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History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings during that country’s long sequence of sectarian wars in the second half of the sixteenth century.

The second volume of David Hume's classic survey of English history covers nearly 300 years (1200-1485) from the long reign of Henry III to the dramatic end of Richard III on Bosworth Field—he was the last Plantagenet, and the last king of England to die in battle. In telling this all-action tale, Hume delves deeply into contemporary records and presents a considered, even sympathetic view, showing that many factors, not just personalities, resulted in dramatic consequences for the nation.

De la femme malheureuse en amour à la reine de France : le plus grand succès biographique de Stefan Zweig. Traduction entièrement révisée par Olivier Mannoni, et préface de l'historien Antoine de Baecque, spécialiste du XVIIIe siècle.

With a novelist’s touch, Lucy Hughes-Hallett transports us into a courtly world of masques and dancing, exquisite clothes, the art of Rubens and Van Dyck, gender-fluidity, sex and appallingly rudimentary medicine. These were dangerous and complicated times, an era where witch hunts coexisted with Descartian rationality, and Buckingham stood at its centre until his spectacular fall from grace.

Etta Shiber and Kitty Bonnefous are the unlikeliest of heroines: two seemingly ordinary women, an American widow and an English divorcée, living quietly together in Paris. Yet during the Nazi occupation, these two friends find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the whirlwind of history. With the help of a French country priest and others, they rescue untold numbers of British and French soldiers trapped behind enemy lines—some of whom they daringly smuggle through Nazi checkpoints in the trunk of their car.

In How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator, acclaimed archaeologist Theodore Papakostas takes the listener on a spectacularly iconoclastic and hugely engrossing journey through Ancient Greece, from its beginnings in prehistory to its end. Marvelling at the exalted moments in Ancient Greek history as well as the more mundane, Papakostas introduces the listener to countless fascinating stories about the cradle of western civilization – many of which upend received wisdom about the empire as well as about archaeology itself.

Sitting beneath a stained-glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, it struck Lewis that he knew very little about those ancestors. And so, in his mid-80s, the esteemed historian began to excavate their past and his own. We know that there is no singular, quintessential American story. Yet, the Lewis family contains many defining ones.

In 1413, when Henry V ascended to the English throne, his kingdom was hopelessly torn apart by political faction and partisanship. Public finances and law and order were in a state of crisis. Pirates tormented the coast; plots, conspiracies, and heresy threatened society. The lingering effects of the worst pandemic in human history continued to menace daily life. And then, in less than ten years, Henry turns it all around.

Based on a trove of new archival discoveries, The Last Tsar narrates how Nicholas’s resistance to reform doomed the monarchy. Encompassing the captivating personalities of the era—the bumbling Nicholas, his spiteful wife Alexandra, the family’s faith healer Rasputin—it untangles the dramatic struggle by Russia’s aristocratic, military, and legislative elite to reform the monarchy.

Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party is gaining strength and becoming more menacing every day. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor upset by the complacency of the German church toward the suffering around it, forms a breakaway church to speak out against the established political and religious authorities. When the Nazis outlaw the church, he escapes as a fugitive.

Operation Biting retells this dramatic operation through a gallery of amazing characters from Winston Churchill, who promoted the raid, to Lord Mountbatten, who commanded Combined Operations, to the brave unsung commandos who fought their way through enemy territory. A cliffhanger of a story that ratchets the suspense to the last moment, Operation Biting sheds new light on an exciting and little-known chapter of the Second World War.

Western civilization is generally regarded as the child of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. That is, in the West, our philosophical and political thought is derived from that of the ancient Greeks; our Christian religion comes from the Jewish religion, and both of these came to us via the Roman Empire.

Great Britain, summer 1940. The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Adolf Hitler’s powerful armies control Europe. England stands alone against this juggernaut, the whole world knowing it is only a matter of time before Nazi Germany unleashes its military might on the island nation. In London, a new prime minister named Winston Churchill is determined to defeat the Nazi menace, no matter the costs. Luckily for Churchill, one quirky Englishman has seen the future.

Anne Boleyn has mesmerized people for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, the infamous Henry VIII, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier's daughter become the queen of England, and what was it that really tore apart this illustrious marriage, making her the whore of England, an abandoned woman executed on the scaffold? While many stories of Anne Boleyn's downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her tragic fate.

At the beginning of 2022, after eight years of political reporting in the US, Jon Sopel returned home to the UK – and having spent almost a third of his career abroad, he found a very different place to the one he left. In Strangeland, his first book since launching the global hit podcast The News Agents, he asks: What is the Britain he’s come home to? In the US, Jon was the outsider looking in, firm in the belief that the common language of English masked our fundamental differences; in terms of values and beliefs, it seemed the British had much more in common with our European neighbours.

Enter Averell Harriman: a railroad magnate and, at the start of the war, the fourth-richest man in America. At Roosevelt’s behest, he traveled to Britain to serve as a liaison between the president and Churchill and to spearhead what became known as the Harriman Mission. Together with his fashionable young daughter Kathy, an unforgettable cast of British diplomats, and Churchill himself, he would eventually manage to wrangle Stalin into the partnership the Allies needed to defeat Hitler.

The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness—the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall.

Although Hungary was a German ally in 1941, two years into World War II, it was still possible for Allied prisoners of war, French and Polish refugees, spies of every kind, and the city’s large Jewish population to live openly, enjoying the cafes and boulevards that made Budapest one of the great European capitals. While the other multicultural centers of Europe had fallen to the almost all-consuming conflict, Budapest remained intact. In September 1944, three months after D-Day, life in the city seemed idyllic. But under the guise of peace existed an undercurrent of tension and anxiety.

The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of eight young Americans who joined Britain's Royal Air Force, defying their country's neutrality laws and risking their U.S. citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots in the summer of 1940—over a year before America entered the war. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air" and with minimal training but plenty of guts, they dueled the skilled and fearsome pilots of Germany's Luftwaffe. By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation.

How did Boris Johnson supersede Theresa May to become Britain's Prime Minister? How did he pursue his promise to Get Brexit Done amidst multiple Brexit secretaries, repeated coup attempts and reshuffles, and an extraordinarily terse relationship with Brussels? What really happened in Downing Street – from the political choices to the party place settings – as the pandemic took the world in its grip? Out follows from May's resignation through to the tussles over the final Brexit deal, the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our shortest serving PM ever.