Stuart Britain

History tells us that the Second World War broke Britain as a great power, diminishing its military strength, ruining its economy, and precipitating a striking wave of decolonization. Nationalists and new superpowers dominated the post-war landscape, and the country was on the slide. But no one knew this in 1945—the leading politicians, the top civil servants, and the most knowledgeable experts, all expected the British Empire to remain intact long into the future.

The last Stuart queen. The first sovereign of Great Britain. Queen Anne inherited a throne shaped by revolution, religion, war, and dynastic fracture. She was the Protestant daughter of James II, the Catholic king driven from power in 1688. She was a Stuart by blood, but her crown depended on the political settlement that had rejected her father and excluded her Catholic half-brother. Her reign was brief, but its consequences were enormous. Under Anne, England and Scotland were joined by the Act of Union in 1707, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. The War of the Spanish Succession ...

From the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, an extraordinary history of the meteoric rise and fall of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham. As King James I’s favourite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was...

Vain and charismatic Walter Sickert made a name for himself as a painter in Victorian London. But the ghoulish nature of his art - as well as extensive evidence - points to another name, one that's left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material - including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause - and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.

For readers of Annette Gordon-Reed and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the shocking untold story of the British royal family’s centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy—from Elizabeth I to the present—and the monarchy’s culpability in the racial injustice that gave...

This is the history of Scotland from the earliest times of human habitation to around the mid 14th century. This book details the long forgotten people and events that created the foundations of Scotland and, indeed, Britain - and explains why things are the way they are, exploring the roots of the long running antagonism between Scotland and England. Mistakes, successes, disasters, reasons as well as pinpointing the exact events that created such a long lasting rivalry between Scotland and its nearest neighbour. It also explains that after a bloody start forged in harsh times, how an ...

An intimate, myth-shattering new biography of Mary Queen of Scots by a premier historian that draws on a trove of newly discovered sources.Queen of Scots, the first full-scale biography of Mary in more than thirty years, offers a singularly novel, nuanced, and dramatic portrait of one of...

Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics, but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims.  

At the end of The King’s Witch, the first book in Tracy Borman’s Stuart-era trilogy, Frances Gorges was pregnant with the child of her dead lover, Thomas Wintour, executed for his role as a conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Now, in The Devil’s Slave, Frances is compelled to return to the dissolute and dangerous court where she has been suspected of witchcraft.

Sir Walter Ralegh’s life is romantic, irresistible, and of central importance to our island story. His death is a convoluted and contested tale of bargaining, failure and betrayal. Through the Elizabethan golden age and Ralegh’s famous adventures to the final act, Anna Beer presents his stranger-than-fiction life in all its richness. How could a man once the Queen’s favorite find himself consigned to the Tower by her successor? Should his legacy be fame or infamy? Who was the real Sir Walter Ralegh?

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

The Jacobites conjure up many images to 21st-century Britons, but Jacobitism was a cause that had far-reaching consequences across 18th century Europe. The Jacobites were not only supporters of the exiled Stuart monarchy, but also against the political and religious settlements agreed to across the British Isles. The specter of the Jacobite threat was present for the British government and monarchy throughout the 18th century. It’s no surprise the Jacobites continue to interest so many people, as do the plot twists, near misses, and “what-ifs” involved.

Bloomsbury presents Monstrous Tales read by Kimberley Nixon, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ian Hanmore, Oscar Kennedy, Janice Hallett, Catrin Walker-Booth, Dan Jones, Abir Mukherjee, Arthur Darvill and Ralph Ineson. This isle is full of noises... From the beaches of Orkney to the Welsh mountains, and the...

A Sunday Times Book of the Week and Top 10 Bestseller A Times bestseller A Waterstones Paperback of the Year 2024 A Spectator Book of the Year What kind of country is England today? What does it mean to be English? Are we hungry for change or seeking old certainties? Join Stuart Maconie on an...

Sarah Churchill, first Duchess of Marlborough, was the glamorous and controversial subject of hundreds of satires, newspaper articles and publications both during her lifetime and after her death. This biography brings Sarah Churchill's own voice, passionate and intelligent, back to life and casts a critical eye over images of the Duchess handed down through art, history and literature. Here is an unforgettable portrait of a woman who cared intensely about how we would remember her.

From New York Times bestselling author Stephen R. Lawhead comes the first installment in the beloved Song of Albion Trilogy--an epic blend of myth, history, and adventure that transports readers beyond the boundaries of the modern world. Lewis Gillies is an American graduate student in Oxford...

George Villiers rose faster than any man in Stuart England. From obscure gentry to Duke of Buckingham, he became the indispensable favourite of two kings and the most hated man in the realm. His power was unrivalled, his influence unchecked, and his failures catastrophic. When he was stabbed to death in a Portsmouth lodging house in 1628, half the country mourned the violence, and half quietly celebrated the removal. This book tells the full story of Villiers’s extraordinary rise and brutal fall, not as court gossip or moral fable, but as political history driven by personality, power, ...

Abigail Masham did not command armies, lead a ministry, or sit in Parliament. Yet for a crucial period in Queen Anne’s reign, she stood closer to power than many of the men who claimed to govern Britain. Born into dependence and advanced through the patronage of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Abigail seemed at first an unlikely figure of consequence. She was a poor relation, a quiet attendant, and a woman whose influence appeared domestic rather than political. But in the court of Queen Anne, private confidence could alter public power. As Sarah Churchill’s fierce friendship ...

Book two in an epic historical fantasy series that blurs the lines between this world and the Otherworld. “Before Albion is one, the hero feat must be performed and Silver Hand must reign.” The great king, Meldryn Mawr, is dead, and his kingdom lies in ruins. Treachery and brutality rule the...

John Milton (1608-1674) has a unique claim on literary and intellectual history as the author of both Paradise Lost, the greatest narrative poem in English, and prose defenses of the execution of Charles I that influenced the French and American revolutions. Tracing Milton’s literary, intellectual, and political development with unprecedented depth and understanding, Poet of Revolution is an unmatched biographical account of the formation of the mind that would go on to create Paradise Lost - but would first justify the killing of a king.