General & world history

What can humankind's rich history of radical revolts teach us about the power of disobedience to change climate policy? What inspiration could we take from seventeenth century Japan to create a regenerative economy today? How might the history of financial capitalism help us understand what it ta...

Have you ever wondered about Edgar theling, the fourteen-year-old who took on William the Conqueror? Or about the woeful collapse of the Angevin Empire under King John? Or what about Eleanor Cobham, a noblewoman found guilty of witchcraft for predicting the death of the King? Join Matthew Lewis a...

Combining over 700 photographs, maps, and artworks with accessible text, 'History of Britain and Ireland' is an invaluable resource for families, students, and anyone seeking to learn more about the fascinating story of the UK and Ireland. Spanning six distinct periods of British and Irish histor...

After World War II, Britain's overseas empire disintegrated. But over the next seventy years, empire came to define Britain as never before. From immigration and race riots, to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, from the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid to the invasion of Iraq, the imper...

From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, and from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes, here is award-winning writer Simon Winchester's brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to ch...

Between its introduction in 1942 and the end of the Second World War, the Avro Lancaster flew more than 150,000 sorties, dropped more than 600,000 tons of explosives and took the Allied fight to Nazi Germany. The true workhorse of the RAF's bomber corps, the 'Lanc' featured on some of the most da...

'Land Between the Rivers' is the result of ten years of research, writing, and thinking about the subject. It is an enormous topic: five thousand years, beginning with Gilgamesh at the edge of historical time. We begin the story with ancient Sumer, and Gilgamesh building the walls of Uruk ('Iraq'...

Money. The object of our desires. The engine of our genius. Humanity's greatest invention. Whether we like it or not, our world revolves around money, but we rarely stop to think about it. What is money, where does it come from, and can it run out? What is this substance that drives trade, revolu...

1649. King Charles I had been executed. A quarter of a million had died in the Second English Civil War. Two hundred great houses stood in ruins, with hundreds of villages and towns left battered and broken. The monarchy, the House of Lords and the Church of England were all abruptly abolished. W...

On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a homemade cotton flag was raised, announcing the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first colonised country to declare its independence after t...