‘The most original of First World War centenary books; it is a travel narrative of rare resonance and insight’ Sunday Times On a summer morning in 1914, a teenage assassin fired the starting gun for modern history. It was a young teenage boy named Gavrilo Princip who fired that fateful shot which killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and ultimately...

The National Archives is one of the most remarkable collections of documents in the world, holding over 120 miles of papers. In 2010 the staff at the Archives were asked to select their favourite document. The results of this poll form the basis of this book, skilfully curated by bestselling author Richard Taylor. Each of the documents has a timeless...

'Because of his baldness and hairiness, he announced it was a capital offence for anyone either to look down on him as he passed or to mention goats in any context.' The biography of the brutal, crazed and incestuous Roman Emperor Caligula, who tried to appoint his own horse consul. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday....

The gripping first-hand account of the events that inspired the major film Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, by the man at the centre of them all - James B. Donovan. Also featuring a foreword by Jason Matthews. With the Cold War at its height, the capture and trial of Colonel Abel, the Soviets' most capable and effective spy, revealed...

'The unofficial voice of modern Irish history' Economist When President of the Irish Republic Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he remarked to Lord Birkenhead, 'I may have signed my actual death warrant.' In August 1922 at the height of the Irish Civil War, that prophecy came true - Collins was shot and killed by a fellow...

'Do you see your son, standing over there, in the antechamber? Well, I am going to shoot him.' The story of the great and mad Cambyses, King of Persia, told by part-historian, part-mythmaker Herodotus of Halicarnassus. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books...

The final five volumes from the landmark BBC radio series This Sceptred Isle. Christopher Lee's epic history tells the story of Britain from the Romans to the death of Victoria. This collection includes the original volumes 6-10: 1702-1760: The First British EmpireThe reign of George I; Britain's first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, and the first rendition of Rule Britannia. 1760-1792:...

From Tristram Hunt, award-winning author of The Frock-Coated Communist and leading UK politician, Ten Cities that Made an Empire presents a new approach to Britain's imperial past through the cities that epitomised it Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and the end days of Empire, Britain's colonial past has been the subject of passionate debate. Tristram...

Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign...

September 1613. In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England’s great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is ‘tormented’ with violent convulsions. Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. Soon the whole family will be stricken with the same terrifying symptoms. The second son, the last male of the line, will not...

The Danes are the happiest people in the world, and pay the highest taxes. 'Neutral' Sweden is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world. Finns have the largest per capita gun ownership after the US and Yemen. 54 per cent of Icelanders believe in elves. Norway is the richest country on earth. 5 per cent of Danish men...

The third and final volume of Sarvepalli Gopal’s biography of Jawaharlal Nehru covers the last eight years of his life and Prime Ministership. It deals with his efforts to sustain economic and social advance of the Indian people and not to lose hold of the principles of his foreign policy even while relations with China deteriorated, culminating the large scale...

‘The classic, groundbreaking account of women’s lives in Greece and Rome’ Mary Beard For centuries, half the ancient world remained invisible -- until Sarah Pomeroy’s pioneering history, which at last revealed the women of antiquity to modern eyes. What did daily life hold for women in ancient Greece and Rome? How many women read the great histories of Herodotus and...

The Northmen’s Fury tells the Viking story, from the first pinprick raids of the eighth century to the great armies that left their Scandinavian homelands to conquer larger parts of France, Britain and Ireland. It recounts the epic voyages that took them across the Atlantic to the icy fjords of Greenland and to North America over four centuries before Columbus...

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his Gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers’ ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy’s brushes with the law....