Countries & Regions

Wayne Barnes – one of the most-experienced international referees in history and criminal barrister to boot – uniquely lifts the lid on a lifetime of trying to keep the biggest names in the sport on best behaviour.

There aren’t many people who can say they’ve been the thirty-first man on the pitch during a World Cup humdinger, Grand Slam decider or Premiership and European Cup final; listened to the sobs of a 20-stone prop as he tries to belt out his national anthem; heard the crunch of bones after some of the mightiest hits known to the game; or been yards away from the greatest players of the last twenty years, doing almost impossible things with a rugby ball – especially when you’re a working-class lad from the Forest of Dean, wondering how you ever got there in the first place.

Candid, humble and warmly told, Throwing the Book is a definitive account of what it means to be a rugby referee and a love letter to the sport that has provided Wayne with so much. Covering his childhood days, family life, career highs and lows, side-step into law, as well as what’s next in store for Wayne both on and off the pitch, this book reveals the man behind the referee for the very first time.

Serious when it needs to be, but also rich in good humour and humanity, Throwing the Book is a memoir to remember.

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THE NO 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER NOW FEATURING EXCLUSIVE MATERIAL ABOUT CHARLES III’s CORONATION WITH ADDED PHOTOGRAPHS

A personal account of the life and character of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, from the writer who knew her family best

‘Compelling . . . Fascinating’ DAILY MAIL
‘The writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals’ THE TIMES
‘The book overflows with nuggets of insider knowledge’ TELEGRAPH
Paints a unique picture of the remarkable woman who reigned for seven decades. Fascinating insights’ HELLO!
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Gyles Brandreth first met the Queen in 1968, when he was twenty.

Over the next fifty years he met her many times, both at public and at private events. Through his friendship with the Duke of Edinburgh, he was given privileged access to Elizabeth II.

He kept a record of all those encounters, and his conversations with the Queen over the years, his meetings with her family and friends, and his observations of her at close quarters are what make this very personal account of her extraordinary life uniquely fascinating.

From her childhood in the 1920s to the era of Harry and Meghan in the 2020s, from her war years at Windsor Castle to her death at Balmoral, this is both a record of a tumultuous century of royal history and a truly intimate portrait of a remarkable woman.

Enjoy this special edition now featuring an exclusive postscript about King Charles III’s Coronation with photographs.
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Praise for Gyles Brandreth’s bestselling royal writing:

‘Beautifully written book. I have read many other books about Philip but this is the best’ DAILY EXPRESS

‘Brilliant, totally inspiring . . . It’s a joy to read a book that comes from a perspective of fondness’ KIRSTIE ALLSOPP, THE TIMES

‘As a sparkling celebration of Prince Philip, the book will be hard to beat’ TELEGRAPH

‘So readable and refreshing even after the millions of words that have been written about Prince Philip in the past couple of weeks’ THE TIMES

‘Brilliant . . . There is so much in this book you won’t find anywhere else’ LORRAINE

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WATERSTONES’ BEST BOOKS OF 2023: SPORT
‘Gripping’ Roger Alton, Sunday Times
The inside story of how England transformed the way Test cricket is played.

After one win in 17 by the start of the summer of 2022, England needed something new. For 145 years, Test cricket was played mainly in one way: batters laid a foundation before daring to attack – and, even then, only if circumstances were favourable. Bowlers tried to bowl maidens, calculating that they would eventually force an error. But the old ways weren’t working.

Then came ‘Bazball’, driven by new head coach in Brendon (‘Baz’) McCullum and captain Ben Stokes. What followed was one of the most thrilling revolutions in any sport, as a rudderless and ridiculed England Test team became – almost overnight – cricket’s most talked-about phenomenon. They embarked on a brand of Test cricket that breathed life into an ailing format, breaking records as they went on to win 11 out 13 Tests before taking on world champions Australia in a dramatic Ashes contest that ended 2-2.

Lawrence Booth and Nick Hoult, two of the game’s most respected writers, had a ringside seat for all the action. Their book will reveal how Bazball swept the England dressing room and transformed the team’s fortunes. Told via a mixture of interviews with the protagonists and insights gathered by the authors during their own close-up reporting, Bazball is an unmissable read. As Rob Key said after he appointed McCullum: ‘Buckle up and get ready for the ride.’

