History

The battlecruiser is perceived by many as the most glamorous of warships, remembered for its triumphs and tragedies in both world (read more)

The battlecruiser is perceived by many as the most glamorous of warships, remembered for its triumphs and tragedies in both world wars. Often forgotten are its lineal ancestors, the big cruisers that were constructed as capital ships for distant waters, as commerce raiders, and as fast scouts for the battlefleet during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth. In this new book by bestselling author Aidan Dobson, the 200 or so big cruisers that were built for the world's navies from 1865 are described and analysed in detail.

The type came into being in the 1860s when the French built a series of cruising ironclads to project its power in the Far East. Britain followed suit as did Russia. By the 1890s the general adoption of these fast, heavily-armed and moderately armoured vessels ushered in the golden age of the big cruiser. (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)

Between Two Worlds is a story teeming with people on the move, making decisions, indulging or resisting their desires and dreams. (read more)

Between Two Worlds is a story teeming with people on the move, making decisions, indulging or resisting their desires and dreams. In the seventeenth century a quarter of a million men, women, and children left England's shores for America. Some were explorers and merchants, others soldiers and missionaries; many were fugitives from poverty and persecution.

All, in their own way, were adventurers, risking their lives and fortunes to make something of themselves overseas. They irrevocably changed the land and indigenous peoples they encountered - and their new world changed them. But that was only half the story. (hide)

Who exactly are the intellectuals ? This term is so widely used today that we forget that it is a recent invention, dating from the (read more)

Who exactly are the intellectuals ? This term is so widely used today that we forget that it is a recent invention, dating from the late nineteenth century. In Birth of the Intellectuals, the renowned historian and sociologist Christophe Charle shows that the term intellectuals first appeared at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and the neologism originally signified a cultural and political vanguard who dared to challenge the status quo. Yet the word, expected to disappear once the political crisis had dissolved, has somehow endured.

At times it describes a social group, and at others a way of seeing the social world from the perspective of universal values that challenges established hierarchies. But why did intellectuals survive when the events that gave rise to this term had faded into the past? To answer this question, it is necessary to show how the crisis of the old representations, the unprecedented expansion of the intellectual professions and the vacuum left by the decline of the traditional ruling class created favourable conditions for the collective affirmation of intellectuals . This also explains why the literary or academic avant garde traditionally reluctant to engage gradually reconciled themselves with political activists and developed new ways to intervene in the field of power outside of traditional political channels. (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)

Border Fury provides a fascinating account of the period of Anglo-Scottish Border conflict from the Edwardian invasions of 1296 until (read more)

Border Fury provides a fascinating account of the period of Anglo-Scottish Border conflict from the Edwardian invasions of 1296 until the Union of the Crowns under James VI of Scotland, James I of England in 1603. It looks at developments in the art of war during the period, the key transition from medieval to renaissance warfare, the development of tactics, arms, armour and military logistics during the period. All the key personalities involved are profiled and the typology of each battle site is examined in detail with the author providing several new interpretations that differ radically from those that have previously been understood. (hide)

Bradshaw's descriptive railway handbook of Great Britain and Ireland. Enlarged facsimile edition of an original 1861 printing. Bradshaw's (read more)

Bradshaw's descriptive railway handbook of Great Britain and Ireland. Enlarged facsimile edition of an original 1861 printing. Bradshaw's original tourist guide to rail travel, the star of the television series Great British Railway Journey.

Produced in 1861 at the time that the railways became essential for tourism as well as infrastructure, this addition to the collection provides a chance to explore what is now common, through the eyes of a nation for whom rail travel was still a novelty of the age. This enlarged facsimile provides a fascinating view of railway travel in the nineteenth century. (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)

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)