From the 1880s to the Second World War, Campbell Road, Finsbury Park (known as Campbell Bunk), had a notorious reputation for violence, for breeding thieves and prostitutes, and for an enthusiastic disregard for law and order. It was the object of reform by church, magistrates, local authorities, and social scientists, who left many traces of their attempts to improve what...

'This anthology is... a distillation of what the fighters put down at the time or in retrospect to tell others (or perhaps convince themselves) what it was all about. Here are the words of the wise, the witty, the nonchalant, the devil-may-care: the poets and the prodigals.' From the Editor's Foreword On land, the Second World War provided an infinite...

Read stories inspired by the four Underground lines that run North and South through city - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. Comedy and capitalism join in four tales: The Northern Line: William Leith, author of The Hungry Years and...

The Dodger is the long-awaited story of Johnny Dodge, a wartime hero and a pivotal figure in the escapade immortalised in the legendary Hollywood film The Great Escape. Of all the Allied prisoners who broke out of Hermann Göring's 'escape proof' camp in the famous episode of March 1944, Johnny Dodge was the most intriguing. American-born Dodge was a cousin...

Raghu Karnad’s “Everybody’s Friend” is a poignant pilgrimage to the military grave of a great-uncle, fallen defending the obsolescent Raj against the oncoming army of imperial Japan. The most brutal fighting unfolded on the unforgiving northeast Indian border with Burma, and Karnad takes himself and the reader deep into Nagaland to find the war graves of Imphal. There he broods...

Almost everyone has a neighbour. Neighbours can enrich or ruin our lives. They fascinate and worry us in equal measure. Soap operas watched by millions play with every lurid permutation of relationships in fictional neighbourhoods. Disputes over gigantic Leylandii and noise nuisance turn nasty and fill newspaper columns. These stories have a rich history - as long as we have...

Read stories inspired by the four Underground lines that run East and West through city - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. The District Line: John Lanchester, author of Whoops! and Capital takes us on a whirlwind tour of the...

'Higher education comes at exactly the right time: in the twilight of your teens, you're just starting to coagulate as a human being, to pull away from parental influence and find your own feet. What better than three years in which to explore the inner you, establish a feasible worldview, and maybe get on Blockbusters.' After an idyllic provincial 1970s...

Our perception of Victoria the Queen is coloured by portraits of her older, widowed self - her dour expression embodying the repressive morality propagated in her time. But Becoming Queen reveals an energetic and vibrant woman, determined to battle for power. It also documents the Byzantine machinations behind Victoria's quest to occupy the throne, and shows how her struggles did...

Herewith a handful of sample entries to tickle your funny bones… In the 1824 war between Britain and Ashanti (now part of Ghana), the British Redcoats found themselves surrounded by 10,000 fierce Ashanti warriors, and running very low on ammunition. Their commander ordered Charles Brandon, the army’s stores manager, to break open the reserve ammunition he’d ordered. As the Ashanti...

Pankaj Mishra's provocative account of how China, India and the Muslim World are remaking the world in their own image - shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2013 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2013 Viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, the Victorian period was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last...

The Benn Diaries, embracing the years 1940-1990, are already established as a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of political life. The selected highlights that form this single-volume edition include the most notable events, arguments and personal reflections throughout Benn's long and remarkable career as a leading politician. The narrative starts with Benn as a schoolboy and takes the reader...

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JAMES FENTON Subtitled 'An education in the twenties', this work blends autobiography and fiction to describe the inner life of a writer evolving from precocious public school boy to Cambridge drop-out at large in London’s Bohemia. It contains thinly veiled portraits of Isherwood’s contemporaries Auden, Upward, and Spender, whose intimate friendships and cult of rebellion...

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future....

The uneasy alliance that lay at the heart of the relationship of two of the most powerful and controversial leaders of the late 20th century: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. For three decades, historians have cited the long-term alliance of Reagan and Thatcher as an example of the special bond between the US and Britain. But, as Richard Aldous argues,...