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In this sensational exposé of British Intelligence’s top informer in the upper ranks of the IRA, Richard O’Rawe delivers the most definitive account yet of the Troubles’ most enigmatic, notorious and sinister figure, Freddie Scappaticci.

Codenamed Stakeknife, from the late 1970s through to his eventual exposure in 2003 he was the ‘jewel in the crown’ of a British infiltration system designed to cause mayhem and chaos in the IRA’s military operations. O’Rawe gained unprecedented access to Scappaticci’s former comrades, who reveal extraordinary details of the inner workings of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit. Headed by Scappaticci, this secretive group was known locally as the ‘Nutting Squad’ owing to its fearsome reputation for the abduction, interrogation, torture and execution of volunteers suspected of working for the British or the RUC. The political scandal at the heart of this story is that Scappaticci’s intelligence handlers were aware of almost every abduction and execution he carried out prior to it taking place; a scandal that became the subject of the British government sponsored inquiry, Operation Kenova.

In this compelling and extraordinary story of state-sanctioned murder and extreme moral ambiguity in the overriding quest for the protection of ‘national security’, the truth is truly stranger than fiction.

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They were told to hold the fort. They did far more than that.

When the Second World War broke out, the task of keeping society afloat fell on the shoulders of the women left behind. Women the world over stepped into boots they’d never worn before – becoming engineers, labourers and intelligence experts. Their houses were razed to the ground, they fled their enemy-occupied countries and they picked up guns to defend their homes, but their stories are rarely told.

Remarkable Women of the Second World War is a collection of twelve of these stories, all carefully gathered and retold by Victoria Panton Bacon. These are the stories of Galina Russian navigator who flew on the front line for the Red Army alongside the feared Night Witches; Ena, an ATA engineer who didn’t think much of the Spitfires and Hurricanes she worked on; and Lee, a Jewish girl who fled Frankfurt and arrived in Coventry on a Kindertransport train. These women weren’t remarkable because of high rank or status, but because of their grit, resilience and determination. These are the tales of ordinary women who did extraordinary things.

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‘I have seen the player who will inherit my place in Argentine football and his name is Messi’ Diego Maradona

FULLY UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE 2022 WORLD CUP TRIUMPH & MESSI’S TRANSFER TO INTER MIAMI

As Lionel Messi raised the World Cup triumphantly into the air, the world watched on in awe. Messi’s final peak conquered; his final dream achieved. It was the fairy tale ending to a glittering career. Yet despite delivering Argentina their third World Cup, Messi’s time at Paris Saint-Germain came to a dramatic conclusion, and Miami awaited the Argentinian legend.

Guillem Balagué has had unprecedented access to Messi’s inner circle including the player himself: his coaches, team-mates and family. From tracing the origins of Messi’s precocious talent in Rosario, Argentina, to chronicling his peerless seventeen-season career at Barcelona, and his tumultuous Parisian adventure, Guillem takes us behind-the-scenes of Messi’s World Cup triumph and his long-desired move to the MLS. This is an epic, authoritative and compelling account of an enigmatic footballing genius.

‘I can tell my grandkids one day that I coached Lionel Messi’ Pep Guardiola

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A new, updated, revised edition of JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY, the wider history of the Middle East through the lens of the Holy City, from King David to today.

The story of Jerusalem is the story of the world.

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilisations. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ‘centre of the world’ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? Drawing on new archives and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.

A classic of modern literature, this is not only the epic story of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and co-existence, but also a freshly-updated history of the entire Middle East, from King David to the twenty-first century, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the wars of today. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem – the only city that exists twice – in heaven and on earth.

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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 later Charles II would stand again on the shore at Dover, laying the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin, Louis XIV.

The Restoration decade was one of experiment: from the science of the Royal Society to the startling role of credit and risk, from the shocking licence of the court to the failed attempts at toleration of different beliefs. Negotiating all these, Charles II, the ‘slippery sovereign’, played odds and took chances, dissembling and manipulating his followers. The theatres were restored, but the king was the supreme actor. Yet while his grandeur, his court and his colourful sex life were on display, his true intentions lay hidden.

