British History

It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Professor Adam Potkay brings his renowned expertise on the Romantic era to bear on the period's principal poets. Providing detailed analysis of the lives and works of literary luminaries such as Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats, Professor Potkay examines the nature of Romantic poetry and provides insight on the stylistic flourishes and themes of this remarkable period.

Discover the remarkable life of Virginia Woolf.... Virginia Woolf ranks among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Embracing the Post-Impressionist times in which she lived, her novels reflect the artistic shift from romanticism to abstract. Plot mattered very little to Woolf. Her writing was a stream of consciousness outside of time and place. Her novels, including her best-known work, Mrs. Dalloway, invariably dwell on gender roles and the concept of reality.

George Orwell, the son of a British civil servant, spent his life promoting social justice and equality, while fighting against totalitarianism and elitism. His two best-known novels 1984 and Animal Farm depict the ultimate horror of a totalitarian government. Orwell wrote with passion about what he believed. Eighty years after their publication, his novels are as relevant as ever. Citizens are spied on by CCTV cameras. Smartphones track people’s movements and activities.

The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British Prime Ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith's Secret Service Bureau to Cameron's National Security Council. At the beginning of the 20th Century the British intelligence system was underfunded and lacked influence in government. But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war.

The purpose of this insider's account is to provide an answer to all these questions and more. Andrew Marr's brilliant, and brilliantly funny, book is a guide to those of us who read newspapers, or who listen to and watch news bulletins but want to know more. Andrew Marr tells the story of modern journalism through his own experience.

George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in the same year as Queen Victoria. Mary Ann might have lived a traditional Victorian-era life had she been pretty and ornamental. When she didn’t attract attention with her looks, however, she made use of her remarkable intelligence. By her early 20s, she translated articles from Latin and French into English and wrote her own reviews for a radical magazine. Discover a plethora of topics such as her life as a young radical, her journey to Switzerland, meeting George Henry Lewes, becoming George Eliot, and more.

With all the immediacy of an eyewitness account, Anthony Pitch recounts the dramatic story of the British invasion of Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1814. The British torched the Capitol, the White House, and other buildings, setting off an inferno that illuminated the countryside for miles around and sent President James Madison galloping out of town. The author's gripping account also describes the valiant defense of nearby Fort McHenry and the story of the writing of The Star Spangled Banner.

In 2016, while working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country - railways not shown on any other publicly available maps. She was determined to uncover the railways' origins, purpose, and most of all, the silence that surrounded them. She would spend three months travelling on these mysterious railways, and the next five years piecing their story together.

Brittle with Relics is a vital history of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution.

In a story of vaulting ambition and underhand politics, of nation, identity and belief, acclaimed political writer Tom McTague chronicles the battle of ideas, events and personalities that first took the country into the Common Market in 1973, only to take it out of the European Union in an explosive referendum a little over forty years later.

Why is Africa still perceived as a country when there are around 2,000 languages spoken on the continent alone? It's a Continent aims to counter the misconception that Africa is a country by breaking down this vast, beautiful and complex continent into regions and countries. Each of the 54 African countries has a unique history and culture and this audiobook highlights the key historical moments that have shaped each nation and contributed to its global position, as well as within the African continent.

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary 'Desert Fox', Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940 when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy’s entrance into the war.

"To boldly go where no man has gone before" was a phrase made popular by Gene Rodenberry in a science fiction setting, but it was certainly the creed of countless explorers during the Age of Discovery and afterwards. In fact, as recently as the mid-18th century, a young sailor named James Cook determined to go "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go." And unlike so many others who tried, he did just that.

British Architecture presents an original and engaging overview of the architecture of the British Isles, from medieval times to the present day. Avoiding the traditional approach of a chronological survey of architects and architectural style, each chapter presents a thematic exploration of key aspects of British architecture that endure across time and still have relevance today. Arnold also highlights the ways in which architecture can project national and regional identities.

A historical fiction novel set in the Five Towns of England during the late 19th century, Three Penny Sunday offers an engaging journey into the life of an intriguing character, Edward Henry Walker, born in 1867. Tracing his trajectory from a modest upbringing in Bursley to prominence, the novel weaves a rich tableau of the era's local pottery industry often referred to as "potbanks", and the tight-knit, gossip-ridden community that shapes the town's social and political landscape. Henry's Course Initially an ordinary boy, Henry secures a surprise scholarship at twelve, albeit through ...

This is an audiobook with four different topics, all related to the history of Great Britain. The topics are the following: Horatio Nelson, one of the most courageous, strategic, valiant British generals in history; the Cathars, who were different from the mainstream Catholic church in the 13th century; the British rule over India; and the Great Fire of London, a massive fire in the ominous year of 1666.

The Book-Makers is a celebration of 550 years of the printed book, told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary men and women who took the book in radical new directions: printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. This is a story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error.

The Boer War was the defining conflict of South African history and one of the most important conflicts in the history of the British Empire. Naturally, complicated geopolitics underscored it. The European history of South Africa began with the 1652 arrival of a small Dutch flotilla in Table Bay, at the southern extremity of the African continent. The Boer War: The History and Legacy of the Conflict That Solidified British Rule in South Africa looks at the controversial fighting and the manner in which it affected the 20th century.