British History

Maximum Volume offers a glimpse into the mind, the music, and the man behind the sound of the Beatles. George Martin's working-class childhood and musical influences profoundly shaped his early career in the BBC's Classical Music department and as head of the EMI Group's Parlophone Records. Out of them flowed the genius behind his seven years producing the Beatles' incredible body of work, including such albums as Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road.

Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, was the most intelligent of Queen Victoria's four sons. He was the youngest, a strong-willed, likeable character with an immense thirst for life who faced two overwhelming handicaps. One was haemophilia, then barely understood, which might have killed him at any moment, and in any case subjected him to recurring pain and disability. The other was his mother's determination to keep complete control over his life.

Meticulously researched by a senior private banker now turned historian, No More Champagne reveals for the first time the full extent of the iconic British war leader's private struggle to maintain a way of life instilled by his upbringing and expected of his public position. Lough uses Churchill's own most private records, many never researched before, to chronicle his family's chronic shortage of money, his own extravagance, and his recurring losses from gambling or trading in shares and currencies.

During the summer of 1940, Hitler's Germany appeared unstoppable. The Nazis were masters of mainland Europe, in alliance with Stalin's Russia, and only the English Channel prevented an immediate invasion. Britain stood alone. Operation Sealion examines just how realistic the German threat of invasion was. The author studies the plans, the available capability and resources, and the Germans' record in Norway and, later, Crete. The author weighs these against the state of Britain's defenses and the relative strengths of the land, air, and naval forces.

Margaret Thatcher was a British stateswoman and the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1990, she was the Leader of the Conservative Party. She was elected Prime Minister three times and served for 11 years, longer than any other British prime minister of the 20th century. Her political views, based on loose economics and individual self-realization, along with her policies, were referred to as Thatcherism, which for decades remained an influential political concept in the United Kingdom.

Few outside the security services have heard of 14 Company. As deadly as the SAS yet more secret, the operators of 14 Company are Britain's most effective weapon against international terrorism. For every bomb that goes off, 14 Company prevent 12. The selection process is the most physically, intellectually, and emotionally demanding anywhere in the world. This is the true story of one operator and of some of the most hair-raising military operations ever conducted on the streets of Britain.

George III, Britain's longest-reigning king, has gone down in history as 'the cruellest tyrant of this age' (Thomas Paine, 18th century), 'a sovereign who inflicted more profound and enduring injuries upon this country than any other modern English king' (WEH Lecky, 19th century), 'one of England's most disastrous kings' (JH Plumb, 20th century) and as the pompous, camp and sinister monarch of the musical Hamilton (21st century). Andrew Roberts' magnificent new biography takes entirely the opposite view.

This book is a testament to how low human nature can get and offers a comprehensive breakdown of the cases’ key dates before looking into the gritty details. In the chapters, you will learn about the origin of the word “serial killer”, dispel common myths about murderers, and get one step closer to understanding why people kill.

Published for the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, this poignant book examines the inspirations and individuals behind our statue-studded country to rediscover war-torn Britain in 100 monuments. Acclaimed historian Tessa Dunlop travels the length and breadth of the British Isles on a quest to uncover a story of national warring and national mourning, of fighting each other and of fighting together. Lest We Forget casts new light on the map of Britain through hidden treasures and uncomfortable truths, and asks what our war heroes and monuments say about us.

On February 15, 1942, the British surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army and handed over Singapore and surrounding Malaya countries. The conflict began on December 8, 1941, when Japanese forces bombed Singapore and continued to make their way through the treacherous Malayan jungle. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated during the attack, “the worst disaster and the largest capitulation in British history”.

The life and adventures of Thomas Cochrane, a young man who rose from midshipman to admiral, are so extraordinary that, to paraphrase Patrick O'Brian, one has to suspend disbelief. In fact, O'Brian admitted to using Cochrane as the model for his character Jack Aubrey. Second only to Nelson among the heroes of the Royal Navy, Cochrane became a household name in Britain during the 1800s as the Admiralty called upon his extraordinary skill as a sailor, his mastery of gunnery, and his daring use of ruses...

The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.

How did the United States become the country it is today? What led to its creation? Adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Atkinson’s deeply researched and stunningly vivid The British Are Coming, the young readers edition explores these questions and so much more as it delves into the American Revolution. A collection of key battles from the beginning of the war, including Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, sets the scene, telling a story of liberation fraught with contradiction and intrigue.

The History of England from Henry IV to Charles I, by a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian. N.B. There will be very few dates in this History! Jane Austen wrote The History of England in 1791, at the age of just 15, as a satirical parody of 18th-century historical textbooks. It pokes fun at the apparent impartiality of contemporary historians and contains more opinions about the monarchs’ relative characters than any facts or dates. The History of England was not published until 1922, more than a century after Austen’s death.

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, going back centuries. In fact, 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, which made landfall with a view to establishing a victualing station to service passing Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) ships.

Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly 500 colonial subjects, Britain's empire was the largest empire in human history. For many, it epitomised our nation's cultural superiority, but what legacy have we delivered to the world? Spanning more than 200 years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals evolutionary and racialised doctrines that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve British imperial interests.

On 16 July 1940, Hitler issued Directive No. 16, setting in motion Operation Sea Lion: his plan to invade England. The success of Operation Sea Lion hinged entirely on the destruction of the RAF and the Royal Navy, but even as Hitler's plans swung into action and England, barely recovered from Dunkirk, rallied her defences, the Battle of Britain began and in just a few months Germany had lost all hope of dominating England's skies and with it, the key to the invasion. On 17 September, 1940, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely and the entire episode faded from memory.

From his earliest days Winston Churchill was an extreme risk taker, and he carried this into adulthood. Today he is widely hailed as Britain’s greatest wartime leader and politician. Deep down though, he was foremost a warlord. In this audiobook, historian Anthony Tucker-Jones explores the record of Winston Churchill as a military commander, assessing how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office. This audiobook assesses his choices in the some of the most controversial and high-profile campaigns of World War II.

In the dramatic few years when colonial Americans were galvanized to resist British rule, perhaps nothing did more to foment anti-British sentiment than the armed occupation of Boston. As If an Enemy's Country is Richard Archer's gripping narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war.