Pitt the Elder: Man of War
by Edward Pearce

This remarkable book opens at the dawn of the British Empire - with the great sea battle at Quiberon Bay where French ships, intended for the 1759 inv...

Tiepolo Pink
by Roberto Calasso

The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, often covering vas...

The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
by Philip Ball

* All human cultures seem to make music - today and through history. But why they do so, why music can excite deep passions, and how we make sense of ...

The Hidden Landscape: A Journey into the Geological Past
by Richard Fortey

'I travelled to Haverfordwest to get to the past. From Paddington Station a Great Western locomotive took me on a journey westwards from London furthe...

The Future History of the Arctic
by Charles Emmerson

'For most of us the Arctic is, above all, an idea. It cannot be mapped, it can only be described. Cold, isolation, emptiness, white, pristine-these ar...

Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party
by Martin Pugh

* Appearing at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! provides an original and challenging interpretation of Labou...

The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents
by Alex Butterworth

* The last third of the nineteenth century saw the world in flux. Science vied with religion to represent the soul of man, and technological advances ...

The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War
by Ben Shephard

* Surprisingly early in the Second World War - long before an Allied victory was assured - people began to plan for its aftermath. They were haunted b...

Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History
by Nick Bunker

* At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the Northern Hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Great Lakes, the com...

Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940
by Paul Addison and Jeremy A Crang

* From May to September 1940, during a period that saw some of the most dramatic events of the war - the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britai...