A Gambling Man is a portrait of Charles II, exploring his elusive nature through the lens of these ten vital years – and a portrait of a vibrant, violent, pulsing world, racked with plague, fire and war, in which the risks the king took forged the fate of the nation, on the brink of the modern world.

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‘An important and timely book.’ – Philippa Gregory
Joan of Navarre was the richest woman in the land, at a time when war-torn England was penniless.

Eleanor Cobham was the wife of a weak king’s uncle – and her husband was about to fall from grace.

Jacquetta Woodville was a personal enemy of Warwick the Kingmaker, who was about to take his revenge.

Elizabeth Woodville was the widowed mother of a child king, fighting Richard III for her children’s lives.

In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives of these four unique women, looking at how rumours of witchcraft brought them to their knees in a time when superstition and suspicion was rife.

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Test your knowledge of kings and queens by attempting to answer some 300 questions across 25 topics, from early kingdoms to the realms of England, Scotland and Wales and the British Royal Family of the modern era.

The topics range from Coronations to Sports and Pastimes – from the first English queen crowned in her own right to the only royal to have won an Olympic Medal. Do you know which country’s national anthem uses the same music as ‘God Save the King’? Whose corpse is said to have exploded in its coffin? What was Queen Victoria’s first name? These hundreds of puzzles are accompanied by a wealth of illustrations from the collections of the British Library. Accept the challenge and see how much more you can learn.

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We talked to leading rugby journalists, we talked to ex-players, we talked to fans and we looked at the playing records of all the stand-out internationals to have played rugby for Ireland before compiling a list of the 50 greatest Irish rugby players in the sport s history.

Many players were impossible to leave out such as Rory Best, Mike Gibson, Jamie Heaslip, Jack Kyle, Paul O’Connell, Brian O Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara, Jonnie Sexton and Keith Wood. While Lions’ legends such as Willie John McBride, Tom Kiernan, Syd Millar and Tony O’Reilly were also a shoo-in.

There is also a hefty selection of modern-day players including Keith Earls, Tadhg Furlong, Cian Healy, Rob Kearney, Conor Murray, Peter O’Mahoney and the new whizkid winger Jacob Stockdale. While there is also space for the great characters of the game, none more so than Peter ‘The Claw’ Clohessy, Willie Duggan and Moss Keane, who didn’t win the most caps but were fans’ favourites because of the spirit in which they played.

With a foreword by Ollie Campbell, the Ireland and British and Irish Lions flyhalf, each entry lists the key facts, statistics and achievements that help show why the selected players are part of the game s elite.

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One of the Sunday Times paperbacks of the Year 2020
One of the Financial Times best books of 2020

‘Totally gripping’– Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘Pilecki is perhaps one of the greatest unsung heroes of the second world war … this insightful book is likely to be the definitive version of this extraordinary life’ — Economist

Would you sacrifice yourself to save thousands of others?

In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interned at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich.

His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre — Auschwitz.

It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi’s terrifying plans. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities out of Auschwitz. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust – yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.

This is the first major account to draw on unpublished family papers, newly released archival documents and exclusive interviews with surviving resistance fighters to show how he brought the fight to the Nazis at the heart of their evil designs.

The result is an enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history.

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The royal family: the quintessential British institution or an antiquated, overindulged drain on the taxpayer?

For all their foibles and idiosyncrasies, the royal family wield considerable influence and yet rather than facing the scrutiny their position merits, they enjoy sickeningly obsequious coverage which reports their activities with breathless awe.

And What Do You Do? is a provocative and hard-hitting analysis, exposing the royals extravagant use of public money and the highly dubious behaviour of some among their number. Former Minister of State and current Privy Counsellor Norman Baker breaks ranks to explore the wider role the royals play in society, including the link with House of Lords reform and the constitutional position of the monarch.

Now fully updated to include new material on Prince Andrew, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, this irreverent and uncompromising account asks urgent questions about the future of the world s most famous royal family.

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