British History

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.

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the...

Shaun Pinner was a retired and decorated British soldier, living a peaceful and happy life in Mariupol with his Ukrainian family. What follows is the true story of his six months spent imprisoned in Russian-occupied Ukraine. After the horrors of frontline fighting, Shaun had to survive his capture by the Russian soldiers, and his removal to a Black Site - an off-the-grid prison untethered to human rights conventions - where he was subjected to a campaign of torture by Putin's secret police.

The national bestseller and direct tie-in to the new game expansion pack Warlords of Draenor—a thrilling novel set in the universe of the record-breaking, internationally bestselling video game World of Warcraft! The brutal siege of Orgrimmar is over. Alliance and Horde forces have stripped...

An “enthralling and authoritative” (The Wall Street Journal) political history of World War II that opens a window onto the difficulties of holding together the coalition that ultimately defeated Hitler—by the acclaimed author of Appeasement “A fine reassessment of Allied politics and...

The fourth and last volume in Churchill's famous account spans 1815 to 1901. It closes when the British Empire is at its peak, with a staggering one-fifth of the human race presided over by the longest reigning monarch in British history: Queen Victoria.

The first biography of the large life of one of the most important, enigmatic, yet private artists of the twentieth century. Drawn from almost forty years of conversations with the artist, letters, and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic. Lucian Freud...

A moving and compulsively readable look into the lives, loves, relationships, and rivalries among the three women at the heart of the British royal family today: Queen Elizabeth II, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and Kate Middleton—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Good Son, These...

Most anyone who has received a basic education in world history knows the story of how "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Most also know that Christopher Columbus made first contact with the Americas while searching for a water route to Asia. However, far fewer people remember that the search for such a route continued for centuries after Columbus' death.

When published in hardcover in 1997, this book was praised for providing an engrossing education not only in naval strategy and tactics, but in Victorian social attitudes and the influence of character on history. In juxtaposing an operational with a cultural theme, the author comes closer than any historian yet to explaining what was behind the often-described operations of this famous 1916 battle at Jutland.

In this compelling study, Joshua Clover undertakes the task of decoding the film. Examining The Matrix's digital effects and how they were achieved, he shows how the film represents a melding of cinema and video games (the greatest commercial threat to have faced Hollywood since the advent of television) and achieves a hybrid kind of immersive entertainment. He also unpacks the movie's references to philosophy, showing how The Matrix ultimately expresses the crisis American culture faced at the end of the 1990s.

A riveting account of the five heated months in which King Charles I attempted to arrest five dissident Members of Parliament by bringing an armed force to the House of Commons—a shocking act of political terrorism that pushed England toward civil war and planted the seeds of the American...

Brought to you by Penguin. When does a bandit become a monarch? When does a gang become a government? And is organised crime at the heart of every modern state? On a thrilling whistle-stop tour of how the world's criminal underbelly has shaped state-making, capitalism, globalisation and all...

Dive into the amazing story of Jamaica, a country shaped by the trials of slavery and the incredible strength of its people. This audiobook tells how enslaved Africans, despite enduring terrible hardships, built the foundation of Jamaica’s vibrant culture and heritage.

Born to an English father and a French mother, lieutenant Charles Saunders Hayden's career is damned by his "mixed" heritage. Assigned to the HMS Themis, an aging frigate under the command of a captain reviled by his crew for both his brutality towards his men and his cowardice in battle...

An atmospheric and romantic debut fantasy perfect for fans of Ash and The Winner’s Curse. Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance between Mynaria and her homeland, protecting her people...

Discover the pivotal political, military, and cultural events that shaped British and Irish history, from Stone Age Britain to the present day, in this revised and updated book. The History of Britain and Ireland is an invaluable resource for families, students, and anyone seeking to learn more...

“Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the...

From 1337 to 1453 England repeatedly invaded France on the pretext that her kings had a right to the French throne. Though it was a small, poor country, England for most of those "100 years" won the battles, sacked the towns and castles, and dominated the war. Desmond Seward's critically acclaimed account of the Hundred Years War brings to life all of the intrigue, beauty, and royal to-the-death-fighting of that legendary century-long conflict.

For generations, British thinkers told the history of an empire whose story was still very much in the making. While they wrote of conquest, imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean was consolidated. While they described the development of imperial governance, rebellions were brutally crushed. As they reimagined empire during the two world wars, decolonization was compromised. Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed.