A mysterious painting holds the clues to a cache of priceless relics in this treasure hunt of "deepening suspense" à la The Da Vinci Code ( Library Journal).In financial trouble, Isobel Sadler considers selling a painting that's been in her family for generations. She can't imagine it's worth much . . . until someone tries to steal it.Mystified, Isobel turns to art dealer Michael Whiting for advice. He identifies the painting as a sixteent...

A highly ambitious and lucid history of ideas from the very earliest times to the present day.'A masterpiece' NEW STATESMAN'An extraordinary new book ... This is the history of "ideas" as it has never presented before' SUNDAY TELEGRAPHIn this hugely ambitious and exciting book Peter Watson tells the history of ideas from prehistory to the present day, leading to a new way of telling the history of the world. The book begins over a m...

Queen’s Witness is a tense political thriller set on the edges of London’s criminal underworld that overlaps with Fleet Street and Westminster. After it appears that the government’s Witness Protection Programme has been broken, investigative journalist, Matthew Kent, is lured into making a dangerous error of judgment, when the ensuing spiral of violence and mystery threatens not only his life but also those of both his lovers.

A compulsively readable blend of romance and drama based on actual events in Britain and France leading up to D-Day in 1944Matthew Hammond is a British military officer posted to the European theater during World War II. He sustained a serious injury on the front lines, so bad, in fact, that it cost him a lung. Now he is back in England, unable to fight, but he continues to serve his country by training new resistance fighters.One of the recruits under his c...

A "compelling" history of German cultural and intellectual development from 1750 to the twentieth century ( Financial Times).From the end of the Baroque era and the death of Bach to the rise of Hitler, Germany was transformed from a poor relation among Western nations into a dominant intellectual and cultural force. By 1933, Germans had won more Nobel Prizes than the British and Americans combined. Yet this remarkable genius was cut down in its prime by Ado...

"Splendidly readable and hugely informative. . . . Episode after episode from the cultural life of the twentieth century springs to vivid life." — Boston GlobeFrom Freud to Babbitt, from Animal Farm to Sartre to the Great Society, from the Theory of Relativity to counterculture to Kosovo, The Modern Mind is encyclopedic, covering the major writers, artists, scientists, and philosophers who produced the ideas by which we live. Peter Watson ...

How the division of the Americas from the rest of the world affected human history.In 15,000 B.C. early humankind, who had evolved in Africa tens of thousands of years before and spread out to populate the Earth, arrived in Siberia, during the Ice Age. Because so much water was locked up at that time in the great ice sheets, several miles thick, the levels of the world's oceans were much lower than they are today, and early humans were able to walk across the Berin...

‘Majestic, ambitious' Literary Review_________________________________________________________________________________________We are endlessly fascinated by the French. We are fascinated by their way of life, their creativity, sophistication and self-assurance, and even their insistence that they are exceptional. But how did France become the country it is today, and what really sets it apart?Journalist and historian Peter W...

Stolen gold and forbidden love intertwine in this riveting novel set during the last days of the Third Reich by "a superb writer and a masterful storyteller" ( Houston Chronicle).Walter Wolff, an officer in the US Army's art recovery unit, has been assigned to track down a priceless collection of gold coins stolen from a monastery in Austria. General Eisenhower believes the treasure could be melted down and used to finance the escape plans of high-ranking ...

An art historian gets caught up in a deadly international standoff in this "inventive" political thriller ( The Guardian).What would happen if Greek extremists blackmailed Britain into returning ancient sculptures? And what if that blackmail involved not only Queen Elizabeth II, but also dark secrets about her uncle, the Duke of Windsor?When Edward Andover, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, receives a painting by Raphael from an anonymous collective...

An ambitious American pope makes powerful enemies—from the Italian Mafia to the US President—in this fascinating thriller that "could be next week's news" ( Daily Mail).What if the unused riches of the Catholic Church were called upon to combat global poverty?Following a tragic earthquake in Italy, Pope Thomas—the first American pontiff and a transformative leader—auctions off one of the Vatican's Renaissance masterpieces to aid in the recovery. Th...

The justification for the atomic bomb was simple: it would defeat Hitler and end the Second World War faster, saving lives. The reality was different.Fallout dismantles the conventional story of why the atom bomb was built. Peter Watson has found new documents showing that long before the Allied bomb was operational, it was clear that Germany had no atomic weapons of its own and was not likely to. The British knew this, but didn't share their knowledge wit...