Showing titles in Great Britain

London, 1938. Alma Fielding, an ordinary young woman, begins to experience supernatural events in her suburban home. Nandor Fodor - a Jewish Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical research - begins to investigate. In doing so, he discovers a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss - and the foreshadowing of a nation’s worst fears. As the spectre of fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed.

The last Plantagenet king remains one of England's most famous and controversial monarchs. There are few parallels in English history that can match the drama of Richard III's reign, witnessed in its full bloody intensity. A dedicated brother and loyal stalwart to the Yorkist dynasty for most of his early life, Richard's personality was forged in the tribulation of exile and the brutality of combat.

At the outbreak of WW2, the British monarchy was in a state of turmoil. The previous king, Edward VIII, had abdicated the throne, leaving his unprepared and terrified brother Bertie to become George VI. Meanwhile, as the now-Duke of Windsor awaited the decree that would allow him to marry his mistress Wallis Simpson, he took an increasing interest in the expansionist plans of the Führer of Germany.

After two decades of relative peace following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the Brexit referendum in 2016 reopened the Northern Ireland question. In this thoughtful and engaging book, Feargal Cochrane considers the region's troubled history, from the struggle for Irish independence in the 19th century to the present.

Early in the morning of 6 May 1840, on an ultra-respectable Mayfair street, a footman answered the door to a panic-stricken maid from a nearby house. Her elderly master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with his throat cut so deeply that the head was almost severed. The whole of London, from monarch to street urchins, was gripped by the gory details of the Russell murder, but behind it was another story, a work of fiction, and a fierce debate about censorship and morality.

More than 400 years after her death, Mary Queen of Scots remains one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history. Antonia Fraser's classic biography of her won the James Tait Prize when it was first published in 1969. It became an international best-seller and was translated into nine languages.

The United Kingdom is an ancient land steeped in history and tradition, filled with prehistoric ruins, majestic castles, and a countryside sculpted from millennia of human habitation. Its rolling countryside is dotted with prehistoric burial mounds and stone circles. Medieval churches have elaborate stained glass windows and gruesome carvings, reflecting a mixture of hope and darkness. Every hamlet and village has tales that go back centuries, and folk festivals with roots in pagan times. Thus, it is not surprising that many believe the area is filled with ghosts.

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

In 1951, the Festival of Britain commissioned a series of short guides they dubbed ‘handbooks for the explorer’. Their aim was to encourage readers to venture out beyond the capital and on to ‘the roads and the by-roads’ to see Britain as a ‘living country’. Yet these 13 guides did more than celebrate the rural splendour of this ‘island nation’: they also made much of Britain’s industrial power and mid-century ambition. Armed with these About Britain guides, historian Tim Cole takes to the roads to find out what has changed and what has remained the same.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time of personal monarchy, when the close friendship or petty feuding between kings and queens could determine the course of history. The Capetians of France and the Angevins of England waged war, made peace, and intermarried. In this lively history, Catherine Hanley traces the great clashes, and occasional friendships, of the two dynasties. Along the way, she emphasizes the fascinating and influential women of the houses—including Eleanor of Aquitaine—and shows how personalities and familial bonds shaped the fate of two countries.

There's nothing the British love quite as much as their dogs. From hunting to our hearths, and from herding sheep to guiding humans, our dogs have accompanied us through centuries of change, and that special relationship is still evolving today. So, just what is it that makes our bond so special? In this fascinating adventure across Britain, Clare Balding explores our unique heritage of canine tradition and meets just some of the many people who live, work and innovate with their dogs.

During the first millennium AD the most northerly part of Britain evolved into the country known today as Scotland. The transition was a long process of social and political change driven by the ambitions of powerful warlords. At first these men were tribal chiefs, Roman generals, or rulers of small kingdoms.

‘He invented a whole cat world’ declared H. G. Wells of Louis Wain, the Edwardian artist whose anthropomorphic kittens made him a household name. His drawings were irresistible but Catland was more than the creation of one eccentric imagination. It was an attitude – a way of being in society while discreetly refusing to follow its rules. As cat capitalism boomed in the spectacular Edwardian age, prize animals changed hands for hundreds of pounds and a new industry sprung up to cater for their every need. Cats were no longer basement-dwelling pest-controllers, but stylish cultural subversives.

The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’ magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. This final volume charts the decline and dissolution of what was once the largest empire the world had known. From the first signs of decay in the imperial ambition in the Boer Wars, through the global shifts in power evident in the two World Wars, it offers a perspective that is honest, evocative, and occasionally elegiac.

The six true-crime stories included in this collection are dark and chilling, and will leave you with a new understanding of just how fragile the human mind can be.

Andrew Marr's first book tells the distinctive story of Scottish politics - now updated with a new introductory chapter. "We may be about to see a new country - indeed, two new countries, emerging on these islands. Half a lifetime ago, I sat down to write this book as a work of history. As it's aged, it's become current affairs."

It's a story of how the shock of defeat propelled an unlikely group of renegades into the frontline of the war. An adventure that reaches back from the trenches of the Western Front to high piracy in the deserts of North Africa to the final assault on Germany. It's a story that comes together in the corridors of headquarters, on long nights at the long bar in Shepherd's Hotel in Cairo, and on the deadliest battlefields in history, around a cast of insubordinate mavericks who didn't fit into the tight military hierarchy.

Beginning with the death of Edward I in 1307 and ending with the deposition of Richard II in 1399, Sceptred Isle follows the experiences of the last Plantagenets, uncovering lesser-known voices and untold stories along the way. Through the epic drama of regicide, war, the prolonged spectre of the Black Death, religious antagonism, revolt and the end of a royal dynasty, we encounter a fractured monarchy, the birth of the struggle between Europeanism and nationalism, social rebellion and a global pandemic.

In The Temple and the Lodge, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh reveal the survival and evolution of a world-changing order through the birth of the Masonic lodge. Recounting the brutal events in the 14th century that led to the sudden disappearance of the Knights Templar - a powerful military and banking order founded in 1119 and active in the Crusades - the authors document the Templars' reappearance in the court of excommunicate Scottish king Robert the Bruce.

Since 1066, when William the Conqueror took the throne, English and Scottish kings have sired at least 150 children out of wedlock. Many were acknowledged at court and founded dynasties of their own. Others were only acknowledged grudgingly or not at all. In the 20th century, this trend for royals to father illegitimate children continued, but the parentage, while highly probable, has not been officially recognized. This book is a genuinely fresh approach to British kings and queens, examining their lives and times through the unfamiliar perspective of their illegitimate children.