When John Cadbury came to Birmingham in 1824, he sold tea, coffee and drinking chocolate in a small shop on Bull Street. Drinking chocolate was considered a healthy alternative to alcohol, something Cadbury, a Quaker, was keen to encourage. In 1879, the Cadburys moved to Bournville and created their ‘factory in a garden’ – an unprecedented move. It is now...

Madame Marie Tussaud is known worldwide for the chain of wax museums she started over 200 hundred years ago. Less known is that her original wax models were often of the famous and infamous people she personally knew during and after the French Revolution. These were people like Voltaire, Robespierre, and Napoleon — people who changed the world. Even more...

There’s no doubt that Paris is brimming with some of the world’s best art. But on a trip to the City of Light, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the options, get caught up in the queues and miss the back street gems. Fear not- armed with this companion you’ll easily navigate your way through the rich art history to the vibrant present scene, and have a ball...

For better or worse, what we are is often determined by our family; the events that occurred many years before we were born, and the choices that were made by our forebears are our inheritance - we are the inexorable product of family history. So it is with nations. The history of Great Britain has been largely defined by powerful and influential families...

'It shows the variety and depth of the men sent into harms way during World War II, something emphasised by the population of Stalag Luft III. Most of the Allied POWs were flyers, with all the technical, tactical and planning skills that profession requires. Such men are independent thinkers, craving open air and wide-open spaces, which meant than an...

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the gateway between the medieval world and the modern, centuries when the western societies moved from an age governed principally by religion and superstition to an age directed principally by reason and understanding. Although the worlds of science and philosophy took giant strides away from the medieval view...

Allergies are on the rise and now affect over 40% of the UK population. Living with allergies has a huge impact on day-to-day life and this book provides practical tips for all the family. Through interviews with leading allergy experts and people managing the conditions, it provides insight into each allergic condition and how to manage them at different...

Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of Chelm – the city of wise fools celebrated in Jewish folklore. According to legend, Chelm was populated by preposterously silly townsfolk. There are numerous tales of their idiotic exploits and the most famous is the story of the people of Chelm and the moon… The people of Chelm have a problem. They love to walk the...

If you care about what you eat, you should care about how you grow it.

Gardeners can demonstrate that by going beyond organics to veganics - growing without animal inputs - they are a driving force in saving the environment.

This book gives you the tools to grow without harming the planet and animals, and explains why moving beyond organics towards super...

When the thirteen year old Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York, married King James IV of Scotland in a magnificent proxy ceremony held at Richmond Palace in January 1503, no one could have guessed that this pretty, redheaded princess would go on to have a marital career as dramatic and chequered as that of her younger...

Isaac Newton was accorded a semi-divine status in the 18th and 19th centuries, whereby his image linked together religion and science. The real human being behind the demi-god image has tended to be lost. He was a person who took credit from others, and crushed the reputations of those to whom he owed most. This most brilliant of mathematicians could alas...

Nile Wilson first shot to fame in 2014, when he became the only British gymnast to win five gold medals at the European Junior Gymnastics Championships. The same year, he won four medals as a senior in the Commonwealth Games and is the current Commonwealth Champion on the horizontal bar. In 2016, he won bronze at the Rio Olympics and is tipped to win gold...

Irishman John-Paul Jordan, still only in his thirties, has led an extraordinary life … from the Foreign Legion and security in Iraq to serving his country in Afghanistan for which he was decorated for his leadership and bravery … and on to ‘herding’ journalists on the front line in Libya … and hunting for gold in Afghanistan …

However, once back in Civvy...

What did a Victorian lady wear for a walk in the park? How did she style her hair for an evening at the theatre? And what products might she have used to soothe a sunburn or treat an unsightly blemish? Mimi Matthews answers these questions and more as she takes readers on a decade-by-decade journey through Victorian fashion and beauty history.

Women’s...

After dinner at the Wolfs Lair it was Hitlers custom to retire to his private quarters where Hitler and his entourage often listened to gramophone records of Beethoven symphonies, selections from Wagner while Hitler would hold forth with lengthy and rambling monologues touching on a wide variety of subjects. Hitler was invariably joined by Keitel and his...

A simplified explanation of probiotics and what they can do for and to the human body is long overdue. Despite the fact that people use the term probiotics a lot in the media as well as in everyday life there appears to be some confusion as to whether probiotics are something that occurs naturally in a healthy human gut or ‘biome’, something that is added...

Alfred the Great’s daughter defied all expectations of a well-bred Saxon princess. The first Saxon woman ever to rule a kingdom, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, led her army in battle against Viking invaders. She further broke with convention by arranging for her daughter to succeed her on the throne of Mercia.

To protect her people and enable her kingdom...

Elizabeth Branwell was born in Penzance in 1770, a member of a large and influential Cornish family of merchants and property owners. In 1821 her life changed forever when her sister Maria fell dangerously ill. Leaving her comfortable life behind, Elizabeth made the long journey north to a remote moorland village in Yorkshire to nurse her sister. After the...

For as long as human societies have existed there have always been people who have always transgressed the laws of their respective societies. It seems that whenever new laws are made, certain people find ways to break them.

This book will introduce you to some of the most notorious figures, from all parts of the world, who have committed heinous crimes such...

Wife to Richard, Duke of York, mother to Edward IV and Richard III, and aunt to the famous ‘Kingmaker’, Richard, Earl of Warwick, Cecily Neville was a key player on the political stage of fifteenth-century Britain England.

Mythologically rumoured to have been known as ‘the Rose of Raby’ because of her beauty and her birth at Raby Castle, and as ‘Proud Cis’...