Time period: 20th century

What role did German big business play in the persecution of European Jews during the Holocaust? What were its motivations? And how did it respond to changing social and economic circumstances after the war? 'Profits and Persecution' examines how the leaders of Germany's largest industrial and fi...

Returning to Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, Fritz Bauer - a gay Jewish lawyer and outspoken critic of Hitler - was determined to reclaim the Germany he had once loved. But he soon saw that the perpetrators of the Holocaust had largely got away with their crimes. Top Nazi office...

Archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, mountaineer and nation builder, Gertrude Bell was born in 1868 into a world of privilege and plenty, but she turned her back on all that for her passion for the Arab peoples, becoming the architect of the independent kingdom of Ir...

The world of 1907 is poised between the old and the new: communist regimes will replace imperial ones in China and Russia; the telegraph is transforming modern communication and the car will soon displace the horse. Kassia St Clair traces the fascinating stories of two interlocking races - settin...

In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try t...

For the past decade at least 25% of the UK population and 30% of children have been in poverty by internationally accepted measures, and the numbers keep rising. In 'The Rise and Fall of the British Welfare State', Pat Thane analyses the history of state welfare in Britain from 1900, and sheds li...

Discover the life of Roald Dahl, the groundbreaking author whose work is beloved by children all over the world. Little Roald grew up in the city of Cardiff in Wales. He loved to spend time reading with his family and visiting the local sweetshop for yummy chocolatey treats. But he found school d...

When war is declared in September 1939, Rosie Mitchell reluctantly returns from London to the Somerset mining town of Hillsbridge to be with her widowed mother. She had fled to the city some years earlier to escape the heartache and shame of a disastrous end to her relationship with the man she h...

It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her b...

It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her b...

April 21, 1923. The SS Metagama is inching out of Stornoway harbour on the Isle of Lewis, bound for Canada. On board are Finlay and Mairead; they are young and hopeful, leaving behind a community that has been touched by tragedy to change their lives forever. On the other side of the Atlantic, th...

Summer 1944: the SAS were charged with the most crucial D-Day missions, taking on the might of the Nazi Reich deep behind enemy lines. Facing Hitler's fearsome Panzer divisions with little more than raw courage and their nimble Willys jeeps, it would take maverick thinking and unconventional warf...

'SAS Great Escapes Three' recounts untold stories of the most daring escapes pulled off by warriors of the world's most famous fighting force in WWII. Ranging from the birth of the SAS, to the post D-day battles for Nazi-occupied Europe, they cover some of the most iconic operations of the Regime...

From the first page, readers will discover a different story to the one they thought they knew - a tale of extreme lifestyles and unlikely friendships, savage horrors and joyful awakenings. Out of the shadows and the rubble, a modern Britain emerged: new industries were created and unprecedented ...

1945, Sunderland. Ida Boulter makes the heart-wrenching decision to leave her five children behind as she escapes her husband and moves to London to start afresh with the love of her life. 1953, County Durham. Ida's children have since built a new life in the beautiful home of Cuthford Manor - lo...

October, 1922. Ruby Vaughn's octogenarian employer and housemate Mr Owen said the trip to Manhurst Castle in the Scottish Borders was to appraise some illuminated manuscripts for their bookshop. However, the truth soon unravels, along with the decades-old secrets he has been carefully hiding. For...

Here is an electrifying look at key moments in music and entertainment history between 1955 and 1979, which helped move gay culture from the margins to the mainstream and changed the face of pop forever - from the ambiguous sexuality of stars such as Little Richard in the 1950s through to David B...

Golden Age Hollywood - a city overflowing with gossip, scandal and intrigue. Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary temptress. So when the film's mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she qui...

Daniel Lohr, sensing that the Nazis are closing in on the Jews, leaves his dying father in Berlin and boards a ship to Shanghai. His passage is dependent upon him delivering a package to his shady uncle, his father's brother, upon arrival. Daniel has no idea what the package contains. On board is...

'Sharon And My Mother-In-Law' is an entertaining and spirited account of living on the West Bank from the early eighties to the present. The book is full of the life and gossip of Amiry's neighbourhood in Ramallah. A blackly funny account of everyday life in Ramallah and refreshingly different fr...