Gladiators and Beasthunts is a comprehensive survey of arena sports in ancient Rome, focusing upon gladiatorial combat and the beast-hunts (venationes). Whilst numerous books have already been written on arena spectacles in ancient Rome, they generally neglect the venationes, despite the fact that the beast-hunts, in which men were pitted in mortal combat...

History has recorded that the first ever powered flight took place at Kitty Hawk in America, on 17 December 1903 and was carried out by the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, who were aircraft designers and manufacturers. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, aviation was only eleven years old. The daddy of battlefield warfare until that...

"The enemy bomber grew larger in my sights and the rear gunner was sprayed by my guns just as he opened fire. The rest was merely a matter of seconds. The bomber fell like a stone out of the sky and exploded on the ground. The nightmare came to an end."

In this enthralling memoir, the author recounts his experiences of the war years and traces the story...

If ever there was a real pilot's aeroplane it was the Hunter; an outstanding multi-purpose aircraft which excelled in the roles of interceptor fighter, ground attack, reconnaissance, research vehicle and two-seater trainer, not forgetting its dramatic formation aerobatic performances.

The Hunter is one of the world's greatest aircraft. For three decades...

The origin of the names of many English towns, hamlets and villages date as far back as Saxon times, when kings like Alfred the Great established fortified borough towns to defend against the Danes. A number of settlements were established and named by French Normans following the Conquest. Many are even older and are derived from Roman placenames. Some...

Discover the story of the disease that devastated the Victorian population, and brought about major changes in sanitation. Drawing on the latest scientific research and a wealth of archival material, Amanda Thomas uses first-hand accounts, blending personal stories with an overview of the history of the disease and its devastating after-effects on British...

Marie Antoinette has always fascinated readers worldwide. Yet perhaps no one knew her better than one of her closest confidantes, Marie Thrse, the Princess de Lamballe. The Princess became superintendent of the Queens household in 1774, and through her relationship with Marie Antoinette, a unique perspective of the lavishness and daily intrigue at...

Seek and Strike – RAF Brüggen in War and Peace is an anecdotal history of the largest RAF station in Germany. Optimised for a new breed of aircraft, and to NATO requirements, this huge airfield was cut out of the Elmpt Forest, on the German border with Holland, and completed in one year to become operational in 1953. First occupied by a fighter wing...

The Third Samnite War (298-290 BC) was a crucial episode in the early history of Rome. Upon its outcome rested mastery of central Italy, and the independent survival of both Rome and the Samnites. Determined to resist aggressive Roman expansion, the Samnites forged a powerful alliance with the Senones (a tribe of Italian Gauls), Etruscans and Umbrians. The...

Commando is the real and exciting story of one of the most important units of World War II. The Commando unit played an important role in Britain’s successes and, here, Durnford-Slater gives his first-hand and unique point of view on everything that happened.

Brigadier Durnford-Slater raised and trained the first Commando unit in 1940, and Commando tells...

"A spellbinding tale of those who paid the ultimate price for freedom.” - Damien Lewis, author of SAS Shadow Raiders: The Ultra-Secret Mission that Changed the Course of WWII.

‘A fascinating account of the little-known final battle of World War II in Europe’ - The Bookseller

In the final days of World War II in Europe, Georgians serving in the...

Fig's life at school is perfectly normal: he's sure his science teacher hates him, his dad is forcing him to attend barmitzvah classes because his mum who have wanted it, and he's just been passed over for the football team in favour of Gus Starks, a ball hog and a bully.

And, as if Fig's life needed one more complication, his grandmother Gigi is...

Anna Komnene is one of the most curious figures in the history of an intriguing empire. A woman of extraordinary education and intellect, she was the only Byzantine female historian and one of the first and foremost historians in medieval Europe. Yet few people know of her and her extraordinary story. Subsequent historians and scholars have skewed the...

In 1906 the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was asked by the Home Office to make available skilled investigators for murder enquiries nationwide as few constabularies had sufficiently skilled – or indeed, any - detectives.

Thus was born the Reserve Squad, or Murder Squad, as it later became known. Despite a reluctance by some forces to call upon The...

Crochet Betty, an Amigurumi-style doll, with patterns for her fifties outfits ranging from shopping to movie-going. There’s a detailed explanation of how to make the basic Betty doll, and also her cute cat Bert.

Each section has patterns for a selection of stylish removable garments and accessories on a fifties theme, with a few added extras for Bert...

Today we are aware of how the rich and privileged have lived in the past because historians write about them endlessly. The poor have largely been ignored and, as a result, their contributions to our modern world are harder to unearth.

Skilled raconteur TERRY DEARY takes us back through the centuries with a poignant but humorous look at how life treated...

