A new edition of a popular introduction to all aspects of life in Britain. This version reflects on the ongoing fallout from the global financial and eurozone crises; the May 2015 General Election; the September 2014 referendum on Scottish independe…
Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field.Bringing together today's leading scholars, both established…
Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite t…
The official TV-tie in to the popular Channel 4 programme 'Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages' Explore the most interesting and beautiful examples of British village life in this lavishly illustrated book, published as a companion volume to the highly…
Empires--vast states of territories and peoples united by force and ambition--have dominated the political landscape for more than two millennia. Empires in World History departs from conventional European and nation-centered perspectives to take a…
From our twentieth-century perspective, we tend to think of the Europe of the past as a colonizer, a series of empires that conquered lands beyond their borders and forced European cultural values on other peoples. This provocative book shows that E…
A wave of internal conquest, settlement and economic growth took place in Europe during the High Middle Ages, which transformed it from a world of small separate communities into a network of powerful kingdoms with distinctive cultures. In this vivi…
The sensational biography of Princess Diana, written with her cooperation and now featuring exclusive new material to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her death. When Diana: Her True Story was first published in 1992, it forever changed the way t…
The untold story of the crises and compromises that united a continent "A work of impressive scholarship and historical imagination, . . . unlike anything written about the EU before or since"-Perry Anderson, London Review of Books As financial turm…
A sparkling new translation of one of the greatest travel books ever written: Marco Polo's seminal account of his journeys in the east. Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after whic…
The Viking reputation is of bloodthirsty seafaring warriors, repeatedly plundering the British Isles and the North Atlantic throughout the early Middle Ages. Yet Vikings were also traders, settlers, and farmers, with a complex artistic and linguisti…
The New York Times bestseller, from the author of Crusaders, that tells the story of Britain's greatest and worst dynasty--"a real-life Game of Thrones" (The Wall Street Journal) The first Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-soaked realm from the No…
The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britain's greatest and worst dynasty--"a real-life Game of Thrones" (The Wall Street Journal)--by the author of The Templars The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the N…
The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal…
Thoroughly updated and revised, the ninth edition of the highly regarded British Civilization: An Introduction continues to be the ideal textbook on Britain, its country and people, religion, politics and government, international relations, legal s…
A myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance. Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of…
Fire and Blood looks at the European crisis of the two world wars as a single historical sequence: the age of the European Civil War (1914-1945). Its overture was played out in the trenches of the Great War; its coda on a ruined continent. It opened…
This book explores the entanglement between politics, culture and violence in the age of the "European civil war" (1914-1945). In these cataclysmic three decades, the old continent experienced a new fusion of "warm" and "cold" violence, of unchained…
This book is both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting, and a primer in how to read social history out of the style of pictures. It examines the commercial practice of the early Renaissance picture, trade in contracts, letters, and…
First published in 1944, and now reissued with new black-and-white illustrations and a foreword by Jo Bell, Canal Laureate, this book has become a classic on its subject, and may be said to have started a revival of interest in the English waterways…
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR - TIME MAGAZINE ONE OF THE BEST 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR - WASHINGTON POST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE ORWELL P…
Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of th…
'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman The world known as the 'Dark Ages', often seen as a time of barbarism, was in fact the crucible in which modern Europe would be created. Chri…
Short introduction to the amazing finds of garments from the Norse settlement of Herjolfnes in Greenland by Else Ostergard. Chapters on technique: production of the tread, dyeing, weaving techniques, cutting and sewing by Anna Norgaard. Measurements…
What was the life of an eighteenth-century British genteel woman like? In this lively and controversial book, Amanda Vickery invokes women's own accounts of their intimate and their public lives to argue that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth c…
Throughout history plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes. It was responsible for the Black Death of 1348 and the Great Plague of London in 1665, and for devastating epidemics much earlier and much later, in the Mediterranean in the si…
'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian Introduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette Winterson In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of…
The bestselling author of Crusaders and presenter of Netflix's Secrets of Great British Castles offers a vivid account of the events that inspired Game of Thrones and Shakespeare's Henry IV and Richard III Discover the real history behind The Hollow…
