Historical
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A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women
Rome as you’ve never seen it before – brazenly unconventional, badly behaved and ever so feminine.‘Hugely entertaining and illuminating’ —Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den
Here’s how the history of the Roman Empire usually goes…
We kick off with Romulus murdering his brother, go on to Brutus overthrowing Tarquin, bounce through an appallingly tedious list of battles and generals and consuls, before emerging into the political stab-fest of the late Republic. After ‘Et tu, Brute?’, it runs through all the emperors, occasionally nodding to a wife or mother to show how bad things get when women won’t do as they’re told, until Constantine invents Christianity only for Attila the Hun to come and ruin everything.
Let’s tear up this script. The history of Rome and its empire is so much more than these ‘Important Things’.
In this alternative history, Emma Southon tells another story about the Romans, one that lives through Vestal Virgins and sex workers, business owners and poets, empresses and saints.
- Discover how entrepreneurial sex worker Hispala Faecenia uncovered a conspiracy of treason, human sacrifice and Bacchic orgies so wild they would make Donna Tartt blush, becoming one of Rome’s unlikeliest heroes.
- Book yourself a table the House of Julia Felix and get to know Pompeii’s savviest businesswoman and restauranteur. Indulge in an array of locally sourced delicacies as you take in the wonderful view of Mount Vesuvius… what could possibly go wrong?
- Join the inimitable Septimia Zenobia, who – after watching a series of incompetent, psychopathic and incompetently psychopathic emperors almost destroy the Empire – did what any of us would do. She declared herself Empress, took over half the Roman Empire and ran it herself.
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£10.40 -
A Royal Navy Cold War Buccaneer Pilot: Flying the Famous Maritime Strike Aircraft
This is a vivid and powerful story of life on board the last of our great Second World War-era aircraft carriers, modernized to serve beyond their time. It is a story of the Cold War which conveys the trials and tribulations of flying one of the best-loved military aircraft in history.Steve Kershaw joined the Royal Navy in 1963. He began flying training in 1968 and progressed to the Blackburn Buccaneer – a world-class naval strike jet that was designed to fly very fast at ultra-low altitudes. In 1970, Steve joined 800 Naval Air Squadron, which embarked on HMS Eagle on its epic final cruise.
The voyage to the Far East was far from trouble-free – an aircraft crashed into the sea, there was a devastating explosion on board the carrier, and then two sailors were arrested for murder in Auckland. New year 1972 saw HMS Eagle decommissioned and 800 NAS disbanded.
Steve was transferred to 845 Naval Air Squadron, on which he flew Wessex helicopters. Embarked on HMS Hermes, the squadron supported Royal Marines Commandos during their deployment to the mountains of Norway under NATO plans for a European war. During this time, helicopters were strangely sabotaged on board and one of them crashed into a fjord at night.
By 1974, HMS Ark Royal was the last remaining Royal Navy fixed-wing aircraft carrier to which Steve returned to fly Buccaneers on 809 Squadron. It was in this period that he participated in a NATO exercise in Norway and a Mediterranean cruise.
On return, the squadron prepared for a bombing competition between the RAF and Royal Navy Buccaneers. As part of this, Steve flew a low-level sortie off the Lincolnshire coast. The light was fading, and he was struggling to see the target ahead. He failed to see they were losing height. The aircraft hit the sea. Steve and his observer, David, were ejected into the water.
In this book, Steve’s story is revealed by his son, Simon, through the words of his father, drawn from a mass of letters sent by him, and the recollections of those who served alongside him.
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£6.60 -
An Englishman at War: The Wartime Diaries of Stanley Christopherson DSO MC & Bar 1939-1945
‘An astonishing record…There is no other wartime diary that can match the scope of these diaries’ James Holland
‘An outstanding contribution to the literature of the Second World War’Professor Gary Sheffield
From the outbreak of war in September 1939 to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day and the crossing of the Rhine, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of the Second World War.
Stanley Christopherson’s regiment, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, went to war as amateurs and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and most valued armoured units in the British Army.A junior officer at the beginning of the war, Christopherson became the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. What he and his regiment witnessed presents a unique overview of one of the most cataclysmic events in world history and gives an extraordinary insight, through tragedy and triumph, into what it felt like to be part of the push for victory.
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£0.90 -
Bravo Two Zero: the classic true story from an SAS hero
Sergeant Andy McNab recounts the story of the top secret mission that would reveal the secrets of the SAS to the world for the first time.
Their location: Iraq
Their mission: to sever a vital enemy underground communication link, to find and destroy mobile Scud launchers
Their call sign: Bravo Two ZeroWhen eight members of the elite SAS regiment embark on a highly covert operation, they are each laden with 15 stones of equipment, needing to tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. They engage in a fierce battle. They escape on foot to the Syrian border. Three men die. One escapes.
But four men are captured. For them, the worst is yet to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they are tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training has prepared them…This is a story of superhuman courage, strength, endurance and dark humour in the face of overwhelming odds. It shows just how much it takes to be a member of the SAS.
