British History

All is lost. The Gods decided to reward Wortimer and punish Ash, and the future of Britannia is hanging in the balance. In the darkness of a prison cell, through pain of torture, Ash tries to remember how everything has gone so terribly wrong. Wortimer defeated his father and conquered Londin. He took Rhedwyn into his chamber, and threw Ash into the deepest dungeon. His armies are rampaging throughout the province, killing Iutes and Saxons wherever they can find them. It seems nothing and nobody can stop the new Dux of Britons from fulfiling his mission to destroying the Iutes and cast all ...

For over 100 years, the mystery of Jack the Ripper has been a source of unparalleled fascination and horror, spawning an army of obsessive theorists and endless volumes purporting to finally reveal the identity of the brutal murderer who terrorized Victorian England. But what if there was never really any mystery at all?

Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian Era, a period of industrial, cultural, scientific, and political change that was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. But Victoria was raised under close supervision and near isolation until she became Queen of the United Kingdom at the young age of 18. She married her first cousin, Albert, and had nine children who married into families across Europe.

In 1959, Nancy’s life changes dramatically when her family moves to a new town, Stevenage. Now there is room for a piano, Nancy loses herself in an imagined past of Mozart’s lesser known sister, while making unexpected discoveries of her own inscrutable mother’s history. In 1989 the piano becomes a fixture in a women’s community centre in the town, in a time of personal strife for Martha and her friends. The politics of the era threaten the existence of the centre, and the future of this group of women. A troubled young man buys the piano in 1997 and places it in his sparse flat at ...

Dotted across homes in Britain are people who were witnesses to one of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. Yet their memory of India’s partition has been shrouded in silence. Kavita Puri’s father was 12 when he found himself one of the millions of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims caught up in the devastating aftermath of a hastily drawn border. For 70 years he remained silent - like so many - about the horrors he had seen.

Discover the untold story of "King James I of England: The King The Vatican Could Not Kill." Journey through the shadows of political intrigue and religious turmoil as James G. Battell unveils the miraculous survival of a monarch whose faith defied Jesuit assassination attempts and thwarted Vatican plots. In this captivating biography, explore the divine interventions and steadfast courage that propelled King James I through a tumultuous reign, revealing a tale of faith, resilience, and the unwavering sovereignty of God. As readers embark on this gripping journey, they will delve into the ...

Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivaled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades. Why was this period so turbulent, and why did the republic, backed by a formidable standing army, come crashing down in such spectacular fashion?

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

In July 1964, the Sunday Mirror ran a front-page story headlined: Peer and a Gangster: Yard Enquiry. While withholding the names of the principal subjects, the newspaper reported that the Metropolitan Police had ordered an investigation into an alleged homosexual relationship between ‘a household name’ from the House of Lords and a leading London underworld figure. Bob Boothby was the Conservative lord in question and Ronnie Kray the gangster.

In fairy tales, dreams do come true...little girls can grow up to marry handsome princes, and live happily ever after in beautiful palaces, where they have delightful children of their own, and in time become queen, to rule with wisdom and grace. But in real life...even when it appears a fairy tale is being played out in the full glare of our modern media age, things never seem to go quite to plan. Such was the life of Diana Spencer.

Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Love and Let Die is the story of a clash between working class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond, and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end.

1539. Anne of Cleves wins the dangerous prize of becoming Henry VIII’s fourth wife. From the start, Anne’s royal blood, education and fierce intelligence count for nothing as the king pursues young Katherine Howard. Katherine is a pawn in the political manoeuvres of her ambitious family; unprepared for the dangers that await, she steps into their trap. At her side is kinswoman Jane Boleyn, who has served - and betrayed - one queen already: her sister-in-law Anne, who died on Henry’s scaffold. Will Jane betray a second queen to the headsman?

If you want to discover the captivating history of England, then pay attention...There are few places that entice the imagination quite like England. Just a little island off the western coast of continental Europe, it boasts a rich history that stretches all the way back to the first modern humans. From the fearsome Celtic warriors of prehistory to the clever inventors and statesmen of the modern era, England’s story is one bursting with magnificent castles, complex kings and queens, rebellious peasants, and horrifying plagues.

A top-10 list is nobody’s perfect tool, especially when trying to measure up 10 of the most significant and influential bands of the British Invasion. Nevertheless, this book presents 10 biographies of classic bands of the era widely regarded as the best of the best, putting their contributions to music in sharp focus. And what contributions they have made! Over half a century later, their songs still ring out on radios, their names are well-known to many, and songs released today are inspired by the music they produced.

Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.

The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

By the mid-19th century, other European powers became interested not only in the exploration of Africa, but the exploitation of it, especially once the German Empire unified after the Franco-Prussian War. This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of chartered companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets, and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European colonies.

This is a revised and updated edition of an award-winning book, recognized as the authoritative work on the subject of British food. It is a breathtaking attempt to trace the changes to and influences on food in Britain from the Black Death through the Enclosures, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of Capitalism to the present day.

The monumental struggle fought against Imperial Japan in the Asia/Pacific theater during World War II is primarily viewed as an American affair. While the United States did play a dominant role, the British and Commonwealth forces also made major contributions. It was a difficult and often desperate conflict fought against a skilled and ruthless enemy that initially saw the British suffer the worst series of defeats ever to befall their armed forces.

In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars and the European continent opened up once again to British tourists. The nineteenth century was to be an age driven by steam technology, mass-industrialisation and movement, and, in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists a hundred years earlier, the British middle-classes flocked to Europe to see the sights. In Tourists, the voices of these travellers – puzzled, shocked, delighted and amazed – are brought vividly to life.