British History

Famed as the ultimate penalty for traitors, heretics, and royalty alike, being sent to the Tower is known to have been experienced by no less than 8,000 unfortunate souls. Many of those who were imprisoned in the Tower never returned to civilization and those who did, often did so without their head! It is hardly surprising that the Tower has earned itself a reputation among the most infamous buildings on the planet.

“A gripping Gothic tale of grief and ambition, passion and intrigue.” — Jess Kidd, author of The Night Ship “An immersive blend of historical and science fiction brims with surprises and dark delights. . . . An incisive exploration of women’s rights within the field of science...

Timothy West reads the third and concluding volume of award-winning historian Simon Schama's compelling chronicle of the British Isles. Here he illuminates the period from 1776 to 2000 through a variety of historical themes, including Victorian advances in technology and industry, women's increasing role in society, and the burgeoning British Empire which promised civilisation and material betterment for all.

**One of AudioFile Magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2019** "The winning combination of George Newbern's engaging narration and Rick Atkinson's vivid new work of history--the first in a planned trilogy about the American Revolution--brings to life what could have been a dry account of Revolutionary...

The British wars began on the morning of 23 July 1637, heralding 200 years of battles. Most were driven by religious or political conviction, as Republicans and Royalists, Catholics and Protestants, Tories and Whigs, and colonialists and natives vied for supremacy. Of the battles not fought on home territory, many took place across Europe, America, India, and also at sea. Schama's examination of this turbulent period reveals how the British people eventually united in imperial enterprise, forming 'Britannia Incorporated'.

A sweeping tale of revolution and wonder in a world not quite like our own, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians is a genre-defying story of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom in the early modern world. It is the Age of Enlightenment -- of new and magical political movements, from the...

The long-awaited memoir from the legendary guitarist and cofounder of the seminal British band The Smiths. An artist who helped define a period in popular culture, Johnny Marr tells his story in a memoir as vivid and arresting as his music. The Smiths, the band with the signature sound he...

The story of the British Army has many sides to it, being a tale of heroic successes and tragic failures, of dogged determination and drunken disorder. It involves many of the most vital preoccupations in the history of the island - the struggle against continental domination by a single power, the battle for empire - and a cast of remarkable characters: Marlborough, Wellington and Montgomery among them.

A.D. 1172. Henry II’s three eldest sons conspire against him and align themselves with his greatest enemy, King Louis of France, but it’s Eleanor of Aquitaine’s involvement in the plot to overthrow her husband that proves to be the harshest betrayal. As a royal family collapses and a...

In this sweeping history, Ireland's best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, tackles the dark history of the Irish Famine and argues that it constituted one of the first acts of genocide. In what the Boston Globe calls "his greatest achievement", Coogan shows how the British government hid behind the smoke screen of laissez faire economics, the invocation of divine providence, and a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, allowing more than a million people to die agonizing deaths and driving a further million into emigration.

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...

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...

A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the...

From New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Winspear, now available in paperback—the tenth novel in the New York Times bestselling Maisie Dobbs series—“a series that seems to get better with each entry” (Wall Street Journal)—in which the death of an Indian immigrant leads Maisie...

An extraordinary novel that brings into vivid focus the larger-than-life King Henry VIII, monarch of prodigious appetites for wine, women, and song. This is a readable, entertaining, tour de force that captures the essence of the Sixteenth Century, in all its drama and atmosphere. A can't-miss...

British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now, Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs.

“Thoroughly engrossing . . . a spirited, suspenseful, economically told tale whose significance is manifest and whose pace never flags.” —The Wall Street Journal From The New York Times–bestselling author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life, the story of a pirate who changed the world...

The year is 1820 and England has fought its last victorious battle against the French. Rider Sandman, a hero of Waterloo, has finally returned to London to wed his young bride. But instead of being able to settle down to his fame and glory, he finds himself penniless in a country where...

In 1204, the great Angevin Empire was fragmenting under King John's rule. Unable to withstand France's invasion of Normandy, John also faced difficult relations with the papacy, and rising dissent among his barons. By the time John died in 1216, the failed Magna Carta gave way to civil conflict, and more than half of the country had fallen to the dauphin of France. These troubles were then passed, along with the crown, to John's nine-year-old son, Henry III.

Until Scandinavia converted to Christianity and came under the rule of powerful kings, the Vikings were a dominant force in the medieval world. Outfitted with wind-powered sailing ships, they left their mark, spreading terror across Europe, sacking cities, deposing kings, and ransacking economies. But as much as we know about this culture, there is a large missing piece: its women. In this revisionist portrait, science journalist Heather Pringle turns those assumptions on their head, using the latest archaeological research and historical findings to reveal this group as they actually were.