Great Britain History

The Fens is Britain's most distinctive, complex, man-made and least understood landscape. Francis Pryor has lived in, excavated, farmed, walked and loved the Fen Country for more than 40 years: its levels and drains, its soaring churches and magnificent medieval buildings. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist.

Discover the fascinating lives of the iconic figures that have shaped Scotland from the early 19th century to the present day. Explore the rich history of Scotland's cultural, social and political landscape, with more than 100 obituaries carefully curated from The Times archive.

The opening of the pioneering Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of the railway network's vital role in changing the face of Britain. Fire & Steam celebrates the vision of the ambitious Victorian pioneers who developed this revolutionary transport system and the navvies who cut through the land to enable a country-wide railway to emerge.

In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the fairy queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed over the centuries. Looking closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition—Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses.

From award-winning author Tim Jeal comes a vivid examination of the six larger-than-life men and one extraordinary woman who set out to find the source of the White Nile in the 19th century.

The first full reappraisal of one of Britain's great fighter aces, this book examines the truth behind Tuck's 1956 biography, Fly for Your Life. It looks at the evidence behind the myths, checks out some of the exaggerated stories and reveals the real Stanford Tuck. In January 1942 Bob Tuck was the top-scoring British fighter ace with an official score of twenty-nine enemy aircraft destroyed. During the Battle of Britain his legendary prowess grew and he was posted to command a leaderless and demoralized squadron, this time flying Hurricanes.

When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier. Since 1900, however, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and—increasingly—Chinese actors. Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the coming century is not what to do about Brussels; it's what to do about Beijing.

Keith Jeffery’s fascinating and revealing account draws on a wealth of archival materials never before seen by any outsider to unveil the inner workings of the world’s first spy agency. Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—or MI6—was born a century ago amid rising fears of foreign military powers, especially Germany. The next 40 years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important—and, until now, largely hidden—role in shaping the history of Europe and the world.

In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China - territory forbidden to foreigners - to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. For All the Tea in China is the remarkable account of Fortune's journeys into China - a thrilling narrative that combines history, geography, botany, natural science, and old-fashioned adventure.

If ever you worry about children today, spare a thought for the people of 19th century Britain, when knife-crime was rife and gangs of children roamed the streets and countryside, committing countless horrendous crimes including murder.

Eagle Days transforms the Luftwaffe’s historical role during the RAF’s ‘Finest Hour’ from a cartoonish antagonist to a multidimensional, flawed-yet-formidable opponent. The narrative contains not just the voices of the air crews who conducted the fighting, but uniquely never-before-translated primary source material of other contemporary eyewitnesses, (Luftwaffe’s paratroopers, anti-aircraft gunners and air signalmen). Eagle Days will offer all fans of this period a refreshing, comprehensive and exciting account of the Luftwaffe’s real experiences during the Battle of Britain.

At the outbreak of World War II, MI6 spymaster Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to set up a top secret operation: German prisoners' cells were to be bugged and listeners installed behind the walls to record and transcribe their private conversations. This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites - and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation.

Now a major motion picture directed by Stephen Frears ( The Queen, High Fidelity) and starring Judi Dench ( Skyfall, Notes on a Scandal) and Steve Coogan ( The Trip, Hamlet 2): the heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years. When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman". Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him.

Educator. Innovator. Inventor. These three words sum up Alexander Graham Bell, one of the greatest scientific men of his era. He is most famous for the invention of the telephone, a device which he predicted would transform human society. And it did. But the telephone is just one of the many innovations and inventions that Bell brought into being. A man who epitomizes the word visionary, Alexander Graham Bell predicted the use of light as a medium for transmitting information and how humanity would be transformed by flight. This is his story.

Volume 3 of Hume's great History of England the theme of which is liberty, above all English constitutional development from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Revolution of 1688.

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.

The Lost Flock is the story of the remarkable and rare little horned sheep, known as Orkney Boreray, and the wool-obsessed woman who moved to one of Scotland’s wildest islands to save them.

On November 12, 1588, five young Asian men—led by a twenty-one-year-old called Christopher—traveled up the River Thames to meet Queen Elizabeth I. Christopher’s epic sea voyage had spanned from Japan, via the Philippines, New Spain (Mexico), Java and Southern Africa. On the way, he had already become the first recorded Japanese person in North America. Now Christopher was the first ever Japanese visitor to England, and no other would leave such a legacy for centuries to come.

The Northumbrians have been overlooked by British and global history, but they’ve made astonishing contributions to both. Dan Jackson sets out to recover this lost history, exploring the deep roots of Northumbrian culture - hard work and heavy drinking, sociability and sentimentality, militarism and masculinity - through centuries of border warfare and dangerous industry. He explains what we can learn about Northumbria’s people from its landscape and architecture and revisits the Northumbrian Enlightenment that gave the world the locomotive and the lightbulb.

Über leere Throne kann man eine Menge sagen. In der Geschichte, sowohl in der Antike als auch in der Neuzeit, bedeutete das Fehlen eines Erben und der plötzliche Tod eines geliebten Monarchen immer Probleme. Wenn die Position eines Königs zu vergeben ist, strecken viele begierige Hände sich aus. Thronprätendenten und Möchtegern-Erben, Vettern und Neffen, uneheliche Söhne und Töchter – sie alle traten hervor und erhoben Anspruch auf den Thron. In der Geschichte des mittelalterlichen Englands gab es viele solcher Episoden.