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR - TIME MAGAZINE A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN B…
Warfare is a major feature of the history of the middle ages, but its study has often been the province of amateurs; only recently have the technical details of warfare and its organisation been subject to proper scholarly investigation. Professor V…
The sweeping crinolines, corsets, bustles, bonnets and parasols of Victorian Britain are indispensable to our period dramas, and their influences can still be seen within burlesque and steampunk fashions. This is no surprise, as nineteenth-century c…
The endless wars of the seventeenth century took their toll in the lives of millions of soldiers and crushing taxes. To legitimise war, Europes rulers turned to the Church: O God, we praise you, Te Deum Laudamus, was sung in the churches of France a…
The fourteenth century was a time of fabled crusades and chivalry, glittering cathedrals and grand castles. It was also a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague. Here, Barbara Tuchman masterfully reveals the two contra…
Barbara W. Tuchman--the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic The Guns of August--once again marshals her gift for character, history, and sparkling prose to compose an astonishing portrait of medieval Europe. The fourteenth centu…
The Sunday Times number one bestsellerThe Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come to…
Perhaps no other weapon represents Renaissance Italian fencing like the rapier. But do we know how it was used and how it was taught? This book takes you to the fencing School, or Salle, of celebrated renaissance rapier Master Nicoletto Giganti of…
The National Bestseller "Focused and persuasive... Bray's book is many things: the first English-language transnational history of antifa, a how-to for would-be activists, and a record of advice from anti-Fascist organizers past and present."--THE N…
Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate on March 15, 44 BC-the Ides of March according to the Roman calendar. He was, says author Barry Strauss, the last casualty of one civil war and the first casualty of the next civil war, which wo…
The concept of a Northern European 'Renaissance' in the arts, in thought, and in more general culture north of the Alps often evokes the idea of a cultural transplant which was not indigenous to, or rooted in, the society from which it emerged. Clas…
The concept of a 'Renaissance' in the arts, in thought, and in more general culture North of the Alps often evokes the idea of a cultural transplant which was not indigenous to, or rooted in, the society from which it emerged. Classic definitions of…
Originally named Juan Fernandez, the island of Robinson Crusoe in the South Pacific was the inspiration for Defoe's classic novel about the adventures of a shipwrecked sailor. Yet the complex story of Britain's relationship with this distant, tiny i…
This study is an exploration of the collective values and activities of lay society in Western Europe between the tenth century and the thirteenth. Arguing that medieval attitudes and behaviour have too readily been defined in terms of hierarchical…
A detailed study of Tudor textiles, highlighting their extravagant beauty and their impact on the royal court, fashion, and taste At the Tudor Court, textiles were ubiquitous in decor and ceremony. Tapestries, embroideries, carpets, and hangings wer…
This ambitious work lifts the veil on a pivotal chapter in the history of art and its social meaning. This book explores the principles of the display of art in the magnificent Roman palaces of the early modern period, focusing attention on how the…
The source of tremendous power and the focus of incredible devotion, throughout history notions of beauty have been integral to social life and culture. Each age has had its own standards: a gleaming white brow during the Renaissance, the black eyeb…
The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edition of Richard III edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel. The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shak…
Europe in 1618 was divided between Protestants and Catholics, and Bourbon and Hapsburg - as well as empires, kingdoms, and countless independent states. After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of…
The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to millions. We are in the midst of one of humankind's great cultural changes. How has this happened?Becoming Atheist explore…
This outstandingly successful work of reference is now brought up to date to mark the hoped-for end of the Northern Ireland Troubles. The book is a detailed account, in diary form, of the thirty-year development of civil and political unrest in Nort…
Through the first half of the twentieth century, emotions were a legitimate object of scientific study across a variety of disciplines. After 1945, however, in the wake of Nazi irrationalism, emotions became increasingly marginalized and postwar rat…
Shortlisted for the Apollo Awards Book of the Year 2020 When we look at the landscape, what do we see? Do we experience the view over a valley or dappled sunlight on a path in the same way as those who were there before us? We have altered the count…
Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas, 2nd upgraded edition. New, smaller book size with same content. Everything necessary to learn and teach Old Norse. Graded lessons, saga readings, runic inscriptions, grammar exercises,…
This book, first published in 1994, is concerned with discovering what it was like to be a slave in the classical Roman world, and with revealing the impact the institution of slavery made on Roman society at large. It shows how and in what sense Ro…
By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering over 10,000 years, from the origins of…
