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A kaleidoscopic story of myth, Spiritualism, and the Victorian search for Utopia from one of the brightest and most original non-fiction writers at work today.In 1872 there was a bizarre eruption of religious mania in Hampshire’s New Forest. Its leader was Mary Ann Girling, a Suffolk farmer's daughter who claimed to be the female Christ and whose sect, the Children of God, lived in imminent anticipation of the millennium. It was rumoured that Mrs Girling mesmerised her supporters, literally hypnotising them to keep them in her power. Other reports claimed that the sect murdered their illegitimate offspring in their Utopian home at 'New Forest Lodge'.Through Mary Ann's story and the spiritual vortex around her, Philip Hoare takes us deeper into the pagan heart of the New Forest. In the neighbouring village of Sway, an eccentric barrister, Andrew Peterson, conducted séances in which the spirit of Christopher Wren instructed Peterson to build a 300-foot concrete tower to alleviate local unemployment. Wren, although dead for two centuries, even issued Peterson with the exact plans for the foundations and the formula for the concrete. It rose like some spiritualist lighthouse towering over the trees, and looming over the Shaker encampment and Mrs Girling's Children of God.At the same time, on the other side of the forest, in the grand country house of the Cowper-Temples, further experiments into the realms of the Victorian uncanny were under way. William Cowper-Temple, a supporter of Mary Ann Girling, vegetarian, anti-blood sport activist and member of Parliament, had joined his wife Georgiana in her Spiritualist quest. A third pair of hands came to the table, those of John Ruskin – the great Victorian artist, scientist, poet and philosopher – who sought the dead spirit of his beloved Rose La Touche. His explorations into the afterlife would eventually send him insane.Through this unique biography of the New Forest Philip Hoare paints a strange, and little known, portrait of Victorian England – a fascinating story of disorder in an avowed age of reason.

In this fascinating and well researched work of the history of the heyday of Victorian British society, Harrison seamlessly weaves together the overlapping developments in politics, economy, social and culture.It was a period that saw Britain become a predominantly urban society, continuing industrialization, the growth of new and distinct social classes, as well as social conflict over the New Poor Law and the emergence of Chartism.

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERTHE EPIC TRUE STORY OF DUNKIRK – NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, AND STARRING KENNETH BRANAGH, TOM HARDY, AND MARK RYLANCE.In 1940, at the French port of Dunkirk, more than 300,000 trapped Allied troops were dramatically rescued from destruction at the hands of Nazi Germany by an extraordinary seaborne evacuation. The true history of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians involved in the nine-day skirmish has passed into legend. Now, the story Winston Churchill described as a 'miracle' is narrated by bestselling author Joshua Levine in its full, sweeping context, including new interviews with veterans and survivors.Told from the viewpoints of land, sea and air, Joshua Levine’s Dunkirk is a dramatic account of a defeat that paved the way to ultimate victory and preserved liberty for generations to come.

Disraeli is one of the most fascinating men of the 19th century. This masterly biography, written by an outstanding popular historian, concentrates on his intriguing private life.Superb politician, orator, writer and wit, Benjamin Disraeli was – according to Queen Victoria – ‘the kindest Minister’ she had ever had, who ‘reached the top of the greasy pole’ [in his own words] despite considerable antisemitism. He enjoyed many scandalous affairs before marrying a widow twelve years older than himself – an extremely eccentric woman to whom he remained deeply and touchingly devoted for the rest of his life.Disraeli had never intended to be a politician. He had begun his astonishing career by working unenthusiastically in a lawyer’s office; he had tried unsuccessfully to found a newspaper; he had written a novel which lay unproductively in the publisher’s office. A conspicuous dandy, sprightly, attentive and witty, he was attractive to women, enjoying many liaisons until he contracted a venereal disease in a St James’s Street brothel.He married in 1839. ‘Dizzy married me for my money,’ Mary Anne used to say. ‘But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love.’ They lived in a large country house, Hughenden Manor, near High Wycombe, which he bought with mostly borrowed money, and soon became one of the most gifted of parliamentarians and as celebrated as any politician in England. As an antidote to his grief at his wife’s death in 1872 he threw himself back into the political life, becoming Prime Minister for the second time in 1874, displacing Gladstone much to the Queen’s delight.

