British History

Take a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses - both grand and small - of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life.

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.

From the author of the “jaunty, heartbreaking winner” (People) and international bestseller Dear Mrs. Bird comes a charming and uplifting novel set in London during World War II about a plucky young journalist and her adventures as wartime advice columnist. London, November 1941. Following...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From bestselling true-crime author Peter Edwards and Governor General's Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, two sons of Lytton, the BC town that burned to the ground in 2021, comes a meditation on hometown―when hometown is gone. “It’s dire,” Greta Thunberg...

A Barnes & Noble Best History Book of 2025 Four men in a lifeboat. Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder. “A perfect enunciation of the classic philosophical conundrum: can you sacrifice one innocent life to save many?"...

Sir Philip Gibbs served as one of five official British reporters during the First World War. In this book he relays the experiences of British soldiers and offers a detailed narrative of the events of World War I, while trying to draw broader conclusions about the nature of war and how it can be prevented in the future.

'He is rugby's Pep Guardiola' – The Telegraph Rassie Erasmus has been called a genius. He’s been called reckless. All his life, he’s done things differently. Now, with his trademark candour, Rassie talks openly about his adventures and misadventures at the pinnacle of world rugby, both as...

Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate. This was partly to let his wife and children experience life in Bryson's homeland - and partly because...

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.

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.

As Europe buckles under Nazi occupation, Maisie Dobbs investigates a possible murder that threatens devastating repercussions for Britain's war efforts in this latest installment in the New York Times bestselling mystery series. October 1941. While on a delivery, young Freddie Hackett, a...

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction** This is the definitive history of Britain’s tumultuous relationship with Europe – as it’s never been told before. 'Powerful, precise, morally engaged, wonderfully alert to character, context and the greater purpose of political...

"Narrator Lucy Paterson provides a charming portrayal of a mother, matron, minx, and monarch: Queen Victoria of England...Paterson's tone is bright and cheerful, and she keeps the historical details lively." — AudioFile Magazine This program includes an introduction read by the author, as well...

For readers of Annette Gordon-Reed and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the shocking untold story of the British royal family’s centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy—from Elizabeth I to the present—and the monarchy’s culpability in the racial injustice that...

**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 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...

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.

A revelatory account of how the loving marriage of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth saved the monarchy during World War II, and how they raised their daughter to become Queen Elizabeth II, based on exclusive access to the Royal Archives—from the bestselling author of Elizabeth the Queen and...

Cyril Robinson's magnificent history continues with volume two in this four-part series. We now follow the fortunes of two great royal dynasties: Tudor and Stuart. Great names from England's past tumble out one after the other. Henry VIII takes the English out of the Catholic fold. His daughter, Elizabeth, defeats the Spanish Armada of 1588. The arrogance of Charles I leads him to the scaffold. Civil War and Puritanism follow, led by the intrepid Oliver Cromwell.

From the brilliant pen of Agatha Christie comes the first novel in her Tommy and Tuppence mystery series featuring the beloved sleuthing duo—now a movie on both Acorn TV and PBS. Tommy and Tuppence are young, in love… and flat broke. Restless for excitement, they decide to embark on a daring...