Great Britain

In a country fragmented by Roman withdrawal during the 5th century AD, the employment of Germanic mercenaries by local rulers in Anglo-Saxon Britain was commonplace. These mercenaries became settlers, forcing Romano-British communities into Wales and the West Country. Against a background of spreading Christianity, the struggles of rival British and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were exploited by the Vikings, but eventually contained by the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred of Wessex. His descendants unified the country during the 10th century, however, subsequent weak rule saw its 25-year incorporation into a Danish empire before it finally fell to the Norman invasion of 1066.

Scholars of the early Church have long known that the term ‘Dark Ages’ for the 5th to 11th centuries in Britain refers only to a lack of written sources, and gives a false impression of material culture. The Anglo-Saxon warrior elite were equipped with magnificent armour, influenced by the cultures of the late Romans, the Scandinavian Vendel people, the Frankish Merovingians, Carolingians and Ottonians, and also the Vikings.

In this volume, co-authors Raffaele D’Amato and Stephen Pollington access their extended knowledge to paint a vivid picture of the kings and warlords of the time with the aid of colour illustrations, rare photos and the latest archaeological research.

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Afghanistan was an unwinnable war. As British and American troops withdraw, discover this definitive account that explains why.

It could have been a very different story. British forces could have successfully withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002, having done the job they set out to do: to defeat al-Qaeda. Instead, in the years that followed, Britain paid a devastating price for their presence in Helmand province.

So why did Britain enter, and remain, in an ill-fated war? Why did it fail so dramatically, and was this expedition doomed from the beginning? Drawing on unprecedented access to military reports, government documents and senior individuals, Professor Theo Farrell provides an extraordinary work of scholarship. He explains the origins of the war, details the campaigns over the subsequent years, and examines the West’s failure to understand the dynamics of local conflict and learn the lessons of history that ultimately led to devastating costs and repercussions still relevant today.

‘The best book so far on Britain’s…war in Afghanistan’ International Affairs

‘Masterful, irrefutable… Farrell records all these military encounters with the irresistible pace of a novelist’ Sunday Times

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There can be no doubt that military conflict between France and England dominated European history in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Hundred Years War is of considerable interest both because of its duration and the number of theatres in which it was fought.

Drawing on the latest research for this new edition, Hundred Years War expert Professor Anne Curry examines how the war can reveal much about the changing nature of warfare: the rise of infantry and the demise of the knight; the impact of increased use of gunpowder and the effect of the war on generations of people.

Updated and revised for the new edition, with full-colour maps and 50 new images, this illustrated introduction provides an important reference resource for the academic or student reader as well as those with a general interest in late medieval warfare.

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‘No dry history, Mosquito reads like a thriller… this outstanding book is hard to put down… Unreservedly recommended’ Aviation Historian

‘White immerses the reader in the action from the first page. A must read choice for total aviation people everywhere’ Flight International

‘A captivating history… Rowland White uses the history of these operations to weave stories of courage and fortitude into the story of a great machine’ Daily Telegraph
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Built of lightweight wood, powered by two growling Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, impossibly aerodynamic, headspinningly fast and armed to the teeth, the de Havilland Mosquito was the war-winning wonder that should never have existed: the aircraft the RAF didn’t think it wanted then couldn’t do without.

Flying on operations barely eighteen months after a single prototype was ordered off the drawing board, it was the answer to its pilots’ prayers: a stunningly versatile warplane capable of leaving the Luftwaffe in its wake to attack when and where the enemy was least expecting it.

Excelling as a spyplane, night-fighter and pathfinder for Bomber Command’s heavies the Mossie’s reputation was cemented by a series of daredevil bombing raids across occupied Europe, including on Berlin itself, where only surprise, speed and precision could ensure success.

So when Churchill’s top secret Special Operations Executive needed to destroy the Gestapo HQ in the centre of downtown Copenhagen to prevent a devastating Nazi last stand that might prolong the war for many months, there was only one machine for the job – the Mosquito.

This is the story of that legendary aircraft told through that one impossible mission.

