Women’s History Month: Uncovering Women’s History
For Women’s History Month 2025, we are sharing 10 free chapters from books uncovering women’s contributions to history. These extracts look at how women…
Yale University Press
History Books of the Year
This reading list brings you our top History titles of 2024 as chosen by critics. You can shop this selection with 30% off on…
Medieval Women: A Reading List
Explore this collection of books foregrounding medieval women as active leaders in political, religious, and cultural history. MatildaCatherine Hanley Matilda was a daughter, wife,…
Under Cover of Darkness: An Extract
Fear was the unacknowledged spectre haunting the streets of London during the Second World War; fear not only of death from the German bombers…
Second World War Reading List
Explore a curated list of books on Second World War History, offering critical perspectives on one of the most significant periods in modern history….
Why I Became an X Troop Commando
Born in Germany in 1922, Colin Anson’s (Claus Ascher) childhood was marked by the trials of Nazism. His father was arrested by the Gestapo…
What defines women’s quest for beauty?
How has women’s quest for health and beauty changed over the last four hundred years? And what has been its impact on gender definition, social inequality and the sense of aging?
Harry Edward, Athletics and the Olympics
In his lost memoir, Britain’s first Black Olympic medal winner details his experience of competing in the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp. After winning Olympic…
What the Greeks Did for the Olympics
In What the Greeks Did for Us, Tony Spawforth says ‘the modern Olympics are the most globally high-profile manifestation of ‘what the Greeks did…
Illustrating A Little History of Psychology
What does it take to illustrate a book about an abstract concept such as psychology? We caught up with Karin Rytter, illustrator of A…
England’s Cathedrals: A Timeline — by Nicholas Orme
Nicholas Orme’s The History of England’s Cathedrals is the first history of the life and activities of all English cathedrals, from Birmingham and Bury…
The Vory – 50 Years in 50 Books
Mark Galeotti’s book The Vory is the first English-language book to document the men who emerged from the gulags to become Russia’s much-feared crime…
An extract from ‘Shakespeare in Bloomsbury’ by Marjorie Garber
2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s first folio, without which many of his works would have been lost. This preservation…
A Curious Tour of Dickens’s London
From vanishing coaching inns to submerged riverside stairs, hidden burial grounds to apocryphal shops, tourists have sought out the landmarks, streets, and alleys of…
The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford – 50 Years in 50 Books
Published for the first time in 2016, The Long, Long Life of Trees explores the intimate way Trees have become entwined with human experience….