'This is bravura narrative history underpinned by passionate advocacy for the women whom medieval history has too often ignored or overlooked. Femina is essential reading' - Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and Powers and Thrones

'I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon and stars' - Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179)

The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings: ...

'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past', George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this glorious work of history, Orlando Figes argues that the maxim is truer for Russia than for any other country in the world.

The Story of Russia begins in the first millennium, when Russia's lands were first settled by the Slavs, and ends with Putin in the third. From Boris and Gleb, the first saints of the Russian Church, to the crowning of sixteen-yea...

From the author of &i>The Darkening Age&/i>,&i> Heresy &/i>is perfect for readers of Tom Holland, Karen Armstrong, Richard Ovenden, Mary Beard and Bettany Hughes&i>.&/i>

A harrowing narrative of the Holland America cruise ship Zaandam, which set sail with a deadly and little-understood stowaway—COVID-19—days before the world shut down in March 2020.

In early 2020, the world was on edge. An ominous virus was spreading on different continents, and no one knew what the coming weeks would bring. Far from the hot spots, the cruise ship Zaandam, owned by Holland America, was preparing to sail from Buenos Aires, Argentina, loaded with 1,200 passengers—American...

An enthralling journey through the history of books and libraries in the ancient world and those who have helped preserve their rich literary traditions

Even before Amsterdam there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.

Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.

In Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the c...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022

'Pacey and potentially revolutionary' Sunday Times

'Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read' The Guardian

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternat...

‘Lucid and damning … an absorbing – and infuriating – tale of complicity, coverup and denial’ PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of EMPIRE OF PAIN

A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II – and how the world allowed them to get away with it.

In 1946, Günther Quandt – patriarch of Germany’s most iconic industrial empire, a dynasty that today controls BMW – was arrested for suspected Naz...