A major new history of Churchill in the 1930s, showing how his meetings at Chartwell, his country home, strengthened his fight against the Nazis

In the 1930s, amidst an impending crisis in Europe, Winston Churchill found himself out of government and with little power. In these years, Chartwell, his country home in Kent, became the headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany. He invited trusted advisors and informants, including Albert Einstein and T. E. Lawrence, who could strengthen his hand as he worked tirelessly to sound the alarm at the prospect of war.

Katherine Carter tells the extraordinary story of the remarkable but little known meetings that took place behind closed doors at Chartwell. From household names to political leaders, diplomats to spies, Carter reveals a fascinating cast of characters, each of whom made their mark on Churchill's thinking and political strategy. With Chartwell as his base, Churchill gathered intelligence about Germany's preparations for war--and, in doing so, put himself in a position to change the course of history.

A gripping new history of London during the Blackout--revealing the violent crime that spread across the capital under the cover of darkness

Fear was the unacknowledged spectre haunting the streets of London during the Second World War; fear not only of death from the German bombers circling above, but of violence at the hands of fellow Londoners in the streets below. Mass displacement, the anonymity of shelters, and the bomb-scarred landscape offered unprecedented opportunities for violent crime.

In this absorbing, sometimes shocking account, Amy Helen Bell uncovers the hidden stories of murder and violence that were rife in wartime London. Bell moves through the city, examining the crimes in their various locations, from domestic violence in the home to robberies in the blacked-out streets and fights in pubs and clubs. She reveals the experiences of women, children, and the elderly, and focuses on the lives of the victims, as well as their deaths.

This groundbreaking study transforms our understanding of the ways in which war made people vulnerable--not just to the enemy, but to each other.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in the Big Hop an audacious race to be the first to fly, nonstop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.

Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration--and a welcome distraction--to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later. In The Big Hop, David Rooney grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over his native Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, Rooney traces the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky.

Mining evocative first-person accounts and aviation archives, Rooney also follows the participants' journeys: learning to fly on flimsy airplanes made of timber struts and varnished fabric; surviving the bloodiest war that Europe had ever yet seen; and battling faulty coolant systems, severe storms, and extreme fatigue while attempting the Atlantic. Rooney transports readers to the world in which the great contest took place, and traces the rise of aviation to its daredevil peak in the early decades of the twentieth century. Recounting a deeply moving adventure, The Big Hop explores why flights like these matter, and why we take to the skies.

Bestselling author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera explores the global legacy of the British Empire, and the ways it continues to influence economics, politics, and culture around the world.

2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to the shaping international law. Even today, 1 in 3 people drive on the left hand side of the road, an artifact of the British empire. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. ­­Following in the footsteps of his bestselling book Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, Empireworld explores the ways in which British Empire has come to shape the modern world

Sanghera visits Barbados, where he uncovers how Caribbean nations are still struggling to emerge from the disadvantages sown by transatlantic slavery. He examines how large charities--like Save the Children and the World Bank--still see the world through the imperial eyes of their colonial founders, and how the political instability of nations, such as Nigeria, for instance, can be traced back to tensions seeded in their colonial foundations. And from the British Empire's role in the transportation of 12.5 million Africans during the Atlantic slave trade, to the 35 million Indians who died due to famine caused by British policy, the British Empire, as Sanghera reveals, was responsible for some of the largest demographic changes in human history.

Economic, legal and political systems across the world continue to function along the lines originally drawn by the British Empire, and cultural, sexual, psychological, linguistic, demographic, and educational norms originally established by imperial Britons continue to shape our lives. British Empire may have peaked a century ago, and it may have been mostly dismantled by 1997, but in this major new work, Sathnam Sanghera ultimately shows how the largest empire in world history still exerts influence over planet Earth in all sorts of silent and unsilent ways.