Like Rowland White’s previous books, Mosquito is an unputdownable mix of utterly compelling storytelling, incredible human stories and fascinating technological detail, which sheds never-before-told light on a pivotal mission that helped bring the war to its bloody and brutal close.
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Praise for Mosquito

‘Wonderful detail, intricate research and most importantly, powerful & moving human testimony, ensure the reader is gripped from the first page to the last by this incredible story’ John Nichol

‘Stunning… This is history as it should be written: adrenaline-charged, exciting, impeccably and painstakingly researched with a cast of vividly-drawn characters. Riding through it is among the greatest, most extraordinarily brilliant aircraft of them all: the Mosquito. One of the most gripping works of history I’ve ever read’ James Holland

‘Weaving together the story of its evolution with vivid accounts of the crews that flew it and the Special Operations Executive on the ground, Mosquito is both a tribute to the finest aircraft Britain produced during the war and a page-turning thriller about its use as the world’s first precision aerial weapon’ Tom Petch, author of Speed Aggression Surprise: The Secret Origins of the SAS

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The Sunday Times bestseller

‘One of the most dramatic forgotten chapters of the war, as told in a new book by the incomparable Max Hastings’ DAILY MAIL

In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no longer be fed. Churchill made a personal decision that at all costs, the ‘island fortress’ must be saved. This was not merely a matter of strategy, but of national prestige, when Britain’s fortunes and morale had fallen to their lowest ebb.

The largest fleet the Royal Navy committed to any operation of the western war was assembled to escort fourteen fast merchantmen across a thousand of miles of sea defended by six hundred German and Italian aircraft, together with packs of U-boats and torpedo craft. The Mediterranean battles that ensued between 11 and 15 August were the most brutal of Britain’s war at sea, embracing four aircraft-carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers, scores of destroyers and smaller craft. The losses were appalling: defeat seemed to beckon.
This is the saga Max Hastings unfolds in his first full length narrative of the Royal Navy, which he believes was the most successful of Britain’s wartime services. As always, he blends the ‘big picture’ of statesmen and admirals with human stories of German U-boat men, Italian torpedo-plane crews, Hurricane pilots, destroyer and merchant-ship captains, ordinary but extraordinary seamen.

Operation Pedestal describes catastrophic ship sinkings, including that of the aircraft-carrier Eagle, together with struggles to rescue survivors and salvage stricken ships. Most moving of all is the story of the tanker Ohio, indispensable to Malta’s survival, victim of countless Axis attacks. In the last days of the battle, the ravaged hulk was kept under way only by two destroyers, lashed to her sides. Max Hastings describes this as one of the most extraordinary tales he has ever recounted. Until the very last hours, no participant on either side could tell what would be the outcome of an epic of wartime suspense and courage.

Max Hastings’ book ‘Abyss’ was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 15-05-2023.

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“Masterly … A fascinating tour d’horizon of the Edwardian political scene. This must be a definitive account.” – Professor Jane Ridley, author of George V: Never a Dull Moment

“A tour de force, sympathetic in its treatment of the subject, eminently wise in its judgement and invariably fair in its verdicts. It purrs along like a Rolls-Royce engine.” – Professor T. G. Otte, author of Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey

“This brilliant book from Britain’s most important constitutional historian upends the orthodoxy about the decadent Edwardians. A masterpiece of intelligent history, both forceful and subtle, which transforms how we view not just those most complex Edwardians but also our own equally complex times.” – Professor Richard Aldous, author of The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli

“Brilliant. Instantly the leading history of this turbulent and critical period in Britain’s transition towards a modern democracy.” – Professor Robert Blackburn, King’s College London

“Vernon Bogdanor has the habit of unearthing gems that have been missed by others. He does it again in this magisterial work on post-Gladstonian Britain by challenging some of the long-established myths about this period that deserve to be cast aside.” – Professor Malcolm Murfett, King’s College London

“Professor Bogdanor argues with conviction and sometimes passion but always with judiciousness and in the light of deep reflection. The result is a masterly work which speaks to the politics of our own time.” – Alvin Jackson, Richard Lodge Professor of History, University of Edinburgh

“An extraordinary exploration of a political world whose dynamics continue to shape the future of liberal constitutionalism.” – Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

“Crisp, authoritative and lucid.” – Nicholas Owen, associate professor of politics, University of Oxford

The turbulent years of 1895 to 1914 changed Britain’s political landscape for ever. They saw a transition from aristocratic rule to mass politics and heralded a new agenda which still dominates today. The issues of the period – economic modernisation, social welfare and equality, secondary and technical education, a new role for Britain in the world – were complex and difficult. Indeed, they proved so thorny that despite the efforts of the Edwardians they remain among the most pressing problems we face in the twenty-first century.

