Winner of the 2026 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical BiographyA Financial Times History Book of the Year 2025'After finishing this beguiling book, there seems no point in reading anything else... In research, analysis and imagination, it’s a masterpiece' Gerard de Groot, The TimesJames VI & I, who died 400 years ago, was one of Britain’s most consequential and interesting monarchs, not least ...

*WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2022***A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021, AS CHOSEN BY THE TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, TELEGRAPH AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT'A big historical advance. Ours, it turns out, is a very un-insular "Island Story". And its 17th-century chapter will never look quite the same again' John Adamson, Sunday TimesA ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history**Among foreign obs...

The acclaimed Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulersCharles II has always been one of the most instantly recognisable British kings - both in his physical appearance, disseminated through endless portraits, prints and pub signs, and in his complicated mix of lasciviousness, cynicism and luxury. His father's execution and his own many years of exile made him a guarded, curious, unusually self-conscious ruler. He lived through some...

Brought to you by Penguin.**A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021, AS CHOSEN BY THE TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, TELEGRAPH AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTA ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history**Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's dazzling, origina...

Winner of the 2026 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical BiographyA Financial Times History Book of the Year 2025James VI & I, who died 400 years ago, was one of Britain’s most consequential and interesting monarchs, not least in creating the British monarchy itself by joining the English and Scottish thrones. A major intellectual, James's preoccupations ranged from witchcraft and theological controversy to hunting, diplomacy, po...

THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZEEleven years when Britain had no king.In 1649 Britain was engulfed by revolution.On a raw January afternoon, the Stuart king, Charles I, was executed for treason. Within weeks the English monarchy had been abolished and the ‘useless and dangerous’ House of Lords discarded. The people, it w...

A plastic box with a lightbulb attached may seem like an odd birthday present. But for ecologist Tim Blackburn, a moth trap is a captivating window into the world beyond the roof terrace of his London flat. Whether gaudy or drab, rare or common, each moth ensnared by the trap is a treasure with a story to tell. In The Jewel Box, Blackburn introduces these mysterious visitors, revealing how the moths he catches reflect hidden patterns governing the world around us.With name...

Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England's fourteenth-century consorts.Using personal letters and wonderfully vivid sources, Alison Weir evokes the lives of five remarkable queens: Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valoi...

Brought to you by Penguin.In 2015, England's last and loneliest golden eagle died in an unmarked spot among the remote eastern fells of the Lake District. It was a tragic day for the nation's wildlife, but the fight to restore the landscape had already begun.Lee Schofield, ecologist and site manager for RSPB Haweswater is leading efforts to breathe life back into two hill farms and their thirty square kilometres of sprawling upland habitat....

**A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology.“The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall**In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious...

Brought to you by Penguin.AS SEEN ON TVProfessor Alice Roberts travels 1,300 miles by train across Italy, France and Spain in search of a greater understanding of the Roman Empire for Channel 4's popular TV series Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts.Visiting sites often off the beaten track with experts in each location sharing their insights and revealing up-to-date discoveries, this book delivers more depth and conte...

Brought to you by Penguin.In the summer of 1940, Britain was under siege. Poland, Belgium, Holland, Norway and France had already fallen, and the British army had been routed on the continent, leading to the chaotic evacuation at Dunkirk.In the rubble of the Allie’s crumbled defence, Inverailort House was established as a new symbol of defiance. Signed off by Churchill himself, this austere building became an academy for the brightest and best of all Allied...