Nicky Haslam has always been at the centre of things wherever he is - at parties, opening nights, royal weddings - and has stories to tell of crossing paths, and more, with the cultural icons of our time: Cecil Beaton, Francis Bacon, Diana Cooper, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe to name but a few....

Why are we so fascinated by ruins? Do we see them as jig-saws and riddles or romantic evocations of the damage of Time, complete with crumbling stone and ivy? Do they stir us to remember past glory or warn against future arrogance? In this elegant, provocative book , the brilliant young art-historian Christopher Woodward looks back to the start of...

Lucie de la Tour du Pin was the Pepys of her generation. She witnessed, participated in, and wrote diaries detailing one of the most tumultuous periods of history. From life in the Court of Versailles, through the French Revolution to Napoleon's rule, Lucie survived extraordinary times with great spirit. She recorded people, politics and intrigue, alongside the intriguing minutia of...

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was the most unconventional and influential leader of the Victorian women's movement. Enormously talented, energetic and original, she was a feminist, law-reformer, painter, journalist, the close friend of George Eliot and a cousin of Florence Nightingale. As a painter, Barbara is now recognised as a vital figure among Pre-Raphaelite women artists. As a feminist she led...

Britain is experiencing a sudden reckless rush of liberalisation, from 24 hour licensing to gay marriages. But how did we get from idolising Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier to Jordan and Peter Andre? Funny and bittersweet, Made In Brighton interweaves personal stories of life in Brighton with larger themes of sex, politics and class to take a cold, hard look...

142 Strand was the home of the brilliant, unconventional young publisher John Chapman. All the daring and avant-garde writers and thinkers of Victorian London gathered here, among them Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray; Americans like Emerson and refugees from revolutionary Europe like Mazzini. In 1851 Chapman brought Marian Evans - the future George Eliot - to London where her arrival caused rows...

Beatrice Cenci was executed in Rome in September 1599: she was said to be sixteen, and was hauntingly beautiful. Her crime was the murder of her father, a member of one of the greatest Roman families, but his cruel treatment of her, including incestuous rape, moved the people of the city to take her side. Weeping crowds lined the streets,...

**AS FEATURED ON HOAXED PODCAST** This definitive book delves into why so many people are ready to believe in conspiracy theories, and the damage it can cause. Voodoo Histories entertainingly demolishes the absurd and sinister conspiracy theories of the last 100 years, such as:Did Neil Armstrong really set foot on the moon?Was the United States government responsible for the 11...

Democracy is Britain's gift to the world. Most of the ideas and ideals that have shaped the world's democracies can be traced back to arguments and reforms that first erupted here. Democracy tells the thousand-year story of the bitter battles over those arguments and reforms, in the words of those who shaped our democracy, fought for it and resisted it....

As a diarist I have chronicled the time through which I have lived in meticulous detail: but all that is history. What matters now is the future for those who will live through it. The past is the past but there may be lessons to be learned which could help the next generation to avoid mistakes their parents and grandparents...

What do women look for in a man? And what do men look for in a woman? And how and why has this changed over the centuries? Every week thousands of people advertise for love either in newspapers, magazines or online. But if you think this is a modern phenomenon, think again - the ads have been running for over...

A Mountain of Crumbs is the moving story of a young Soviet girl's discovery of the hidden truths of adulthood and her country's profound political deception. Elena, born with a desire to explore the world beyond her borders, finds her passion in the complexity of the English language - but in the Soviet Union of the 1960s, such a passion...

'Sara Wheeler is the literary maestro of the earth's frozen regions... The prose is startling and sharp-edged as the icy landscapes themselves' Financial Times Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, herding reindeer across the tundra with Lapps and shadowing the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with truckers, Sara Wheeler discovers a complex and ambiguous land belonging...

From conkers to marbles, from British Bulldog to tag, not forgetting 'one potato, two potato' and 'eeny, meeny, miny, mo', The Lore of the Playground looks at the games children have enjoyed, the rhymes they have chanted and the rituals and traditions they have observed over the past hundred years and more. Each generation, it emerges, has had its own...

**A SOURCE FOR MARCO POLO, A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES** Marco Polo's journey from Venice, through Europe and most of Asia, to the court of Kublai Khan in China is one of the most audacious in history. His account of his experiences, known simply as The Travels, uncovered an entirely new world of emperors and concubines, great buildings - 'stately pleasure...