During the 1930s, the British Intelligence agencies became increasingly concerned about Communist influence in the country. They reacted by spying on thousands of ordinary British citizens. Amongst them were many artists and writers who, in tune with ‘the spirit of the times’, had become sympathetic to left-wing causes, most notably the Spanish Civil War...

In 1827 the Duke of Wellington – former Commander-in-Chief of the British Army and British Prime Minister – ordered the withdrawal of British soldiers from the island of Ceylon after years of bloody conflict there. English cargo vessels, including the unarmed English Quaker ship Morning Star, were despatched to sail to Colombo to repatriate wounded British...

The Peninsular War and the Napoleonic Wars across Europe are subjects of such enduring interest that they have prompted extensive research and writing. Yet other campaigns, in what was a global war, have been largely ignored. Such is the case for the war in India which persisted for much of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods and peaked in the...

Andrew Field, who has published four best-selling books on the Battle of Waterloo, has established himself as one of the leading experts on the French perspective of the campaign. Using selected extracts from French eyewitness accounts that haven't been published before in English, he has added a new dimension to our understanding of what happened on the...

The Mighty Warrior Kings traces the history of early Europe through the biographies of nine kings, who had the courage, determination and martial might to establish their dominance over the fragmented remnants of the Roman Empire. The book begins with Charlemagne, who united large regions of current-day France, Germany and Italy into the Holy Roman Empire...

Regicide, military dictatorship, war and rumours of war, opposition from all sides and collapse of a 'failed state': such is the story of Oliver Cromwell's unique experiment in the governance of Britain, following the English-British Civil Wars. The British state of the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in the Protectorate, with...

Peek beneath the bedsheets of nineteenth-century Britain in this affectionate, informative and fascinating look at sex and sexuality during the reign of Queen Victoria. It examines the prevailing attitudes towards male and female sexual behaviour, and the ways in which these attitudes were often determined by those in positions of power and authority. It...

Imagine you were transported back in time to Ancient Egypt and you had to start a new life there. How would you fit in? Where would you live? What would you eat? Where would you go to have your hair done? Who would you go to if you got ill, or if you were mugged in the street? All these questions, and many more, will be answered in this new how-to guide for...

The 'Montfortian' civil wars in England lasted from 1259-67, though the death of Simon de Montfort and so many of his followers at the battle of Evesham in 1265 ought to have ended the conflict. In the aftermath of the battle, Henry III's decision to disinherit all the surviving Montfortians served to prolong the war for another two years. Hundreds of...

The book is an investigation of the evidence for King Arthur based on the earliest written sources rather than later myths and legends.

The evidence is laid out in a chronological order starting from Roman Britain and shows how the legend evolved and at what point concepts such as Camelot, excalibur and Merlin were added.

It covers the historical...

The story of King Arthur is one of the best known in English history: he was the boy who was schooled by Merlin and who claimed his right to lead the Britons against the Saxons by drawing a sword from a stone; later, he was the warrior who congregated with his knights around a Round Table and who was given a magical sword, Excalibur, by the Lady of the...

Scotland is a land with a proud and centuries long history that far pre-dates its membership of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Today in the 21st century it is also a land that has done much to make its historical records accessible, to help those with Caledonian ancestry trace their roots back to earlier times and a world long past.

In Tracing...

Many people in the past – perhaps a majority – were poor. Tracing our ancestors amongst them involves consulting a wide range of sources. Stuart Raymond’s handbook is the ideal guide to them.

He examines the history of the poor and how they survived. Some were supported by charity. A few were lucky enough to live in an almshouse. Many had to depend on...

When the top secret codebreaking activities at Bletchley Park were revealed in the 1970s, much of the history of the Second World War had to be rewritten. Code Wars examines the role of ULTRA (the intelligence derived from breaking secret enemy signals) on major events of the Second World War. It examines how it influenced the outcome of key battles such as...

Frederick the Great is one of history’s most controversial leaders. Famed for his military successes and domestic reforms, his campaigns were a watershed in the history of Europe, securing Prussia’s place as a continental power and inaugurating a new pattern of total war that was to endure until 1916. However, much myth surrounds this enigmatic man, his...

When the call went out in 1917 for volunteers willing to serve both at home and on the Western Front in a newly founded Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, young women from every province of Ireland responded just as eagerly as those from homes in Scotland, England and Wales.

Drawn from every class, creed, family background and ability, the girls who came...

Born in 1360, Jan Zizka was a formidable figure whose life and military career was set amidst the whirlwind of monumental revolutions - military, religious, political and social - that engulfed medieval Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. The leader of Bohemia’s Hussite Revolution, the first of the religious wars during the Protestant Reformation, he was...