The period has often been seen as one of decadence, of the strange death of liberal Britain. In contrast, Vernon Bogdanor believes that the robustness of Britain’s parliamentary and political institutions and her liberal political culture, with the commitment to rational debate and argument, were powerful enough to carry her through one of the most trying periods of her history and so make possible the remarkable survival of liberal Britain.

In this wide-ranging and sometimes controversial survey, one of our pre-eminent political historians dispels the popular myths that have grown up about this critical period in Britain’s story and argues that it set the scene for much that is laudable about our nation today.

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Suppose that everything we think we know about ‘The Victorians’ is wrong? That we have persistently misrepresented the culture of the Victorian era, perhaps to make ourselves feel more satisfyingly liberal and sophisticated? What if they were much more fun than we ever suspected? Matthew Sweet’s Inventing the Victorians has some revelatory – and entertaining – answers for us.

As Sweet shows us in this brilliant study, many of the concepts that strike us as terrifically new – political spin-doctoring, extravagant publicity stunts, hardcore pornography, anxieties about the impact of popular culture upon children – are Victorian inventions. Most of the pleasures that we imagine to be our own, the Victorians enjoyed first: the theme park, the shopping mall, the movies, the amusement arcade, the crime novel and the sensational newspaper report. They were engaged in a well-nigh continuous search for bigger and better thrills. If Queen Victoria wasn’t amused, then she was in a very small minority . . .

Matthew Sweet’s book is an attempt to re-imagine the Victorians; to suggest new ways of looking at received ideas about their culture; to distinguish myth from reality; to generate the possibility of a new relationship between the lives of nineteenth-century people and our own.

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THE IRISH TOP 10 BESTSELLER

A gripping investigation into one of Irish history’s greatest mysteries, Great Hatred reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil.

‘Heart-stopping . . . The book is both forensic and a page-turner, and ultimately deeply tragic, for Ireland as much as for the murder victim.’
MICHAEL PORTILLO

‘Gripping from start to finish. McGreevy turns a forensic mind to a political assassination that changed the course of history, uncovering a trove of unseen evidence in the process.’
ANITA ANAND, author of The Patient Assassin

‘Invaluable.’ IRISH TIMES

‘Intelligent and insightful.’ IRISH INDEPENDENT

On 22 June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson – the former head of the British army and one of those credited with winning the First World War – was shot and killed by two veterans of that war turned IRA members in what was the most significant political murder to have taken place on British soil for more than a century. His assassins were well-educated and pious men. One had lost a leg during the Battle of Passchendaele. Shocking British society to the core, the shooting caused consternation in the government and almost restarted the conflict between Britain and Ireland that had ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty just five months earlier. Wilson’s assassination triggered the Irish Civil War, which cast the darkest of shadows over the new Irish State.

Who ordered the killing? Why did two English-born Irish nationalists kill an Irish-born British imperialist? What was Wilson’s role in the Northern Ireland government and the violence which matched the intensity of the Troubles fifty years later? Why would Michael Collins, who risked his life to sign a peace treaty with Great Britain, want one of its most famous soldiers dead, and how did the Wilson assassination lead to Collins’ tragic death in an ambush two months later?

Drawing upon newly released archival material and never-before-seen documentation, Great Hatred is a revelatory work that sheds light on a moment that changed the course of Irish and British history for ever.

‘McGreevy provides more than the anatomy of a political murder; in reconstructing this era of blood, poverty and wartime trauma, he also gives full expression to the terrible forces that WB Yeats once called the “fanatic heart” and the “great hatred”.’
THE TIMES

‘Thoughtful and well-researched . . . an important and valuable addition to the library of the Irish Revolution.’
PROFESSOR DIARMAID FERRITER, University College Dublin

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But disagreement about the future of the province remains, and for the first time in decades one can now seriously speak of a democratic end to the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain as a foreseeable possibility. The Northern Ireland problem remains a fundamental issue as the United Kingdom recasts its relationship with Europe and the world. In this completely revised edition of his Very Short Introduction Marc Mulholland explores the pivotal moments in Northern Irish history – the rise of republicanism in the 1800s, Home Rule and the civil rights movement, the growth of Sinn Fein and the provisional IRA, and the DUP, before bringing the story up to date, drawing on newly available memoirs by paramilitary militants to offer previously unexplored perspectives, as well as recent work on Nothern Irish gender relations. Mulholland also includes a new chapter on the state of affairs in 21st Century Northern Ireland, considering the question of Irish unity in the light of both Brexit and the approaching anniversary of the 1921 partition, and drawing new lessons for the future.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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WITH AN EXCLUSIVE NEW CHAPTER FOR THE PAPERBACK EDITION

