Stuart Britain

Jamestown, England's first real foothold in the New World, was fraught with danger - from starvation and disease to violent skirmishes between colonists and the native populations. Mortality rates were impossibly high: six out of seven settlers died within the first few years. How clear these and other perils were made to the 56 young women who left their homes and boarded ships in England in 1621, nearly 15 years after Jamestown's founding, is not known. But we do know who they were. Their ages ranged from 16 to 28, and they were deemed "young and uncorrupt".

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 ...

Experience a world both ancient and timeless in The Song of Albion Trilogy, a sweeping historical fantasy that blurs the lines between our world and the Otherworld. Rooted in Celtic myth and packed with heart-stopping adventure, this epic series follows an unlikely hero whose journey of destiny...

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.  

England's turbulent seventeenth century is vividly laid out before us, but so too is the cultural and social life of the period, notable for its extraordinarily rich literature, including Shakespeare's late masterpieces, Jacobean tragedy, the poetry of John Donne and Milton, and Thomas Hobbes's great philosophical treatise, Leviathan. Rebellion also gives us a very real sense of the lives of ordinary English men and women, lived out against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty.

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.

Reine d'Écosse six jours après sa naissance en 1542, mariée à François II et reine de France à dix-sept ans, veuve un an après, remariée à lord Darnley, amante du comte de Bothwell qui tuera Darnley, réfugiée auprès d'Elisabeth Ire qui la gardera captive pendant vingt ans, décapitée en 1587 pour s'être laissé prendre au piège d'une conspiration : Marie Stuart est l'une des figures les plus romanesques, les plus tragiques de l'histoire.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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 extraordinary life and career of music legend Rod Stewart, in his own words for the first time. With his soulful and singular voice, narrative songwriting, and passionate live performances Rod Stewart has paved one of the most iconic and successful music careers of all time. He was the...

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...

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...

Experience the dazzling brilliance of a world like ours—yet infinitely bolder and brighter: a place of kings and warriors, bards and battles, feats of glory and honour. It is a place you will forever wish to be. It is Albion. "When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the world I knew." Lewis...

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.

January, 1649. After seven years of fighting in the bloodiest war in Britain’s history, Parliament faced a problem: what to do with a defeated king who refused to surrender? Parliamentarians resolved to do the unthinkable, to disregard the Divine Right of Kings and hold Charles I to account for the suffering and slaughter endured by his people. On a winter’s day outside Whitehall, the king of England was executed. When the king’s son, Charles II, was restored to the throne, he set about enacting a deadly wave of retribution against all those responsible for his father’s death.

The remarkable story of George Downing—savvy soldier, politician, diplomat, spy, and one of the most scandalous figures of his era. Judged by contemporaries to be a "perfidious rogue," Sir George Downing rose to prominence during the English Civil War as Oliver Cromwell's chief of military...