Good Trouble will show the strong connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland - specifically the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march on the 1969 Belfast to Derry march through oral history, based on numerous interviews of events leading up to both marches and afterwards. This is close to the author's heart as both of his parents marched to integrate lunch counters and movie theatres in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1963 as college students. His mother was at the 1963 March to Washington where Martin Luther King gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech.
Award winning author Julieann Campbell (On Bloody Sunday) wrote the introduction for Good Trouble, looking back at her times growing up in Derry, in the heart of the Catholic Civil Rights Movement. Jones travelled to Dublin, Belfast and Derry to conduct interviews for the book. In all, he did fifteen interviews with people who were involved in the movement in Northern Ireland (including Billy McVeigh - featured in the BAFTA winning documentary, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland) and in the United States (including Richard Smiley and Dr. Sheyann Webb-Christburg - both were at Bloody Sunday in Alabama and on the Selma to Montgomery march among others). Jones was also able to talk with Eamonn McCann (he took part in the Belfast to Derry march in 1969; he was the John Lewis of Northern Ireland).
Unlike most books on Northern Ireland, this goes into detail about the connection and the influence between the two movements. Also, most focus on Bloody Sunday and not the pivotal incidents at Burntollet Bridge and the Battle of the Bogside. Building off of unprecedented access and interviews with participants in both movements, Jones crafts a gripping and moving account of these pivotal years for both countries.

The Greatest Expedition Rescue in History

Experience one of the most unexpected survival stories in modern history. Read the first-hand account of Sir Ernest Shackleton as he takes you through the grand trials and tribulations of being marooned in the Southern Ocean for nearly two years. His original plan was to trek across Antarctica, a feat that had yet to be achieved. The turn of events that should have ended in tragedy is worth reading time and again.

• Annotated with a bonus biography of Ernest Shackleton
• Illustrations included

Timed with the outbreak of World War I, this ill-fated expedition is something to behold. The original plan was to have two teams work their way across the frozen wastelands of Antarctica. That never came to fruition for either team. Then, after endless months stuck on ice floes, Shackleton and a rag-tag team set out in a small open boat across the open ocean in an attempt to save everyone. The unlikely end is something to behold.

At midnight I was pacing the ice, listening to the grinding floe and to the groans and crashes that told of the death-agony of the Endurance, when I noticed suddenly a crack running across our floe right through the camp.

The fate of Ernest Shackleton, the Endurance, and her crew have been studied for over a century. Shackleton's exploits have been turned into movies. His leadership style has been adapted into training programs for major corporations.

Get your copy of this classic adventure today

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing.

London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes.

All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left.

The eventual arrest of the Beast of Rillington Place caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows?

The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.

In June 1996, the British government convened multiparty talks trying to establish peace within Northern Ireland, after thirty years of bloody civil war based on religious, cultural, political, and economic tensions, known as The Troubles. The talks included political parties from the two factions central to the conflict: Unionists, largely Protestants committed to retaining Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, and Nationalists, largely Catholics committed to the reunification of Northern Ireland with the independent Republic of Ireland. Fundamental questions on national identity and democracy quickly turned these proceedings into faction bickering, thus failing to produce any substantive progress. The emergence of new leaders in 1997--Tony Blair, prime minister of Great Britian, and Bertie Ahern, taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland--created an opportunity for reenergizing the talks chaired by the former US senator George Mitchell, with all parties making a concerted effort to reach a viable resolution among Nationalists and Unionists.

In the game, students will represent the major parties in Northern Ireland as they reconvene at the multiparty talks in 1997 to find ways to reconcile two competing visions of Northern Irish nationalism, or at least find a way for each community to tolerate one another's participation in a common constitutional arrangement. Much is at stake, for another failure could lead to a full resumption of the civil war.

This riveting new history tells the story of Britain's journey from imperial power to a nation divided--one that alternately welcomes and excludes former imperial subjects and has been utterly transformed by them.