The Amazon No.1 Bestseller
The Sunday Times Bestseller

THE ROYAL BOOK OF THE YEAR
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‘Eye-poppingly revealing. . . impeccable sources, historical heft and canny insights served up with a zingy wit. There are many royal biographers, but few as good as this. She turns gossip into the first draft of history.’ TELEGRAPH

From the Queen’s stoic resolve to the crisis of Meghan and Harry. From the ascendance of Camilla and Kate to the downfall of Andrew. Full of remarkable inside access, The Palace Papers by Sunday Times bestselling author Tina Brown will change how you understand the Royal Family.

‘Clever, well-informed and disgustingly entertaining’ THE TIMES

‘There are royal books, and there are royal books. But The Palace Papers is in a genre of its own’ RADIO TIMES

‘Jaw dropping! What a book . . . if you ever want to feel like a fly on the wall of any of the palaces, this is it.’
LORRAINE KELLY

‘Brown’s prose has the swoosh of an enjoyably OTT ballgown’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘The world’s sharpish and best-informed royal expert’ PIERS MORGAN

‘Riveting and rigorous’ PANDORA SYKES

‘A witty, rip-roaring read . . . full off perceptive and witty observations’ i Newspaper

‘A rollicking ride through recent royal family history . . . Tina Brown’s sparkling prose and eye for detail enliven an entertaining exposé’ OBSERVER

‘The most explosive royal book of the year’ THE SUN

‘Gloriously irreverent, racily written and often very funny. The early chapters on the long affair between Prince Charles and Camilla read like a non-fiction version of Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles’ NEW STATESMAN

‘A motherlode of delectable gossip . . . Brown has produced a work both scholarly and scandalous that makes us think about what the post-Elizabethan world may bring, alternately amusing and horrifying us along the way . . . vivid and richly-embroidered’ INDEPENDENT

‘The devil is in the delicious detail . . . Brown tackles her subjects with the same brio she brought to her years as a highly regarded magazine editor . . . Her access to those who flit around the royals gives her writing an edgy authenticity’ DAILY MAIL

‘Brown thrashes her way through absolutely everything that has happened to the family since the end of the last book in 1997 . . . Charles and Camilla are vividly brought to life in a series of well-researched stories and anecdotes’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘The Palace Papers is a sharp-nibbed observation of a generation of tumult for the House of Windsor, bookended by the deaths of Princess Diana and Prince Philip. It’s a story about media as much as monarchy, and it draws from almost every chapter in Brown’s career in journalism’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘It’s hard to look away as Tina Brown delves into decades’ worth of royal scandals’ GUARDIAN

‘Utter brilliance . . . a rip-roaring read’ SCOTSMAN

‘A brilliant book. Tina Brown has inside knowledge and writes so well’ LADY ANNE GLENCONNER (author of Lady in Waiting)

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‘Never again’, became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Diana’s death. More specifically, there could never be ‘another Diana’ – a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy. Picking up where The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.

Tina Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey that shows the Queen’s stoic resolve as she coped with the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and her partner for seven decades, Prince Philip, and triumphed in her Jubilee years even as the family dramas raged around her. She explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla his queen, the tension between William and Harry who are on ‘different paths’, the ascendance Kate Middleton, the disturbing allegations surrounding Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to ‘step back’ as senior royals. Despite the fragile monarchy’s best efforts, ‘never again’ seems fast approaching.

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Saul David’s Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 is a fascinating look at the most controversial and brutal British imperial conflict of the nineteenth century.

The real story of the Anglo-Zulu war was one of deception, dishonour, incompetence and dereliction of duty by Lord Chelmsford who invaded Zululand without the knowledge of the British Government. But it did not go to plan and there were many political repercussions. Using new material from archives in Britain and South Africa, Saul David blows the lid on this most sordid of imperial wars and comes to a number of startling new conclusions.

‘Saul David’s brilliant and magisterial account must now be regarded as the definitive history of the Zulu War’ Frank McLynn, Literary Review

‘This meticulously detailed book…give[s] a fully rounded and judicious account of this dismal conflict Guardian

‘Fascinating, thrilling, convincing… reads like a novel’ Economist

Saul David is Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham and the author of several critically acclaimed history books, including The Indian Mutiny: 1857 (shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature), Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 (a Waterstone’s Military History Book of the Year) and, most recently, Victoria’s Wars: The Rise of Empire.

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