Like bubonic plague and stone cladding, no-one took Margaret Thatcher seriously until it was too late. Her first act as leader was to appear before the cameras and do a V for Victory sign the wrong way round. She was smiling and telling the British people to f*** off at the same time. It was something we would have to...

Discover Amos Oz’s most iconic work in this extraordinary memoir that is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation *OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE* ‘A hero of mine, a moral as well as literary giant’ Simon Schama Amos Oz's remarkable, moving story takes us on a...

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S JOHN K. FAIRBANK PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 2017 'This is the finest single-volume history of Vietnam in English. It challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic's political future' Guardian 'Powerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink...

*Shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay* Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 by the Financial Times, Guardian, New Statesman, Observer, The Millions and Emerald Street 'Flâneuse [flanne-euhze], noun, from the French. Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities. That is an imaginary definition.' If the word...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore, read by Tuppence Middleton. Winter, 1916: In St Petersburg, Russia on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar's secret police... Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka...

23 February Results rolling in! Algebra, 6th = 74%. Not bad. Latin = 55% Thrilled! History top = 85% smashing! Geography, disgusting, 2nd = 67%. In 1954 in Carlisle lived an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl called Margaret. She would go on to become an acclaimed writer, the author of the novels Georgy Girl and Diary of an Ordinary Woman as well...

There are many books about Israel, but none like this. From Rich Cohen, the author of the acclaimed Tough Jews, The Avengers, and Sweet and Low, comes a new approach to a story we thought we knew. Breaking through the heated polemics and intractable politics, Israel Is Real is a fresh voice, a tale of people and ideas, of the...

In 1990, Günter Grass - a reluctant diarist - felt compelled to make a record of the interesting times through which he was living. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of Communism, Germany and Europe were enduring a period of immense upheaval. Grass resolved to immerse himself in these political debates: he travelled...

The extraordinary real stories that inspired the major BBC series Have you ever illegally downloaded a DVD? Taken drugs? Fallen for a phishing scam? Organised crime is part of all our worlds - often without us even knowing. McMafia is a journey through the new world of international organised crime, from gunrunners in Ukraine to money launderers in Dubai, by...

'A book with a ferocious pace and more black humour than one could imagine'– Evening Standard **As heard on BBC Radio 4 The World Tonight** America lost 1.4 million citizens in the North Korean attacks of 2020. This is the final, authorised report of the US government commission investigating the catastrophe. ‘The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March...

This definitive, multi-volume history of the world's first known state reveals that much of what we have been taught about Ancient Egypt is the product of narrow-minded visions of the past Drawing on a lifetime of research, John Romer chronicles the history of Ancient Egypt from the building of the Great Pyramid through the rise and fall of the Middle...

‘IB was one of the great affirmers of our time.’ John Banville, New York Review of Books The title of this final volume of Isaiah Berlin’s letters is echoed by John Banville’s verdict in his review of its predecessor, Building: Letters 1960–75, which saw Berlin publish some of his most important work, and create, in Oxford’s Wolfson College, an institutional...

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 'The kind of vision the world needs right now...Pankaj Mishra shouldn't stop thinking' Christopher de Bellaigue, Financial Times 'This is the most astonishing, convincing, and disturbing book I've read in years' Joe Sacco 'Urgent, profound and extraordinarily timely' John Banville How can we explain the origins of...

'A wholly pleasing book, which offers a tasty side dish to anyone exploring the narrative history of the British Empire' Max Hastings, Sunday Times WINNER OF THE GUILD OF FOOD WRITERS BOOK AWARD 2018 The glamorous daughter of an African chief shares a pineapple with a slave trader… Surveyors in British Columbia eat tinned Australian rabbit… Diamond prospectors in Guyana...

The Sceptred Isle provided the definitive radio account of the British nation, from 55BC to the end of the 20th century. Now its attention turns towards the incredibly powerful families which have wielded power behind the scenes for the past 1,000 years. The Dynasties relates how the loyalties of this privileged elite, many of whom are older than the monarchy...