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...

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is a book by the historian Simon Schama. It was published in 1989, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, and like many other works in that year, was highly critical of its legacy. Read More...

Set of three books including The morte D'Arthur, Sir Tristram de Lyonesse, and The Tale of King Arthur. Read More...