Great Britain History

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

1217 charts the nascent sense of national identity that began to swell. Three key battles would determine England’s destiny. The fortress of Dover was besieged, the city of Lincoln was attacked, and a great invasion force set sail and, unusually for the time, was intercepted at sea. Catherine Hanley expertly navigates medieval siege warfare, royal politics, and fighting at sea to bring this remarkable period of English history to life.

This comprehensive and authoritative history of the War of 1812, thoroughly revised for the 200th anniversary of the historic conflict, is a myth-shattering study that will inform and entertain students, historians, and general listeners alike. Donald R. Hickey explores the military, diplomatic, and domestic history of our second war with Great Britain, bringing the study up to date with recent scholarship on all aspects of the war, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

Modern communications have driven motorways and pylons through the countryside, dwarfed us with TV and telephone masts, and drastically altered the way in which we move around, see, and understand Scotland. Recent politics and logistics have established borders and jurisdictions which now seem permanent and impervious. The Faded Map looks beyond these to remember a land that was once quiet and green.

The British Empire is unique in world history. How did this small island come to rule a full quarter of the globe? No other nation has matched this achievement.

In this magisterial book, Roy Jenkins' unparalleled command of the political history of Britain and his own high-level government experience combine in a narrative account of Churchill's astounding career that is unmatched in its shrewd insights, its unforgettable anecdotes, the clarity of its overarching themes, and the author's nuanced appreciation of his extraordinary subject.

A comprehensive look at the brutal wilderness war that secured America's independence… With Musket and Tomahawk is a vivid account of the American and British struggles in the sprawling wilderness region of the northeast during the Revolutionary War. Combining strategic, tactical, and personal detail, this book describes how the patriots of the recently organized Northern Army defeated England's massive onslaught of 1777, thereby all but ensuring America's independence.

Peter Marshall was born in Orkney. His ancestors were farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday – where, in 1624, one of them was murdered by a witch. In an expansive and enthralling historical account, Marshall looks afresh at a small group of islands that has been treated as a mere footnote, remote and peripheral, and in doing so invites us to think differently about key events of British history.

In a life of extraordinary drama, Jane Boleyn was catapulted from relative obscurity to the inner circle of King Henry VIII. As powerful men and women around her became victims of Henry's ruthless and absolute power - including her own husband and sister-in-law Queen Anne Boleyn - Jane's allegiance to the volatile monarchy was sustained and rewarded. But the price for her loyalty would eventually be her undoing and the ruination of her name

In this magisterial work of history and adventure, based on more than a decade of prodigious research in British, Canadian, and European archives, and months in the field in Nepal and Tibet, Wade Davis vividly re-creates British climbers’ epic attempts to scale Mount Everest in the early 1920s. With new access to letters and diaries, Davis recounts the heroic efforts of George Mallory and his fellow climbers to conquer the mountain in the face of treacherous terrain and furious weather.

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

The Tudor dynasty died out because there was no heir of Elizabeth I's body to succeed her. Henry VIII, despite his six marriages, had produced no legitimate son who would live into old age. Three of the reigning Tudors (Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I) died without heirs apparent, the most tragic case being that of Mary Tudor, who went through two recorded cases of phantom pregnancy. If it were not for physical frailty and the lack of reproductive health among the Tudors, the course of history might have been different.

Until the mass hysteria of the seventeenth century, accusations of witchcraft in England were rare. However, four royal women, related in family and in court ties - Joan of Navarre, Eleanor Cobham, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and Elizabeth Woodville - were accused of practicing witchcraft in order to kill or influence the king. In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives and the cases of these so-called witches, placing them in the historical context of 15th-century England, a setting rife with political upheaval and war.

Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red, and Britannia ruled not just the waves but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries.

An absorbing account of the conspiracy to kill King James I by his handsome lover, the duke of Buckingham, a historical crime that has remained hidden for 400 years....

Young Elizabeth Stuart was thrust into a life of wealth and splendor when her godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, died and her father, James I, ascended to the illustrious throne of England. At 16 she was married to a dashing German count far below her rank, with the understanding that James would help her husband achieve the crown of Bohemia. Her father's terrible betrayal of this promise would ruin "the Winter Queen", as Elizabeth would forever be known, imperil the lives of those she loved, and launch a war that would last for 30 years.

In this account of Europe’s rise to world leadership in technology, Frances and Joseph Gies make use of recent scholarship to destroy two time-honored myths. Myth One: that Europe’s leap forward occurred suddenly in the “Renaissance,” following centuries of medieval stagnation. Myth Two: that Europe achieved its primacy through “Western” superiority.

Julia Cummings has long been acquainted with loss - her mother, her brother, her sister, her friend, all gone too soon. But the loss that pushed her grief to the limit as a young girl was that of her best friend, Lucas Jonquil, who abandoned her without looking back. Now, eight years later, Lucas has returned to Lampton Park, and Julia has steeled herself - she will never forgive the man who broke her heart.

It is December 1878, and war looms on the horizon in South Africa. British high commissioner Sir Henry Bartle-Frere seeks to dismantle the powerful neighboring kingdom of the Zulus and uses an incursion along the disputed border as his justification for war. He issues an impossible ultimatum to the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, demanding he disband his armies and pay massive reparations. With a heavy heart, the king prepares his nation for war against their former allies.

An account of the last three hundred years of Scottish history offers a look at Scottish identity and culture.