A bestselling historian shows how the British Empire created the modern world, in a book lauded as "a rattling good tale" (Wall Street Journal) and "popular history at its best" (Washington Post) The British Empire was the largest in all history: the nearest thing to global domination ever achieved. The world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain's Age of Empire. The global spread of capitalism, telecommunications, the English...

Kwasi Kwarteng is the child of parents whose lives were shaped as subjects of the British Empire, first in their native Ghana, then as British immigrants. He brings a unique perspective and impeccable academic credentials to a narrative history of the British Empire, one that avoids sweeping judgmental condemnation and instead sees the Empire for what it was: a series of local fiefdoms administered in varying degrees of competence or brutality by...

A "gripping [and] splendidly readable" portrait of the battle within the British War Cabinet-and Churchill's eventual victory-as Hitler's shadow loomed (The Boston Globe). From May 24 to May 28, 1940, members of Britain's War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue what became known as the Second World War. In this magisterial work, John Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical events at 10 Downing Street, where Winston...

Traces the line of the Windsor House, profiling such events and people as Princess Margaret and Prince Charles, the wedding of Prince William and Kate, and the Queen's jubilees, providing details on the private and personal lives of the queen and her family.

The Tudor era belongs to its women. No other period of English history, has produced so many notable and interesting women, and into other periods have they so powerfully influenced the course of political events. Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I and, at moments of high drama, Mary Queen of Scots dominated the political scene for more than half a century, while in the previous fifty years Henry VIII's marital escapades brought six more women to the center...

Norman influence pervaded Europe in the early Middle Ages. Haskins traces that influence using meticulous research and his insightful analysis in The Normans in European History (1915), to show how the modern nation-state is in many ways the heir of Norman culture and civilization.

David Elliston Allen is coordinator of the History of Medicine Program of The Wellcome Trust. He is also Honorary Lecturer in the History of the Life Sciences, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, and teaches at the University College, London. At once a major resource for historians of science and an excellent introduction to natural history for the general reader, David Allen's The Naturalist in Britain established a precedent for investigating...

Sunday evening, October 9th, 1216. King John is facing continued civil war and a devastating French invasion; treacherous times. We discover him crossing the tidal marshes of the Fenlands of East Anglia. He is about to lose Englands crown jewels, his gem collection, and sackfuls of silver coins with his image on them: a treasure trove. What happened? What was he doing in that remote and windswept place? Why did he take the crown jewels with him?...