British Nonfiction

Margot Asquith was perhaps the most daring and unconventional prime minister's wife in British history. Known for her wit, style, and habit of speaking her mind, she transformed 10 Downing Street into a glittering social and intellectual salon. Yet her last four years at Number 10 were a period of intense emotional and political turmoil in her private and public life.

For more than five thousand years, the land of Palestine has stood at the crossroads of civilizations. Empires have risen and fallen upon its soil, prophets have walked its hills, and generations of ordinary people have lived, loved, farmed, fought, and dreamed in this contested corner of the world. Today, the story of Palestine is often reduced to headlines about conflict—but its history is far richer, deeper, and more complex. In Palestine: A History Through Empires, Faith, and Struggle, Layla Al-Rami takes readers on a sweeping journey from the Bronze Age to the twenty-first century, ...

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 6 This is the 6th book in the series and tells the story of 9 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *The Black Panther - Donald Neilsen In the early 1970s, there was a series of murderous Post Office raids in the Midlands and North of England. Then, in 1975, this reign of terror took on a new dimension with the kidnap of Lesley Whittle. *The Kray Twins – East End Killers For most of the 1950s and 1960s, Ronnie and Reggie Kray were a terrifying legend in the pubs and ...

BRITISH KILLERS – VOLUME 4 This 4th book in the series tells the story of 9 vicious crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Nicholas Vernage - Cold Blooded Cop Killer When 26-year-old Nicholas Vernage was released from Wandsworth Prison in 1991, going straight was the last thing on his mind. Within a couple of months he had returned to his life of crime with a vengeance - and had brutally stabbed to death three innocent people. *House of Horrors When police began digging up the back garden of ...

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 1 This book tells the story of 9 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *The Hitman It was one of Scotland Yard's most shocking cases. Six brutal murders that only came to light during a routine robbery investigation. *The Towpath Murders In 1953, the Coronation was a time of joyous celebration for most Britons. But two teenage girls from south-west London never lived long enough to see Queen Elizabeth II crowned. *The New Forest Massacre It started as the robbery of the ...

Raised for vastly different futures, one burdened with the responsibility of becoming the future king and the other destined to live in his shadow, Charles and Andrew have spent their lives on different sides of the same coin. War of the Windsors tells, for the first time, the complete story of Charles and Andrew from their diverging childhoods to their current struggles.

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 5 This 5th book in the series tells the story of 9 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Colin Ireland He killed to be famous A serial killer was on the loose in London, terrorising the gay community. During a 12 week killing spree in 1993 he strangled five homosexual men he had picked up in bars in a deliberate and murderous killing spree to become a famous serial killer. *Donald Hume - 'I got away with murder' It took three trials to clear Donald Hume of murder, and ...

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 2 This book tells the story of 9 true crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Dead In Devils Dyke David Lashley was a violent rapist with a deep hatred of blonde women, so when the beautiful Australian heiress Janie Shepherd went missing in February 1977, he was soon a suspect. *The Stockwell Strangler During the heatwave of 1986 a serial killer was on the loose in South London - a cruel, perverted maniac who selected his victims from the weak, the sick and the elderly ...

One of Esquire's best books of spring 2022 An extended meditation on late style and last works from "one of our greatest living critics" (Kathryn Schulz, New York). When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating...

About the Book In his latest book, Paul Amess braves cold rain, hot tea, a leaky tent and a heroic old bike through a countryside crammed with stories. This laugh-out-loud, oddly uplifting ride across the Pennines proves that everything can go wrong in the most entertaining way and still end exactly right. When a knackered cyclist points his wheels from Peak Forest to Street, he expects hills. He does not expect randy hedgehogs at 3 a.m., duels with homicidal goats, cliff-edge “paths” that feel like practical jokes, or a greatest-hits tour of Britain’s strangest history. Along the way...

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.

Sometimes in life you may get to live some of your dreams. Standing on my front gallery on St. Croix I look across the channel. On a sunny day I can see St. Thomas and St. John off to my left about 39 miles away. These two islands make up two sides of the three island trinity of this the Virgin Islands, a U.S. possession. St. Croix is the third island. Gazing slightly to my right I can see Tortola in the distance, too. Tortola and so many more islands are located in the British Virgin Islands. These two separate island chains are remarkably close geographically together. These tiny bits of ...

Michael Palin's diaries begin in the late 1960s when he began writing for hugely popular programs. He recounts how Monty Python emerged and triumphed. From the success and cult status brought by Monty Python, Palin shares stories from their world tours, their stay at hotels recently trashed by...

The height of Mount Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any Westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years, until 1921, was 40 miles. The Hunt for Mount Everest tells the story of the 71-year quest to find the world's highest mountain. It's a tale of high drama, of larger-than-life characters - George Everest, Francis Younghusband, George Mallory, Lord Curzon, Edward Whymper - and a few quiet heroes: Alexander Kellas, the 13th Dalai Lama, Charles Bell.

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 3 This 3rd book in the series tells the story of 9 true crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Peter Manuel - The Beast of Birkenshaw Peter Manuel was a loner: a compulsive thief and liar whose juvenile delinquency led to an adult criminal career specializing in burglary and assault. But in 1956 something changed. What turned him into Scotland's most wicked serial killer, eventually convicted and hanged on the gallows for the murder of 7 people? *Michael Sams - Killer ...

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.

The season of 1939 brought all those "in Society" to London. The young debutante daughters of the upper classes were presented to the king and queen to mark their acceptance into the new adult world of their parents. They sparkled their way through a succession of balls and parties and sporting events. The season brought together influential people not only from society but also from government at the various events of the social calendar.

This collection of humorous columns for a rural parish magazine reflects life all year round in a small English village in the beautiful Cotswolds countryside where the author has lived since 1991. Easy to dip into, this light-hearted volume provides entertaining reading for anyone interested in modern rural community life and the real-life equivalent of the fictional village of Wendlebury Barrow, the parish that is the setting for Debbie Young's fiction books. It is the sequel to All Part of the Charm, a collection of nostalgic essays and parish magazine columns. Debbie Young also writes...

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?