Product Description: The king who was the present Queen's grandfather, and hoped that one day she'd inherit the throne For a man with such conventional tastes and views, George V had a revolutionary impact. Almost despite himself he marked a decisive break with his flamboyant predecessor Edward VII, inventing the modern monarchy, with its emphasis on frequent public appearances, family values, and duty...read more

Product Description: Mark Greengrass's gripping, major, original account of Europe in an era of tumultuous change SUNDAY TIMES and FINANCIAL TIMES Books of the Year 2014 This latest addition to the landmark Penguin History of Europe series is a fascinating study of 16th and 17th century Europe and the fundamental changes which led to the collapse of Christendom and established the geographical and political frameworks of Western Europe as we know it...read more

From one of our most acclaimed historians comes an account of human solidarity throughout the ages, provocatively arguing against the received wisdom that history is best understood as a chronicle of groups in conflict. Investigating the six most pervasive categories of human difference - religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization - Cannadine asks how determinative each of them has really been over the course of history. Without denying their power to motivate populations dramatically at particular moments, he reveals that in the long term none has proven remotely as divisive as the occasional absolutist cries of ''us versus them'' would suggest, whether Christian versus Muslim during the Crusades (and now), landed gentry versus peasantry during the Bolshevik Revolution, or Jews versus ''Aryan race'' in Nazi Germany. For most of recorded time, these same ''unbridgeable'' differences were experienced as just one identity among others; whatever most chroniclers, self-serving mythmakers, and demagogues would have us believe, history needs to be reimagined to include the countless fruitful interactions across these lines, which are usually left out of the picture.

Product Description: [MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] From one of our most acclaimed historians comes an account of human solidarity throughout the ages, provocatively arguing against the received wisdom that history is best understood as a chronicle of groups in conflict...read more

Product Description: This title is an impassioned, controversial plea for us to recognise the importance of writing history - from world-famous historian David Cannadine. David Cannadine is one of Britain s most distinguished historians and this is his masterpiece...read more

Product Description: This publication, in association with the National Portrait Gallery in London, follows the reign of Queen Elizabeth II documented in photographs and portraits by some of the most important 20th century artists.

A landmark portrait of Andrew Mellon describes his rise to the heights of political and financial power, his controversial role as treasury secretary under three presidents, and his remarkable philanthropy and gift to America of the National Gallery of Art. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

A collection of thirty-three orations ranging over fifty years, demonstrating how Winston Churchill gradually honed his rhetoric.

Following the events and activity surrounding the bicentenary of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson, this volume is a collection of scholarship on the battle itself and its context and legacy. It brings research from a range of disciplinary perspectives to bear on one of the most significant naval actions in the age of sail.

Product Description: This book examines the boom in history, in television and film, newspapers and radio and the constraints and opportunities it offers. Leading historians and broadcasters, such as Melvyn Bragg, Simon Schama and David Puttnam, draw on their personal experiences to explore the problems and highlights of representing history in the media...read more

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Product Description: For too long, too many historians have been too much concerned with impersonal forces, underlying structures and long-term developments. Now, "people" are back. In a postmodern age it is easier to appreciate the decisive role played by individuals, as they ride their luck and seize their opportunity to bend the world to their will...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: With the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997, the empire that had lasted three hundred years and "upon which the sun never set" finally lost its hold on the world and slipped into history. But the question of how we understand the British Empire--its origins, nature, purpose, and effect on the world it ruled--is far from settled...read more

Product Description: How did the House of Windsor transform itself into " a wealth-creating machine" which has built up a huge private fortune from public funds? how did the (apparently) happy "family on the throne" turn dysfunctional, and a glitzy royal marriage degenerate into the ghastly "spectacle of two sad, spoiled, solipsistic individuals slugging it out in public? In this collection, the author offers dazzling brief overviews of topics ranging from class to divorce, private to patriotism, the rise and fall of Empire and the absurd cult of "Victorian values"...read more

Traces the concept of class through social, intellectual, and political history from the eighteenth century through the twentieth