A delightful and fascinating social history of Victorians at leisure, told through the letters, diaries, journals and novels of nineteenth-century men and women, from the author of the bestselling ‘The Victorian House’.Imagine a world where only one in five people owns a book, where just one in ten has a knife or a fork – a world where five people out of every six do not own a cup to hold a hot drink. That was what England was like in the early eighteenth century. Yet by the close of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had brought with it not just factories, railways, mines and machines but also fashion, travel, leisure and pleasure.Leisure became an industry – a cornucopia of excitement for the masses – and it was spread by newspapers, advertising, promotions and publicity – all of which were eighteenth-century creations. It was Josiah Wedgwood and his colleagues who invented money-back guarantees, free delivery and celebrity endorsements. New technology such as the railways brought audiences to ever-more-elaborate extravaganzas, whether it was theatrical spectaculars with breathtaking pyrotechnics and hundreds of extras – ‘hippodramas' recreating the battle of Waterloo – or the Great Exhibition itself, proudly displaying 'the products of all quarters of the globe' under twenty-two acres of the sparkling 'Crystal Palace'.In ‘Consuming Passions’, the bestselling author of ‘The Victorian House’ explores this dramatic revolution in science, technology and industry – and how a world of thrilling sensation, lavish spectacle and unimaginable theatricality was born.

Conn Iggulden’s No.1 bestselling series, which tells the epic story of Genghis Khan, his warrior sons, and their fight to rule an empire, now in one complete eBook for the first time.WOLF OF THE PLAINS, LORDS OF THE BOW, BONES OF THE HILL, EMPIRE OF SILVER, CONQUEROR.The masterful series which brings to life the mighty Khan dynasty and one of the most powerful military empires in history. From the triumph of the great Genghis Khan, the architect of the vast Mongol Empire, to the extraordinary life of his grandson Kublai, this is the story of a family of warriors, who had to learn the art of war in order to survive.

A page-turning collection from the nation’s favourite storyteller.A bumper collection of over a dozen gripping stories from Sunday Times bestselling author Josephine Cox.Includes The Beachcomber, Lovers and Liars, Live the Dream, The Journey, Journey’s End, The Loner, Songbird, Born Bad, Divorced and Deadly, Blood Brothers, Midnight, Three Letters, The Broken Man.

Winston Churchill rages against time and his own mortality, in conflict with friend and foe alike, in this tumultuous political drama of his last ten years of public life. Here is Churchill at his most outrageous, maddening and devious – but also at his most human, courageous, and defiant.At the end of July 1945, Churchill was a defeated man – hurled from power by the British people after a war in which he had saved his country.‘Churchill Defiant’ is the story of how, when it seemed impossible, Churchill fought his way back over the next six years to the centre of great events. In 1951, at last Prime Minister once more, he was ready to begin his dash to win 'the last prize I seek': the lasting peace that had eluded the world after Hitler's defeat.But Churchill's battles were just beginning. He would have to wage war with both his closest colleagues and his most indispensable allies, the Americans, to get to where none of them wanted him to go: the negotiating table with the Soviets.Barbara Leaming has written a gripping, fast-paced narrative of bare knuckle politics, of life and death decisions, of old grudges, and fresh blame. It is a compelling, vivid, and often deeply poignant portrait of the great man at a time when almost no one wanted him to remain on the public stage and when he was willing to do absolutely anything to stay there.