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‘The best account yet of the SAS in action.’ Sunday Times
‘A gripping account of special forces at work…a tremendous adventure story.’ Daily TelegraphRead more
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Devil Dogs: A New History of the Second World War from the Sunday Times Bestselling Author of SBS Saul David
A Times History Book of the Year 2022
From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last.
The ‘Devil Dogs’ of K Company, 3/5 Marines, were part of the legendary first Marine Division. They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942 – the first US ground offensive of the war – and were present when Okinawa, Japan’s most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the ‘Green Hell’ of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one K Company veteran as ‘thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.’
Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective soldiers in world history – and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today.
Remarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the colour, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne.
Gripping, intimate, authoritative and far-reaching, this is a unique and incredibly personal narrative of war.
Saul David’s previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021.
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£3.80 -
GORDON RAMSAY: Biography of a Culinary Maverick
Gordon Ramsay, a culinary maverick with a career as sizzling as his signature dishes, emerged as a prominent figure in the culinary world. Born in Scotland in 1966, Ramsay’s journey from aspiring footballer to renowned chef began when he enrolled at North Oxfordshire Technical College to study hotel management.His early career saw him training under culinary luminaries in Europe, honing his skills in classic French cuisine. Ramsay’s breakthrough moment came when he joined Marco Pierre White’s restaurant, Harvey’s, where he absorbed both the artistry and intensity that would later define his own culinary approach.In 1998, Ramsay opened his first solo venture, Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road, quickly earning three Michelin stars. This success marked the inception of his global empire, expanding to restaurants worldwide and culminating in a myriad of Michelin stars.Beyond the kitchen, Ramsay became a household name through television. His unfiltered and passionate persona on shows like “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Kitchen Nightmares” solidified his status as a culinary rockstar. Ramsay’s commitment to perfection, tempered by a fiery temper, adds a unique flavor to his celebrity chef persona.
Despite the tough exterior, Ramsay is also a philanthropist, author, and family man. His journey from a small town in Scotland to the summits of the culinary world illustrates the tenacity of a man whose love for food and uncompromising standards have left an indelible mark on the global gastronomic landscape.Read more
£3.10 -
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Epic, moving and important’ ROBERT HARRIS
‘A modern classic’ OBSERVER
‘An unforgettable epic of a book’DAILY MAIL
From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War.
Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded the Netherlands. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed and sent to starve in Bergen-Belsen.
Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwów, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, Ludwik’s father was arrested and sentenced to hard labour in the Gulag. Meanwhile, deported to Siberia and working as a slave labourer on a collective farm, Ludwik survived the freezing winters in a tiny house he built from cow dung.
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about Finkelstein’s parents’ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the twentieth century. It is a story of persecution; survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through.
‘Danny Finkelstein has written an elegant, moving account of the history of one family, and in doing so shines light on the history of the 20th century. If you want to understand Hitler and Stalin, read this book about people whose lives were upended by both of them’ ANNE APPLEBAUM, author of Gulag: A History, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
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£2.80 -
One Life: The True Story of Sir Nicholas Winton
The book that inspired major motion picture ONE LIFE, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter.
‘Remarkable’ – Guardian
Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia at the brink of World War II. Most never saw their parents again; nearly all left behind were murdered. This is his story.
In 1938, 29-year-old ‘Nicky’ cancelled a ski holiday and instead spent nine months masterminding a seemingly impossible plan to rescue hundreds of Jewish children and find them homes in the UK. Over 6,000 people are alive today because of his efforts.
What motivated an ordinary man to do something so extraordinary? This book, written by his daughter, Barbara, explores the 106-year life of an incredible humanitarian, a man whose legacy only came to public light decades later.
His life story is a clarion call to choose action over apathy in the face of injustice, and a reminder that every one of us can change the world.
‘If something is not impossible, then there must be a way to do it.’
‘Those of us who came on a Kindertransport from Prague and owe our lives to Nicky will be so grateful to Barbara for writing something so special’ – Lord Alf Dubs, ex-Labour minister and ‘rescued child’
[This book was first published in 2014 as If It’s Not Impossible… The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton]
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£5.70 -
SAS: Sea King Down
The thrilling, edge-of-your-seat true story of one soldier’s Special Forces operations in the Falklands War
‘BRILLIANT. A ROLLERCOASTER OF BLISTERING ACTION, SURVIVAL AND BEHIND-THE-LINES DARING’ DAMIEN LEWIS
________THE BIGGEST SINGLE LOSS OF LIFE FOR THE SAS SINCE WORLD WAR TWO . . .
1982, the British task force sails to liberate the Falkland Islands. Aboard: SAS D Squadron, determined to make their mark.
No one more so than Mark ‘Splash’ Aston.
But they have barely seen action when their Sea King helicopter crashes in freezing South Atlantic waters, killing 22 of Mark’s comrades.
The last out of the sinking wreck, he suffers a broken neck. But defying medical evacuation orders, Mark sneaks off ship, re-joins his SAS comrades to land on a mountain near Port Stanley – to defend it against days of attacks by Argentine special forces . . .