In the turbulent years since the outbreak of World War II, Britain has gone from an imperial power whose dominion extended over a quarter of the world's population to an island nation divorced from Europe. After the war, as independence movements gained momentum, former imperial subjects started making their way to her soggy shores. Would these men and women of different races, cultures, and faiths be accepted as British, or would they forever be seen as outsiders? In this deeply intimate retelling of the United Kingdom's transformation from empire to island nation, Charlotte Lydia Riley shows that empire haunts every aspect of life in modern Britain.

From race riots to the Notting Hill Carnival, from the Suez Crisis to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Monday Club and Enoch Powell's defiant calls to protect England's racial purity to Band Aid, the Spice Girls, and Brick Lane, the imperial mindset has dominated Britain's relationship with itself and the world. The ghosts of empire are to be found, too, in anti-immigrant rhetoric and royal memorabilia, in the pitched battles over how history should be taught in schools--and, of course, in Brexit.

Drawing on a mass of original research to capture the thoughts and feelings of ordinary British citizens, Imperial Island tells a story of people on the move and of people trapped in the past, of the end of empire and the birth of multiculturalism, a chronicle of violence and exclusion but also a testament to community. It is the story that best explains Britain today.

A Spectator Best Book of the Year; An Aspects of History Best Book of the Year; An Engelsberg Ideas Best Book of the Year

Five hundred years ago, Thomas Wolsey endowed in Oxford a foundation he called Cardinal's College. Henry VIII, the monarch who dismissed and ruined him, re-established it as Christ Church later in his reign as an institution rich, spacious and imposing beyond any other. It would help young men of Tudor England and beyond to study history, improve their minds, enlarge imaginations and broaden experience for the benefit of the realm - under the tutelage, of course, of some remarkable dons.

Generations of students had their intellects and world perspectives shaped by Oxford. It was believed that the study of history - touching the ancient world at one end and modern politics at the other - interlaced with geography, economics, political science, law and modern languages, would demonstrate the reasons for the success or failure of states. The student would be taught - in Sir Isaiah Berlin's memorable phrase - to 'spot the bunk!'

In this book, acclaimed historian Richard Davenport- Hines examines the intimate connections between British politics, statecraft and the Oxford University history course. He explores the temperaments, ideas, imagination, prejudices, intentions and influence of a select and self-regulated group of men who taught modern history at Christ Church: Frederick York Powell, Arthur Hassall, Keith Feiling, J. C. Masterman, Roy Harrod, Patrick Gordon Walker, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Robert Blake; by turns an unruly Victorian radical, a staunch legitimist of the Protestant settlement, a Tory, a Whig, a Keynesian, a socialist, a rationalist who enjoyed mischief and a student of realpolitik.

These dons, with their challenging and sometimes contradictory opinions, explored with their pupils the wielding of power, the art of persuasion and the exercise of civil and political responsibility. Intelligent, strenuous and aware of the treachery and uncontrollability of things in the world, they studied the crimes, follies, misfortunes, incapacity, muddle and disloyalty of humankind in every generation. History in the House offers an unforgettable portrait of these men, their enduring influence and the significance of their arguments to public life today.

A study of six prominent postwar politicians in the United Kingdom.

Making the Weather is the story of six postwar politicians, all of whom exerted an outsized influence on the political life of the United Kingdom--an influence greater than that of most prime ministers. Vernon Bogdanor's cast includes three from the political Left--Aneurin Nye Bevan, Roy Jenkins, and Tony Benn--and three from the Right--Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph, and Nigel Farage. Each study is a fascinating analysis examining how these men achieved such prominence and influence and how, though very different figures in many ways, they came to dominate the political landscape, often for years.

Each of the six made fundamental contributions to the debate about Britain's future and to the vibrancy of British democracy. From immigration to Europe, from the National Health Service to devolution, the issues and causes that brought these men to prominence are still relevant.

Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains is the taut, gripping account of one of the most brilliantly organized social justice campaigns in history--the fight to free the slaves of the British Empire.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
A National Book Award Finalist
A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

In early 1787, twelve men--a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery--came together in a London printing shop and began the world's first grassroots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due at last.