A magisterial chronicle of the calamity that crippled Europe in 1914.1914: a year of unparalleled change. The year that diplomacy failed, Imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machine–guns. What followed were the costliest days of the entire War. But how had it happened?In Catastrophe: 1914 Max Hastings, best-selling author of the acclaimed All Hell Let Loose, answers at last how World War I could ever have begun. Ranging across Europe, from Paris to St. Petersberg, from Kings to corporals, Catastrophe 1914 traces how tensions across the continent kindled into a blaze of battles; not the stalemates of later trench-warfare but battles of movement and dash where Napoleonic tactics met with weapons from a newly industrialised age. A searing analysis of the power-brokering, vanity and bluff in the diplomatic maelstrom reveals who was responsible for the birth of this catastrophic world in arms. Mingling the experiences of humbler folk with the statesmen on whom their lives depended, Hastings asks: whose actions were justified?From the out-break of war through to its terrible making, and the bloody gambles in Sarajevo and Mons, Le Cateau, Marne and Tannenberg, this is the international story of World War I in its most severe and influential period. Published to coincide with its 100th Anniversary, Catastrophe: 1914 explains how and why this war, which shattered and changed the Western world for ever, was fought.

An ambitious and powerful account of modern Irish history through the eyes of those who experienced it at first hand.Forty years after the Provisional IRA was formed and British troops arrived in Ireland, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness sit together as leaders of a devolved Northern Irish government, in which Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists share power. The Troubles appear to be over; the future promises to be quite different from the past. But recent events perhaps suggest otherwise, as old tensions rise to the forefront once more.Through countless interviews with the people from both sides that lived through, participated in and were victims of the Troubles, the author builds a picture of the attitudes and the beliefs that shaped three decades of Ireland's history. There are those whose lives have been shattered, those who have tried to ignore the realities, those who have attempted to bridge the divide, those who do not accept the peace, and some who refuse to look back at all.What emerges is a balanced and wide-ranging account that explores the struggle between ideology and compassion, how the battles and politics of centuries ago still define people's attitudes towards their neighbours today, and how political injustice and the course of time can make a complex reality seem like simple history.

The epic life story of the Atlantic Ocean from the bestselling author, Simon WinchesterIn a narrative tour de force, Simon Winchester dramatises the life story of the Atlantic Ocean, from its birth in the farther recesses of geological time to its eventual extinction millions of years in the future.At the core of the book is the story of mankind's complex relationship with this immense sea, which stretches for 9,000 miles from pole to pole. The Atlantic has profoundly influenced the lives of those who have lived along its shores, from hardscrabble pioneers in windswept locations such as the Aran Islands and Newfoundland, to the inhabitants of the great port cities of Lisbon, Rio, London and New York.‘Atlantic’ brings to life key episodes in this compelling human drama – the age of exploration and the subsequent colonisation of the Americas; the flourishing of transatlantic commerce and the rise and fall of the slave trade; extraordinary tales of sea-borne emigration during the nineteenth century; and the great naval battles that have left an indelible imprint on Atlantic history.Travelling by small sailing craft, container ship and general cargo vessel, Simon Winchester will journey around the edges and across the vast expanse of the ocean to report from the places that encapsulate its most fascinating stories. It is an enthralling mixture of history, science and reportage from a master of narrative non-fiction, and the definitive account of this magnificent body of water.

‘A great read, a moving story of family history, love deception, passion and heartbreak’Cornwall TodayTwo women, living more than a hundreds years apart yet against the same wild backdrop of sea and landscape, make a rash bid for freedom to live another life. But for both of them, that choice means a loss which will greatly affect the next generation.…When marine historian Mark Hannah finds a hauntingly beautiful figurehead in Newfoundland, he traces her ship, The Lady Isabella, back to Cornwall. There he meets Gabrielle Ellis, the woman who will restore her to her former glory. Together they begin to piece together the lives of the carver, Tom Welland and the real Lady Isabella.Surrounded by the rugged Cornish landscape, Gabrielle becomes increasingly haunted by Isabella's lost life. As Gabrielle's own life becomes inextricably involved with Mark's, her story runs parallel with the lives of Isabella, her husband Richard and Tom Welland, the carver.