘Sensational new book’ – MAIL ON SUNDAY ‘Bombshell book’ – THE SUN ‘Tell-all book’ – MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Explosive new book' – DAILY MAIL 'Kervin is a master storyteller' – THE LONDON STANDARD AN UNFLINCHING EXPOSÉ OF MOHAMED AL-FAYED'S 25-YEAR REIGN OF TERROR AT HARRODS...

A top-10 list is nobody’s perfect tool, especially when trying to measure up 10 of the most significant and influential bands of the British Invasion. Nevertheless, this book presents 10 biographies of classic bands of the era widely regarded as the best of the best, putting their contributions to music in sharp focus. And what contributions they have made! Over half a century later, their songs still ring out on radios, their names are well-known to many, and songs released today are inspired by the music they produced.

From the bestselling author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll. “I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time...

Tony Blackburn is one of Britain's most iconic disc jockeys, a true pioneer of pop radio who has kept the nation entertained for decades. From his rebellious early days as a pirate radio DJ to becoming the golden voice of BBC Radio 1, Tony has seen it all - chart-topping hits, industry rivalries...

Brought to you by Penguin. Wreckers sinks the old narratives of imperialism, revealing the violent, chaotic and improvised reality of empire-building from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. While figures such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan are celebrated for...

Before The Beatles landed on American shores in February 1964, only two British acts had topped the Billboard singles chart. In the first quarter of 1964, however, the Beatles alone accounted for 60% of all recorded music sold in the United States; in 1964 and 1965 British acts occupied the number one position for 52 of the 104 weeks; and from 1964 through to 1970, the Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, and more placed more than 130 songs on the American Top Forty.