Bury the Chains is by far the most readable and rounded account we have of British antislavery, a campaign that...helped to change the world and can be seen as a prototype of the modern social justice movement--Los Angeles Times Book Review

An Independent Book of the Month

What was the mood of the British people during the middle and later years of the Second World War? How did they react to the major military and domestic events of the period? What issues were uppermost in their minds? What incidents caused particular public interest and controversy? These are some of the insights provided by this remarkable collection of contemporary wartime documents.

During the Second World War, Home Intelligence, a unit of the Ministry of Information, closely monitored British public attitudes on the home front and compiled secret reports on the state of popular morale which were circulated around Whitehall. In this volume, leading historian of the period, Jeremy Crang, brings together selected Home Intelligence reports from June 1941 to December 1944 to offer us a fascinating 'real time' glimpse into the mindset of the British people during these long years of struggle.

The reports provide a unique window into public responses to the shifting military fortunes of the war, including the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British and Commonwealth victory at El Alamein, the strategic bombing of Germany, the defeat of Italy, and the Allied landings in Normandy. They also include much valuable information on the continuing stresses and strains of wartime life such as the blackout, rationing, fuel economy and strikes - as well as the V-weapon attacks of 1944 which brought back all the horrors of the Blitz. Alongside this, hopes and fears about the post-war world come to feature strongly and Home Intelligence carefully documented attitudes to the Beveridge report, as well as other aspects of reconstruction.

Introduced by the editor, and incorporating an extensive glossary, this collection is an exceptional record of popular opinion on the British home front as the tide of war gradually turned from defeat to victory. It is indispensable in understanding both the unity and diversity of wartime Britain, as well as the many-sided experience of living through 'Our People's War'.

The author of over 150 books in various genres, the French writer Renaud Camus is perhaps best known as the man who coined the Great Replacement, his phrase to describe the sweeping demographic changes now transforming Europe and its diasporas throughout the world. In The Deep Murmur, Camus explores one source of our societies' heedless embrace of a post-European future: the prohibition on the word race and all that it has connoted over its long and storied history, now seen as irrevocably tainted by the experience of Nazism. Without the word, the thing ceases to exist. Thus gradually recedes, in the words of Bernanos, that deep murmur in which the race cradles its own - and, with it, the very possibility of transmission, of a place in the world that is nothing other than a place in time.

The volume opens with Camus' Elegy for Enoch Powell, written in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Powell's (in)famous Rivers of Blood speech. Powell foretold our present; Camus is its chronicler.

A remarkable insight into the training and techniques of Allied agents operating behind enemy lines during the Second World War.

Most wars have had some element of espionage and subterfuge, but few have included as much as the Second World War, where the all-embracing nature of the conflict, new technology, and the battle of ideologies conspired to make almost everywhere a war zone. The occupation of much of Europe in particular left huge areas that could be exploited.

Partisans, spies and saboteurs risked everything in a limbo where the normal rules of war were usually suspended. Concealment of oneself, one's weapons and equipment, was vital, and so were the new methods and hardware which were constantly evolving in a bid to stay ahead of the Gestapo and security services. Silent killing, disguise, covert communications and the arts of guerrilla warfare were all advanced as the war progressed.

With the embodiment and expansion of organisations such as the British SOE and the American OSS, and the supply of special forces units which operated behind enemy lines, clandestine warfare became a permanent part of the modern military and political scene. Perhaps surprisingly many of these hitherto secret techniques and pieces of equipment were put into print at the time and many examples are now becoming available.

This manual brings together a selection of these dark arts and extraordinary objects and techniques in their original form, under one cover to build up an authentic picture of the Allied spy.

The Greatest Expedition Rescue in History

Experience one of the most unexpected survival stories in modern history. Read the first-hand account of Sir Ernest Shackleton as he takes you through the grand trials and tribulations of being marooned in the Southern Ocean for nearly two years. His original plan was to trek across Antarctica, a feat that had yet to be achieved. The turn of events that should have ended in tragedy is worth reading time and again.

