Once musicians such as Mozart were little more than court servants; now they are multimillionaire superstars wielding more power than politicians. How did this extraordinary change come about?Tim Blanning's brilliantly enjoyable book examines how everything from the cult of the romantic to technology and travel all fed the inexorable rise of music in the West, making it the most dominant and ubiquitous of the art forms. Encompassing balladeers, the great composers, jazz legends and...

'Let the nations rejoice: this history of Europe is a truly glorious book' John Adamson, Sunday TimesThe Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history – from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, ...

George I was not the most charismatic of the Hanoverian monarchs to have reigned in England but he was probably the most important. He was certainly the luckiest.Born the youngest son of a landless German duke, he was taken by repeated strokes of good fortune to become, first the ruler of a major state in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and then the sovereign of three kingdoms (England, Ireland and Scotland).Tim Blanning's incisive short biography examines George...

From the acclaimed author of The Pursuit of Glory and Frederick the Great, a riotous biography of the charismatic ruler of 18th-century Poland and Saxony - and his catastrophic reign.Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2025Shortlisted for the 2025 Apollo Book of the Year Award'It's been a superb year for history but Augustus the Strong ranks up there with the very very best! I ca...

SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, dominated the 18th century in the same way that Napoleon dominated the start of the 19th - a force of nature, a caustic, ruthless, brilliant military commander, a monarch of exceptional energy and talent, and a knowledgeable patron of artists, architects and writers, most famously Voltaire. From early in his reign he was already ...

A distinguished historian chronicles the rise of music and musicians in the West from lowly balladeers to masters employed by fickle patrons, to the great composers of genius, to today’s rock stars. How, he asks, did music progress from subordinate status to its present position of supremacy among the creative arts? Mozart was literally booted out of the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg “with a kick to my arse,” as he expressed it. Yet, less than a hundred years later, Europe’s most p...

A compelling and persuasive account of how the Romantic Movement permanently changed the way we see things and express ourselves.Three great revolutions rocked the world around 1800. The first two - the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution - have inspired the greatest volume of literature. But the third - the romantic revolution - was perhaps the most fundamental and far-reaching. From Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Burns, to Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz...

*** A Financial Times Book of the Year * A Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday Summer Read *HOLD THE POWER AND GLORY OF ANCIENT ROME IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND.'Fantastic ... expert storytelling'** CONN IGGULDEN'Excellent' SUNDAY TIMES'Riveting and utterly original' MAIL ON SUNDAYA wild she-wolf tenderly nurses infant twins Romulus and Remus.Marcus Junius Brutu...

'Provocative, elegant, intriguing - Jenkins is a bold, imaginative writer, brilliant at challenging old assumptions and encouraging you to look at British architecture in a new light' Rory StewartThe story of Britain is revealed through its buildings, and yet the language of architecture is a mystery to all but a few. In this enlightening history, spanning castles and cathedrals to factories and railway stations, Jenkins translates the hidden narratives infused in...

In the early years of Vladmir Putin’s Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the President’s most trusted assets. By 2023, he had become a dangerous warlord – and also one of Putin’s chief rivals in Russia’s tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading an attempted coup, and shortly after killed in a mysterious plane crash.But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, his role in the war with Ukraine, and the chaos unleashed across Russia by his turn against Putin? ...

An extraordinary adventure into South America’s epic history'Absolutely wonderful' DOMINIC SANDBROOK'A luscious, erudite romp ... a tour de force of literary mezcla' ALICE ALBINIA'A magnificent contribution to the Latin American canon' MARIE ARANAIn this sweeping exploration of the continent's forgotten past, Laurence Blair takes as his waymarks nine countries that can’t be found on a map: van...

A moving account of how war is remembered – and by whom'Impressive. A hundred individual histories, skillfully assembled, built into a poignant meditation on why they still matter' David Olusoga'Brilliant' Piers MorganShortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award 2026Bestselling historian Tessa Dunlop travels the length and breadth of the United Kingdom on a quest to uncover a ...