History

Thanks to Shakespeare, the name Macbeth has become a byword for political ambition realised by bloody violence. Fiona Watson has uncovered, buried beneath the layers of myth, a history that is entirely different from, but just as extraordinary as, that recounted by Shakespeare. As ruler of Alba (Scotland) Macbeth sat on one of the longest-established thrones in Western Europe. It is true that he killed Duncan, the previous king, but this was the normal, if brutal, method of regime change in Dark Age Scotland. The reality is that Ma... read more

Captain Scott perished with four of his fellow explorers on their return from the South Pole in March 1912. Almost immediately the myth was founded, based on Scott's diaries, turning him into an icon of courage in the face of impossible circumstances. But during the final months of that journey Scott also took a series of breathtaking photographs: panoramas of the continent, superb depictions of mountains and formations of ice and snow, and photographs of the explorers on the polar trail. But these photos have never been seen - ini... read more

How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? Here at last is an intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature. First published 2005.

Lucrezia Borgia - an infamous murderess or simply the victim of bad press? Lucrezia Borgia's name has echoed through history as a byword for evil - a poisoner who committed incest with her natural father, Pope Alexander VI, and with her brother, Cesare Borgia. Long considered the most ruthless of Italian Renaissance noblewomen, her tarnished reputation has prevailed long since her own lifetime. In this definitive biography, a work of huge scholarship and erudition, Sarah Bradford gives a fascinating account of Lucrezia's life in al... read more

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely in his own study at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some... read more

In 1797, Lucia, a beautiful statesman's daughter was married off to a powerful Venetian, only to be caught up in the turbulence of Napoleon's march. This is her story, from dazzling young hostess in Habsburg Vienna, lady-in-waiting at the court of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais in Milan, single mother in Paris during the fall of Napoleon's Empire to Byron's hard-fisted landlady during the poet's stay in Venice.

The definitive biography of the world's most important body of water - the Atlantic.
One hundred and ninety million years ago, the shifting of two of the world's tectonic plates led to the creation of an immense chasm. This giant gash in the flanks of the planet slowly opened up and eventually evolved into the most important and most travelled ocean in our world. In this utterly original biography, Simon Winchester explores the life of the Atlantic; its birth, its relationship with mankind, and what lies in store for... read more

'The whites want war and we will give it to them' - Sitting Bull. This is the archetypal story of the American West. Whether it is cast as a tale of unmatched bravery in the face of impossible odds or of insane arrogance receiving its rightful comeuppance, Custer's Last Stand continues to captivate the imagination. Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly reconstructs the build-up to the Battle of the Little Big Horn through to the final eruption of violence. Two legendary figures dominate the events: George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bul... read more

Classicist and poet Robert Graves' superb two-volume retelling of the Greek myths for a modern audience has been regarded for over fifty years as the definitive version. Drawing on the entire canon of ancient literature, Graves weaves together all the elements of every myth into a single harmonious narrative. Ideal for the first time reader, it is also accompanied by commentaries, cross-references, variants and explanations that make it equally valuable as a work of scholarly reference. The result is a dazzling and comprehensive ac... read more

A history of the architectural heritage of Gisborne's commercial district.

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying battles and wars than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did these normal activities take place but at home. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. With the irresistibl... read more

The British Museum is home to a remarkable collection of treasures from around the world, including its famous Egyptian mummies, the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone and the Sutton Hoo helmet. Looking after them are some 800 staff who maintain the galleries, plan major exhibitions, restore precious objects and manage a flow of 4.5 million visitors each year. Rupert Smith has been granted special access to the huge variety of people who work in the Museum - from its expert curators and the conservators who preserve the collection fo... read more

Charles II was thirty when he crossed the Channel in fine May weather in 1660. His Restoration was greeted with maypoles and bonfires, like spring after long years of Cromwell's rule. But there was no going back, no way he could 'restore' the old. Certainty had vanished. The divinity of kingship fled with his father's beheading. 'Honour' was now a word tossed around in duels. 'Providence' could no longer be trusted. As the country was rocked by plague, fire and war, people searched for new ideas by which to live. Exactly ten years ... read more

'"The QI Book of the Dead" is a book about life. What an awful thing life is. It's like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless' - Gustave Flaubert. Around 90 billion people have existed since the human race began. From this huge number, the bestselling QI team selected 600 of the finest examples of our species and researched them in depth, distilling this immense banquet of life into an exquisite tasting menu of six-dozen crisp, racy mini-biographies, where the internationally and immortall... read more

Our world is governed by the numbers generated by the accounts of nations and corporations. We depend on these numbers to direct our governments, our institutions, corporations, economies, societies. But where did they come from and how did they become so powerful? The answer to these questions begins in the Dark Ages in northern Italy with a new form of record keeping perfected by the merchants of Venice called double-entry bookkeeping. The story of double entry stars a Renaissance monk, mathematician, magician and constant compan... read more

Do we really care about each other less than we did in the past? This myth-destroying book shows that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less, not more, violent from prehistory to today. Even the twentieth century, commonly perceived as the most brutal, is part of this trend. Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage', and the Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, and ranging over everything from the Enlightenment to warfare, art to religion, Steven Pinker argues that modernity and i... read more

Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and Map of a Nation is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it. The Ordnance Survey's history is one of political revolutions, rebellions and regional unions that altered the shape and identity of the United Kingdom over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's ... read more

'Her superb research and sympathetic reconstructions of 19th century Scotland and Australia bring to life a long-forgotten but fascinating group of women.' - Sian Rees, author of The Floating Brothel In the early 19th century crofters and villagers streamed into the burgeoning cities of Scotland, settling in the crowded and damp tenements of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Orphan girls, single mothers, women with feckless husbands and widows all struggled to feed and clothe themselves, and were left with few options other than theft and pro... read more

An unforgettable exploration of a country and its literature. When Rachel Polonsky went to live in Moscow, she found an apartment block in Romanov Street, once a residence of the Soviet elite. One of those ghostly neighbours was Stalin's henchman Vyacheslav Molotov. In his former apartment, Rachel Polonsky discovered his library and an old magic lantern. Molotov - ruthless apparatchik, participant in the collectivizations and the Great Purge - was also an ardent bibliophile. Molotov's library and his magic lantern became the prism... read more

One night in 1974, a young Frenchman secretly - and illegally - rigged a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. At daybreak, he gave the high-wire performance of all time, making eight crossings over the course of an hour, 110 floors up above the earth, as a hundred thousand people gathered on the ground to watch. In "To Reach the Clouds", Philippe Petit re-creates a six-year quest to realise his dream, an adventure as thrilling as the walk itself. In an unforgettable memoir he tells the story of how he conspi... read more