• Annotated with a bonus biography of Ernest Shackleton
• Illustrations included

Timed with the outbreak of World War I, this ill-fated expedition is something to behold. The original plan was to have two teams work their way across the frozen wastelands of Antarctica. That never came to fruition for either team. Then, after endless months stuck on ice floes, Shackleton and a rag-tag team set out in a small open boat across the open ocean in an attempt to save everyone. The unlikely end is something to behold.

At midnight I was pacing the ice, listening to the grinding floe and to the groans and crashes that told of the death-agony of the Endurance, when I noticed suddenly a crack running across our floe right through the camp.

The fate of Ernest Shackleton, the Endurance, and her crew have been studied for over a century. Shackleton's exploits have been turned into movies. His leadership style has been adapted into training programs for major corporations.

Get your copy of this classic adventure today

A bold, new history of British Jewish life since the Second World War.

Historian Gavin Schaffer wrestles Jewish history away from the question of what others have thought about Jews, focusing instead on the experiences of Jewish people themselves.

Exploring the complexities of inclusion and exclusion, he shines a light on groups that have been marginalised within Jewish history and culture, such as queer Jews, Jews married to non-Jews, Israel-critical Jews and even Messianic Jews, while offering a fresh look at Jewish activism, Jewish religiosity and Zionism.

Weaving these stories together, Schaffer argues that there are good reasons to consider Jewish Britons as a unitary whole, even as debates rage about who is entitled to call themselves a Jew. Challenging the idea that British Jewish life is in terminal decline, An unorthodox history demonstrates that Jewish Britain is thriving and that Jewishness is deeply embedded in the country's history and culture.

This volume explores the shifting nature of anti-racism in Britain through 11 illuminating case studies. Together, they highlight the tensions between solidarity and paternalism, demonstrate the interplay between local, national and transnational forces, and illustrate the legacies and trajectories of these histories in the present.

This book offers a new understanding of the main economic and political trends of 20th-century Britain, through the lens of Churchill's early career and approach to industrialisation.

Shedding fresh light on Churchill's political endeavours between 1900 and 1922, this study analyses his work within his political constituencies, and highlights how he attempted to balance their local concerns with his larger imperial agenda. Tomlinson guides readers through Britain's industrial challenges at the start of the twentieth century - with a particular focus on the textile economies of Churchill's constituencies in Lancashire and Scotland - and shows how industrial competition within the Empire exemplified the tensions between domestic economic policy and attempts at globalization, and influenced Churchill's later politics.

Tomlinson acknowledges the role of the First World War in boosting the industrial output and bargaining power of countries within the Empire, and analyses these alongside key moments in Churchill's early career, such as his defeat at Dundee, and time at the Exchequer. In doing so, the author highlights the context in which Churchill's ideas on the politics and economics of Empire were first formed, particularly in relation to the impact of imperial economic policy on British domestic prosperity. Ultimately, this book delivers a new assessment of twentieth-century British economic history, in the light of Britain's relationship to the Empire and the 'first great globalization'.

This is the definitive chronology of the Titanic's final hours, told in fascinating detail and offering a real-time experience of one of the greatest dramas of twentieth century history.

2.20am on 15th April 1912, the Titanic is plunging 12,000 feet to the ocean floor. Machinery, coal, crystal goblets, pianos and jewellery all tumbled through the dark water. Hundreds of passengers and crew remained trapped below decks - hundreds more would perish on the surface. First published in 2016, this is the definitive chronology of the Titanic's final hours, offering readers a real-time experience of one of the greatest dramas of twentieth century history.

You have seen the film, now experience the event as it happened in real-time, with minute by minute details offering an unprecedented account of how the Titanic came to sink. Part historical drama and part historical re-enactment, this is the perfect book for those who like their reading time to be steeped in real-life detail.