History

Belfast History Tour offers an insight into the fascinating history of the capital city of Northern Ireland. Author Aidan Campbell (read more)

Belfast History Tour offers an insight into the fascinating history of the capital city of Northern Ireland. Author Aidan Campbell guides us around its well-known streets and buildings, showing how its famous landmarks used to look and how they have changed over the years as well as exploring its lesser-known sights and hidden corners. With the help of a handy location map, readers are invited to follow a timeline of events and discover for themselves the changing face of Belfast. (hide)

Beneath the Killing Fields of the Western Front still lies a hidden landscape of industrialised conflict virtually untouched since (read more)

Beneath the Killing Fields of the Western Front still lies a hidden landscape of industrialised conflict virtually untouched since 1918. This subterranean world is an ambiguous environment filled with material culture that that objectifies the scope and depth of human interaction with the diverse conflict landscapes of modern war. Covering the military reasoning for taking the war underground, as well as exploring the way that human beings interacted with these extraordinary alien environments, this book provides a more all-encompassing overview of the Western Front.

The underground war was intrinsic to trench warfare and involved far more than simply trying to destroy the enemy's trenches from below. It also served as a home to thousands of men, protecting them from the metallic landscapes of the surface. With the aid of cutting edge fieldwork conducted by the author in these subterranean locales, this book combines military history, archaeology and anthropology together with primary data and unique imagery of British, French, German and American underground defences in order to explore the realities of subterranean warfare on the Western Front, and the effects on the human body and mind that living and fighting underground inevitably entailed.

Pub Date:
30/11/2016 (hide)

From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative (read more)

From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative history of two conflicts which have overshadowed the beginning of the 21st century. Inextricably linked to the ongoing 'War on Terror', the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated more than a decade of international politics, and their influence is felt to this day. Blood, Metal and Dust is the first military history to offer a comprehensive overview of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing in-depth accounts of the operations undertaken by both US and UK forces. (hide)

Published on 01/09/2015: It is time for a new book about bog bodies: the number of known bodies is growing. Lindow Man, the famous (read more)

Published on 01/09/2015: It is time for a new book about bog bodies: the number of known bodies is growing. Lindow Man, the famous Pete Marsh discovered in Cheshire in the 1980s, has been joined by new finds from Ireland and elsewhere. Who were these unfortunate people, and why were they killed? Archaeologists, armed with the latest analytical techniques, are today investigating these cold cases to reveal much about our distant past.

Forensic science allows us to deduce the age, physical condition, status, cause and time of death of these ancient victims, helping to answer the fundamental questions that they pose: were these people executed, simply murdered, or victims of human sacrifice? Who selected them? Who delivered the killing blow, and why? Drawing on all the latest evidence and research, Miranda Aldhouse-Green has written an engrossing detective story, uncovering the hidden truths behind these murder mysteries. (hide)

Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau (read more)

Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a massive armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of one-and-a half-million: to hold them in camps or confine them in villages ringed with barbed wire, to treat and portray them as sub-human savages.

From 1952 until the end of the war in 1960 tens of thousands of detainees - and possibly hundreds of thousands - died from the combined effects of exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. Until now these events have remained untold, largely because the British government in Kenya destroyed most of its files. For the last eight years Caroline Elkins has conducted exhausted research to piece together the story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors. (hide)

The British Empire had a rich, varied and controversial history, commonly perceived to have spanned 500 years from the era of Columbus (read more)

The British Empire had a rich, varied and controversial history, commonly perceived to have spanned 500 years from the era of Columbus and his voyages of discovery to the break up of the Empire after the Second World War. Many statements are made about this era that shaped our nation, but what are the stories behind these facts? Which are true and which are merely beliefs that have grown into fact? Jem Duducu takes us on a whirlwind tour of the Empire and its history, condensing the gigantic story into easy-to-read, bitesize sections. He examines some of the most important aspects of the Empire, from exploration and discovery in the era of Elizabeth I, to the Slave Trade, to the eventual decline after the Second World War.

A compact history book that is easy to pick up. You are guaranteed to impress your friends with your new-found knowledge. (hide)

British Summer Time Begins is about summer holidays of the mid-twentieth century and how they were spent, as recounted to Ysenda (read more)

British Summer Time Begins is about summer holidays of the mid-twentieth century and how they were spent, as recounted to Ysenda Maxtone-Graham in vividly remembered detail by people who were there. Through this prism, it paints a revealing portrait of twentieth-century Britain in summertime: how we were, how families functioned, what houses and gardens and streets were like, what journeys were like, and what people did all day in their free time. It explores their expectations, hopes, fears and habits, the rules or lack of rules under which they lived, their happiness and sadness, their sense of being treasured or neglected - all within living memory, from pre-war summers to the late 1970s. (hide)

BRIXMIS (British Commander-in-Chief's Mission to the Group Soviet Forces of Occupation in Germany) is one of the most covert elite (read more)

BRIXMIS (British Commander-in-Chief's Mission to the Group Soviet Forces of Occupation in Germany) is one of the most covert elite units of the British Army. They were dropped in behind `enemy lines' ten months after the Second World War had ended and continued with their intelligence-gathering missions until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. During this period Berlin was a hotbed of spying between East and West. (hide)

Opening with the notorious bonfires of 'un-German' and Jewish literature in 1933 that offered such a clear signal of Nazi intentions, (read more)

Opening with the notorious bonfires of 'un-German' and Jewish literature in 1933 that offered such a clear signal of Nazi intentions, Burning the Books takes us on a 3000-year journey through the destruction of knowledge and the fight against all the odds to preserve it. Richard Ovenden, director of the world-famous Bodleian Library, explains how attacks on libraries and archives have been a feature of history since ancient times but have increased in frequency and intensity during the modern era.
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A brand new history of the Dambusters raid from best-selling and critically acclaimed military historian, Max Hastings. Operation (read more)

A brand new history of the Dambusters raid from best-selling and critically acclaimed military historian, Max Hastings. Operation Chastise, the destruction of the Mohne and Eder dams in north-west Germany by the RAF's 617 Squadron on the night of 16/17 May 1943, was an epic that has passed into Britain's national legend. Max Hastings grew up embracing the story, the classic 1955 movie and the memory of Guy Gibson, the 24-year-old wing-commander who led the raid.

In the 21st Century, however, he urges that we should see the dambusters in much more complex shades. The aircrew's heroism was entirely real, as was the brilliance of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the `bouncing bombs'. But commanders who promised their young fliers that success could shorten the war fantasised as ruthlessly as they did about the entire bomber offensive.
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