‘Oh my goodness – another girl Mrs Swain!’ Clara’s normal iron composure broke and she screamed, ‘No! That’s not the bloody deal!’ And that is how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world. When Helen Batten’s marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family’s past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna’s early life. What...

DON'T MISS THE MAJOR FILM INSPIRED BY CHASE'S NARRATIVE, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA On 20 November 1820, just south of the equator, the whaling ship Essex, spotted and pursued a shoal of sperm whales. As the crew started harpooning, the largest whale – some 85 feet long – rammed the Essex twice and 'stove in her bows'. What...

'Fast-paced and punchy ... accomplished' Independent With journalistic acumen and a novelist's flair, Xinran tells the remarkable stories of men and women born in China after 1979 - the recent generations raised under China's single-child policy. At a time when the country continues to transform at the speed of light, these generations of precious 'one and onlies' are burdened with...

Philip Roth is the voice of our times. In a sequence of intimate conversations with some of the most influential and insightful writers of the twentieth century, Roth explores the importance of region, politics and history in their work and that of their predecessors. What qualities helped Primo Levi survive the demented laboratory of Auschwitz? What does Milan Kundera make...

For over half a century, noodlemaker Gyalo Thondup has been a familiar figure in the Himalayan hill town of Kalimpong. But it was not until 2010 that the townsfolk discovered his true identity: Gyalo Thondup is none other than the older brother of the Dalai Lama and his special envoy, a trusted interlocutor between Tibet and foreign leaders from Chiang...

Early in 1974, Bernard Donoughue, a young academic at the London School of Economics, was invited by Harold Wilson first to help fight the General Election and then to found and run the Policy Unit at Number Ten Downing Street, a body independent of the Civil Service machine working solely for the Prime Minister. He thus joined Wilson's notorious 'kitchen...

When Asad was eight years old, his mother was shot in front of him. With his father in hiding, he was swept alone into the great wartime migration that has scattered the Somali people throughout the world. This extraordinary book tells Asad’s story. Serially betrayed by the people who promised to care for him, Asad lived his childhood at a...

'An outstanding history ... one of the best writers on the First World War' Simon Sebag Montefiore Shortlisted for the Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature The Ottoman Endgame is the first, and definitive, single-volume history of the Ottoman empire's agonising war for survival. Beginning with Italy's invasion of Ottoman Tripoli in September 1911, the Empire was in a...

Eyewitness accounts from the BBC Archive are at the heart of this unique history of the first half of the 20th Century, narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith. The events of 1900-1949 are described by the people who saw them happen, from the death of Queen Victoria and accession of Edward VII through the First World War, the sinking of the Titanic,...

In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live. Bill Bryson was struck one...

In 1936, with the opening of his first holiday camp in Skegness, Billy Butlin laid the foundations for a new era in the history of the British seaside. Today, his legacy still lives on as Butlin's celebrates its 80th year as an iconic British institution. The Nation's Host charts the incredible inside story of Butlin's, from its origins in a...

SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TELEGRAPH AND EVENING STANDARD '[The] centenary will prompt a raft of books on the Russian Revolution. They will be hard pushed to better this highly original, exhaustively researched and superbly constructed account.' Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'A gripping, vivid, deeply researched chronicle of the Russian Revolution told through the eyes of...

In the early nineteenth century China remained almost untouched by British and European powers - but as new technology started to change this balance, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. Would the Chinese suffer the fate of much of the rest of the world, carved into pieces by Europeans? Or could they adapt rapidly enough to maintain...

It is 1988 and Florida-based FBI agent Joe Navarro divides his time between SWAT assignments, flying air reconnaissance, and working counter-intelligence. A body-language expert with an uncanny ability to “read” those he interrogates, Navarro is known as super-intense – an agent whose work ethic quickly burns out partners. He craves an assignment that will get him noticed by the FBI...

A jaunty journey into the world of the quiz, from the question editor of BBC2's Only Connect, sometimes in the form of 300 excellent quiz questions In 1938 Britain started to quiz. Since then, quizzes have become ubiquitous entertainment from pubs to primetime, suffered major criminal investigations, created unlikely folk heroes and been subjected to the rigours of question checkers....