British History

Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of "The Cambridge Spies" - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.

London is a city rich in history and culture, and nowhere is this more evident than in the unique language of its people. In “Londontopia’s Cockney Rhyming Slang Dictionary,” readers will be introduced to the fascinating world of Cockney rhyming slang - a form of English that uses playful, often comical phrases to replace common words and expressions. This comprehensive dictionary features hundreds of entries, each accompanied by its meaning and a colorful example of usage. But it’s not just a guide to the language - readers will also find a big section on London’s Cockney history...

Three powerful African-American female executives celebrate their gender and heritage as they share their secrets for success in this effective guide for businesswomen. Ways to communicate thoughtfully, trust yourself, and exude self-esteem are just a few tactics the authors discuss for those who want to enter the workforce as confident leaders.

The British Army won a convincing series of victories between 1916 and 1918. But by 1939 the British Army was an entirely different animal. The hard-won knowledge, experience and strategic vision that delivered victory after victory in the closing stages of the First World War had been lost. In the inter-war years there was plenty of talking, but very little focus on who Britain might have to fight, and how. Victory to Defeat is a captivating history of the mismanagement of a war-winning army.

He is one of the most reviled English kings in history. He drove his kingdom to the brink of civil war a dozen times in less than twenty years. He allowed his male lovers to rule the kingdom. He led a great army to the most ignominious military defeat in English history. He was Edward II, and this book tells his story. Kathryn Warner strips away the myths which have been created about him over the centuries, and provides a far more accurate and vivid picture of him than has previously been seen.

George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture, quoted so often that we tend to forget who wrote the original words! This must-read is also a must-listen!

The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.

They built some of the first communal structures on the empire's frontiers. The empire's most powerful proconsuls sought entrance into their lodges. Their public rituals drew dense crowds from Montreal to Madras. The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons were quintessential builders of empire, argues Jessica Harland-Jacobs.

Many other mainline Christians viewed the Quakers as a dangerous sect, so much so that they pressured the British Parliament to pass the Quaker Act of 1662. This act set forth in law the “prescribed form” of prayer and worship as designated by the state. It was a formula that specifically left the traditions of the Quakers out. Unable to gain acceptance in England, the Quakers would soon leave the place of their origin altogether and try their luck in a brave new world on another continent.

Impersonating a King's Officer is a death sentence, but Brent had decided long ago, even before the boy died that he would do it. It would be a far better life than that of a power monkey. After the years of torture and pain his chance had come but could he manage it? Setbacks are a part of life and Brent has more than his share after his rescue. His dream of being a naval officer depends on an improbable rescue attempt of four important men from the pit of his nightmares. He, alone, knows of an entrance to the pit and it falls to him to succeed or die.

Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd’s History of England to a triumphant close. Ackroyd takes listeners from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the 20th century, when his great-granddaughter Elizabeth II had been on the throne for almost five decades.

The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.

In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed - a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged - and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an arms race over the millennia, a battle of exploitation and defense between two fascinating species.

The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire.

"The read that exposes 'political correctness' for the fraud we suspected it to be." 'England's Rise and Decline' first reminds us what it was that once made Britain's economy the world's super-leader. It then explains how England consolidated her position globally, in particular through her 'special relationship' with America. Her decline, meanwhile, is seen as a result of the 'Victorian hypocrisy' of the town-based, college-educated professional. That same middle-class sanctimony is the root of today's ultra-liberal 'p.c.' movements. Instructively detailed in its history, yet ...

2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to the shaping international law. Even today, 1 in 3 people drive on the left hand side of the road, an artifact of the British empire. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. Empireworld explores the ways in which British Empire has come to shape the modern world.

For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder. While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic.

This is the almost-forgotten story of Victorian Britain's strangest religious sect and its wealthy, mostly female, followers who believed they could ascend directly to heaven. Henry James Prince was a rogue Anglican Priest with a flare for the dramatic, and the founder of the Agapemone, or 'Abode of Love'. He also claimed to be the immortal conduit of The Holy Spirit and purportedly engaged in free love and ceremonial sex with his mostly female followers. But Prince's eventual death didn't mark the end of this strange set... he was promptly replaced by another.

Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced upon the world’s richest deposits of diamonds and gold, setting off a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land. The result was the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and the devastation of the Boer republics.

Much is known about what Europeans did in Africa, yet very little is known about Africa's history before its colonization. In this surprising exploration, Max Siollun uncovers societies that were not part of a backward "Dark Continent," but which instead had rich lore to rival the ancient Greeks and Romans. This story of a dynamic and artistic people is a vital listen for those who want to discover a forgotten era of West Africa.