There are few more heart-stopping moments in life than when the spade you are working with strikes a solid object. You scrape back the soil and there, unmistakably, is the bright glint of gold. Over the years, the fields of East Anglia have brought forth a staggering wealth of treasure from all periods of history, but especially the Roman, Saxon and Viking eras. The finds have been made by people from all walks of life. Many discoveries are of international importance, such as the Mildenha...

Samuel Pepyss London was a turbulent, boisterous city, enduring the strains caused by foreign wars, the Great Plague and the Great Fire, yet growing and prospering. The Restoration in 1660 brought the reopening of the theatres, with women appearing on the stage for the first time, and the period saw the development of English opera and the first public concerts. Pepys lived through a time of change in a city of contrasts, which maintained a sophisticated cultural scene, yet was a focus for...

This is the story of Fabergé's Imperial Easter eggs – of their maker, of the tsars who commissioned them, of the middlemen who sold them and of the collectors who fell in love with them. It's a story of meticulous craftsmanship and unimaginable wealth, of lucky escapes and mysterious disappearances, and ultimately of greed, tragedy and devotion. Moreover, it is a story that mirrors the history of twentieth-century Russia – a satisfying arc that sees eggs made for the tsars, sold by Stalin,...

Three times during the 17th century, England and Holland went to war as part of an ongoing struggle for economic and naval supremacy.Primarily fought in the cold waters of the North Sea and the English Channel, the wars proved revolutionary in their impact upon warship design, armament, and naval tactics. During this time, the warship evolved into the true ship-of-the-line that would dominate naval warfare until the advent of steam power.This book traces th...

When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: the old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.In Fracture, criti...

Written by an expert on the Prussian army of the Napoleonic era, this is a fascinating insight into the 18th-century evolution of the Prussian forces into the war-winning troops of the final battles against Napoleon.Using contemporary materials including drill regulations, instructions, staff and regimental histories and after-action reports, this book provides a compelling history of Prussian tactics from 1792 until 1815. It includes studies of the professional Pr...

A description of Attila the Hun's invasion of Gaul in AD 451, the Roman response and the eventual battle of Chalons.The battle of the Catalaunian Fields saw two massive, powerful empires square up in a conflict that was to shape the course of Eurasian history forever. For despite the Roman victory, the Roman Empire would not survive for more than 15 years following the battle, whilst the Huns, shattered and demoralized, would meet their downfall against a coalition...

In the chaos of the Second World War, Canada faced cruel choices, both on the battlefield and in the world of politics. Of all these life-and-death choices, ten stand above the others in their importance, their agonizing stakes, and the impact they have on the country to this day.

The loss of reason, a sense of alienation from the common-sense world we all like to imagine we inhabit, the shattering emotional turmoil that can seize hold of some of us: these are a part of our shared human experience whatever culture we come from. Nowadays, mental disturbance is most commonly (though not always) viewed through a medical lens, but human beings have also always sought to make sense of the depredations of madness through invocations of the religious and the supernatural, ...

The Normans were a relatively short-lived cultural and political phenomenon. The emerged early in the tenth century and had disappeared off the map by the mid-thirteenth century. Yet in that time they had conquered England, southern Italy and Sicily, and had established outposts in North Africa and in Levant.Having traced the formation of the Duchy of Normandy, Trevor Rowley draws on the latest archaeological and historical evidence to examine how the Norm...

The dramatic opening weeks of the Great War passed into legend long before the conflict ended. The British Expeditionary Force fought a mesmerizing campaign, outnumbered and outflanked but courageous and skillful, holding the line against impossible odds, sacrificing themselves to stop the last great German offensive of 1914. A remarkable story of high hopes and crushing disappointment, the campaign contains moments of sheer horror and nerve-shattering excitement; pathos and comic relief; ...

Women, Work and Family is a classic of women's history and is still the only text on the history of women's work in England and France, providing an excellent introduction to the changing status of women from 1750 to the present.