SAS Sea King Down is a pulse-pounding account of D-Squadron’s tragic loss and subsequent heroic stand in one of the most hostile places on Earth.
A story told by a man who barely survived to tell it.
________‘A gripping untold story of heroism, hardship and sacrifice within the SAS’ BEAR GRYLLS
‘Gripping, fast moving and completely authentic. A brilliant piece of work. Better than Bravo Two Zero’ – Mike Rose, former Commanding Officer of the SAS
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£5.70SAS: Sea King Down
£5.70 -
The Long Walk: An Anthology by EOD & Search Veterans, 2023
“They call it the long walk. It’s like I’m in a bubble. Like the world went away and it’s just me… focussed… concentrating. You get used to it – it becomes normal.”Men and women who have worked in bomb disposal tell their stories, as they saw them, as they lived them.
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£4.70 -
The War in the Shadows: The Battle of the Spymasters in WWII (The Secret War)
An enthralling exposé of the spies who moved in the darkened dangerous back alleys of World War Two.Perfect for readers who enjoy the books of Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum and John le Carré but who want to learn more about what the real spies really did.
While American, British, German and Russian soldiers clashed in the battlefields of the world, a small group of men and women moved in the shadows, deliberating over actions behind the scenes.
Agents, double-agents and even triple-agents worked to gather intelligence and give their sides advantages during this monumental conflict. Yet, unlike the world of James Bond, there was no glamor to their actions.
Through in-depth research Charles Whiting shines a light on the unvarnished world of espionage in World War Two and demonstrates how all the players of this game, whether French, British, American, Czech, German, Dutch or Russian, lost in this war in the shadows.
This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the overlooked truth of what it was like to be a spy in the Second World War.
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£4.70 -
The War Twins of London: A WWII Historical Fiction Novel (World War II Brave Women Fiction Book 2)
When the war hits London, all they have is each other.Identical twins Maggie and Tillie are thriving in 1940s London. Waitresses in one of the city’s finest institutions and both with budding romances, the war could not feel farther away.
But, slowly, the tides begin to change. The war in Europe is creeping toward the UK, and the men are being called to aid in military efforts. Tillie’s fiancé Colin joins the RAF, flying dangerous missions over Germany, and Maggie’s childhood love Micah finds himself far away in France, with no way to return. Devastated but determined, the twins resolve to do their part for their country – Maggie in the Women’s Voluntary Service and Tillie for the British Red Cross.
Then, the Blitz begins. And everything changes.
Nightly airstrikes wreak havoc on the city, leaving ruin in their wake. Ambulance shifts for Tillie become desperate missions to pull injured women and children from the rubble, while the constant fear for the fates of their beloveds, far from home, is almost too much for the girls to bear.
And when tragedy strikes for both sisters, they know nothing will ever be the same again.
Will the twins be strong enough to protect themselves and the ones they love? And can true love really prevail when the skies are darkened by war?
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£5.30 -
Tumult in the Clouds: Original Edition (Penguin World War II Collection)
The classic memoir by one of America’s greatest fighting aces: James Goodson
Anglo-American James Goodson’s war began on Sept 3rd 1939, when the SS Athenia was torpedoed and sank off the Hebrides. Surviving the sinking and distinguishing himself rescuing survivors, Goodson immediately signed on with the RAF. He was an American, but he wanted to fight.
Goodson flew Spitfires for the RAF before later joining his countrymen with the Fourth Fighter Group to get behind the controls of Thunderbolts and Mustangs where he became known as ‘King of the Strafers’.
Chock full of breathtaking descriptions of aerial dogfights as well as the stories of others of the heroic ‘few’, Tumult in the Clouds is the ultimate story of War in the air, told by the one of the Second World War’s outstanding fighter pilots.
Praise for Tumult in the Clouds:
‘A classic . . . Tumult in the Clouds will continue to be read for many many years to come. It is an inspiring book’ Len Deighton
‘An utterly compelling and intensely personal account of war in all its horror and excitement. A thrilling adventure story and an enthralling, compassionate witness to incredible heroism. I was gripped’ John Nichol
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£4.70 -
Walsall Borough Police – 101 Historical Cases from 1832 to 1898
Walsall Borough Police – 101 Historical Cases from 1832 to 1898
Not for the fainthearted, this fascinating collection of 101 policing snapshots taken between 1832 and 1898, gives an intriguing yet brutal insight into the murder, mystery and mayhem of the nineteenth century.
In 1832, Walsall Borough Police became the first force in the area and we focus on the trials and tribulations of the pioneering men, who in the face of adversity made the new system work.
True and hard hitting historical facts are graphically laid bare in these accounts of crime and punishment during the early years of policing. At a time when the hanging of felons was a spectator sport and trips to Australia were free, it was a lucky escape to get an hour in the stocks or a few strokes of the whip.
Step into this long gone world and try to guess the conclusions of these gripping tales, then ask yourself the question are things better or worse now, you decide?
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£7.10
