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...

Brought to you by Penguin.The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order.Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the reader into the shock of the struggle through one of its most dramatic episodes: the siege of Basing House. To the parliamentarian Roundheads, the Hampshire mansion was a bastion of royalism, popery and excess. Its owner was both a Ca...

Brought to you by Penguin.A critical but fair political biography of Churchill that zooms in on crucial moments in his life and career that help us understand the man in his many contradictions.While in A.J.P. Taylor's words, Churchill was 'the saviour of his country', he was also a deeply flawed character, whose personal ambition would cloud his political judgement - and as a result he was often plain wrong. But the book's central argument...

'Here's the history that really matters' Financial TimesThe UK is, at the same time, both one of the world's most successful economies and one of Europe's laggards. The country contains some of Western Europe's richest areas such as the south east of England, but also some of its poorest such as the north east or Wales. It's really not much of an exaggeration to describe the UK, in economic terms, as 'Portugal but with Singapore in the bottom corner'. Look...

Brought to you by Penguin.The remarkable story of the Real 'Dad's Army', from the bestselling historian of The Secret Life of Bletchley ParkWith the threat of invasion from Hitler's forces looming large in 1940, men of all ages and backgrounds assembled under the banner of the Home Guard. A voluntary force much later nicknamed ‘Dad’s Army’, at its height there were almost two million volunteers prepared to defend every corner of th...

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 fresh and vivid account of the unexplored relationship between two of England's best-known queens - from the bestselling author of The Stolen Crown and The House of Boleyn'This joint biography of these two queens reads as good as any ripping yarn and is well worth five stars.' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A new perspective of a mother and daughter's relationship brutally ended by fear and a wandering eye. A brilliant an...

A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war.In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who on...