The plot concerns a World War I veteran employed to uncover a mural in a village church that was thought to exist under coats of whitewash. At the same time another veteran is employed to look for a grave beyond the churchyard walls. There is prevalent religious symbolism throughout the book, mainly dealing with judgement. Read More...

With vivid detail Jean Levi paints a court world of luxury, decadence and cruelty. At the same time he charts the means by which the first Emperor united immense populations within a totalitarian state of extraordinary complexity... Read More...

The Fighting Man in World War II. Training, discipline, morale, food, shelter, fear, life and death in the combat zone... here is the actual human experience of the Allied front line soldier in the most destructive war in history. Read More...

John de St Jorre reconstructs a unique period, marked by its creative energy, its spirit of innovation and its humour. He shows us the undergrowth of literature bursting forth into jungle life. Read More...

Shakespeare lived in many worlds, so many that no single book can hope to encompass them all. But in particular, he inhabited two worlds of words, between which there yawns an apparently unbridgeable gap. Read More...

Best-selling spy author Len Deighton shows us the reality of the most crucial battle of the Second World War. Since the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the British people have confronted no greater greater threat to their freedom than in 1940, when Hitler's armies swept through France in a few weeks and stood poised twenty-one miles from Dover. Read More...

The story of George Scovell. In 1812 two mighty armies maneuvered across the Spanish plains. They were finely balanced, under skillful leaders. Each struggled to get an advantage. It was a daunting challenge, and Wellington looked to one man to break the code: George Scovell. Read More...

On 5 July 1884 the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton bound for Sydney. Halfway through their voyage, Captain Tom Dudley and his crew of three men were beset by a monstrous storm off the coast of Africa. After four days of battling seas and hurricane gales, their yacht was finally crushed by a ferocious forty-foot wave. A true story of the voyage and subsequent court case that outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the ocean boats. Read More...

Richard Gough's book is the most remarkable local history ever written. Read More...

Hakluyt's voyages to North America. A modern version, with an introduction by A L Rowse. Read More...