'I was able to get on well with everyone below stairs and above, or so I thought until I began working for Lady Astor...' In 1929, Yorkshire lass Rosina Harrison became personal maid to Lady Astor: the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat and wife of one of England's wealthiest lords. Lady Astor was brilliant yet tempestuous,...

Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: it sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world, and yet the country's roiling disaffection produced sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, driven by contemporary technology, and yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back to match those of...

In May 2003 journalist Rory McCarthy went to Iraq to cover what was claimed to be the triumphant rebuilding of the country after the American invasion. Two years later he left a place teetering on the brink of civil war, whose inhabitants longed for the Americans to leave but feared what would happen if they did. Throughout his stay, McCarthy...

This enchanting, juicy history takes us from the pineapple's origins in the Amazon rainforests to its first tasting by Columbus in Guadeloupe and its starring role on the royal dinner tables of Europe. In the eighteenth-century this spectacular fruit reigned supreme: despite the fact that, at first, to cultivate just one cost the same as a new coach, every great...

The refinement of radiocarbon dating using the information form tree-ring counts has raised serious doubts about the accepted theoretical frameowkr of European prehistory. Monuments in Central and Western Europe have proved to be considerably older than their supposed Near-Eastern forerunners, and the record must be almost completely rewritten in the light of these new dates. Before Civilsation is a preliminary...

Florence in the fifteenth century was the undisputed centre of the Italian Renaissance. Its legacy is apparent today in every aspect of human endeavour. Our art and science, our learning and literature, our Christianity and our civic liberties, even our conception of what constitutes a gentleman, have all been shaped by Florentine thought and deed. In this brilliant and absorbing...

Catherine II, Empress of all the Russias, was the archetypal Enlightenment monarch. She reigned for more than 30 years, and during that time, as politician, diplomat, commander-in-chief, educator, builder, picture-collector, lover, mother, playwright, writer of fairy stories, autobiographer and indefatigable correspondent, she reformed and developed her largely unenlightened and backward country. Yet this woman, who at the age of 33,...

The publication of Robinson Crusoe in London in 1719 marked the arrival of a revolutionary art form: the novel. British writers were prominent in shaping the new type of storytelling - one which reflected the experiences of ordinary people, with characters in whom readers could find not only an escape, but a deeper understanding of their own lives. But the...

This illuminating collection of essays assesses the seventeenth century, interpreting what used to be called 'The Puritan Revolution', the ideas which helped to produce it and resulted from it, and the relation between these ideas and the political and economic events of the day. Each essay approaches the subject from a different angle, looking at aspects of the revolution -...

Inspired by the revelation that the Sphinx had been weathered by water and not by wind-blown sand and was, therefore, thousands of years older than the oldest civilisation known to man, Colin Wilson sets out to explore the remote depths of history. The compelling argument of this bestselling book is that, thousands of years before Ancient Egypt and Greece held...

Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women and their lost daughters. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity, these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them -...

'Woman, who is equal to the moon in the flower of youth, Is equal to a little old ape after the onset of old age' This remarkable collection brings together a host of writings from across different regions and cultures of the Middle Ages, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. They are arranged to follow the life stages of...

This is a book on the Russian Revolution with a difference. It unites the formal history and the individual memoir by telling the story of 1917 in the words of eyewitnesses who say history in the making. They witnessed two revolutions - the overthrow of Tsarism in March and the Bolshevik seizure of power in November - and described them...

This is a study of a literary generation writing in a period of expanding fears and ever more urgent political and social crises. The pace of the time itself, the sense of time passing and an end approaching gave a special quality to the Thirties. The public world pressed insistently on the private world. For those who came of literary...

At a time when the influence of Islam and the Arab world dominate newspaper headlines as a result of bloodshed and terrorist threats, it will come as a welcome relief to learn of Sultan Qaboos. The very term 'Sultan' conjures up shades of peacock thrones and riches beyond the dreams of avarice. This incredible scene has almost vanished . ....