Renowned industrial expert Geoffrey Owen analyses the complex reasons behind the delayed modernisation of British industry.In 1945, following the economic hardship of the war years, British industry looked forward with confidence to re-establishing links with its traditional trading partners in the Empire, and in the years of reconstruction which followed enjoyed unprecendented growth and prosperity. But the emergence of an economically vigorous ...
Described as ‘a masterpiece’ by critics, this remarkable book tells the story of war through the lives and deaths of a single family. Absolutely unforgettable new writing.If you loved The English Patient or Rohinton Mistry’s Fine Balance or Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, you will love this book.Three young men gazed at him from silver-framed photographs in his grandmother’s house, ‘beheld but not noticed, as angels are in a friez ...
Extreme Survivors tells the illustrated story of 60 of the most daring escapes, famous shipwrecks, and ultimate survival stories. These are astonishing stories of human endurance and endeavour.The statistics, descriptions, archive photographs and illustrative maps will give the reader a full understanding of how Joe Simpson crawled to safety in the South American Andean mountains, how Anthony Farrar-Hockley evaded capture after the Battle of Imj ...
In one corner, a godless young warrior, Voltaire’s heralded ‘philosopher-king’, the It Boy of the Enlightenment. In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of ‘outdated’ music, a scorned genius in his last years. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a turbulent age.Behind the pomp and flash, Prussia's Frederick the Great was a tormented man, son of an abusive king who forced him to watch as his best friend (probably his ...
Talented historian Maya Jasonoff offers an alternative history of the British Empire. It is not about conquest – but rather a collection of startling and fascinating personal accounts of cross-cultural exchange from those who found themselves on the edges of Empire.A Palladian mansion filled with Western art in the centre of old Calcutta, the Mughal Emperor’s letters in an archive in the French Alps, the names of Italian adventurers scratched in ...
The extraordinary story of the deserters of the Second World War. Who were they? What made them run? And what happened once they made the decision to flee?During the Second World War, the British lost 100,000 troops to desertion, and the Americans 40,000. Commonwealth forces from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Britain's colonial empire also left the ranks in their thousands. The overwhelming majority of deserters from all armie ...
An epic history of the battle of Quebec, the death of Wolfe and the beginnings of Britain’s empire in North America. Military history at its best.Perched on top of a tall promontory, surrounded on three sides by the treacherous St Lawrence River, Quebec – in 1759 France's capital city in Canada – forms an almost impregnable natural fortress. That year, with the Seven Years War raging around the globe, a force of 49 ships and nearly 9,000 men com ...
Winner of the Crossword Prize for non-fiction, ‘“Curfewed Night’” is a passionate and important book – a brave and brilliant report from a conflict the world has chosen to ignore.' Salman RushdieBasharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years countless young men, fuelled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to ...
From one of our finest historians comes an outstanding exploration of the British monarchy from the retreat of the Romans up until the modern day. This compendium volume of two earlier books is fully revised and updated.The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, t ...
