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Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town

Pompeii explodes a number of myths – from the very date of the eruption, probably a few months later than usually thought; the hygiene of the baths which must have been hotbeds of germs; and the legendary number of brothels, most likely only one, to the massive death count which was probably less than ten per cent of the population. Street Life, Earning a Living: Baker, Banker and Garum Maker (who ran the city), The Pleasure of the Body: Food, Wine, Sex and Baths, these chapter headings give a surprising insight into the workings of a Roman town. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. A fast-food joint on the Via dell’ Abbondanza introduces food and drink and diets and street life. These are just a few of the strands that make up an extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing re-discovery, by Britain’s leading classicist.

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The Sixties (Big Ideas)

Many books have been written on the Sixties: tributes to music and fashion, sex, drugs and revolution. In The Sixties, Jenny Diski breaks the mould, wryly dismantling the big ideas that dominated the era – liberation, permissiveness and self-invention – to consider what she and her generation were really up to. Was it rude to refuse to have sex with someone? Did they take drugs to get by, or to see the world differently? How responsible were they for the self-interest and greed of the Eighties? With characteristic wit and verve, Diski takes an incisive look at the radical beliefs to which her generation subscribed, little realising they were often old ideas dressed up in new forms, sometimes patterned by BIBA. She considers whether she and her peers were as serious as they thought about changing the world, if the radical sixties were funded by the baby-boomers' parents, and if the big idea shaping the Sixties was that it really felt as if it meant something to be young.

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The English Civil War: A People's History

This is a remarkable popular history of the English Civil War, from the perspectives of those involved in this most significant turning point in British history. This compelling history, culminating in the execution of Charles I, brings to life the people who fought in it, died in it, and in doing so changed the history of the world forever. In an excitingly fresh approach to the period, Diane Purkiss tells the story of this critical era not just in terms of the battle of ideas, but as the histories of the people who conceived them. "The English Civil War" builds a gripping narrative of the individuals involved and their motives, from those whose reputations were made on the back of this violent and brutal war, such as Oliver Cromwell and Lady Eleanor Davies, to witchfinders and revolutionaries; and ultimately, the ordinary men who fought and the women who lived with tragedy, finding their political voice for the first time. The consequences of ten years of bloody revolution were to stretch from the cities to the villages to the grand houses, form Ulster to East Anglia to the outer reaches of Cornwall. The tales uncovered by Diane Purkiss paint a picture of a world turned upside down, where madness and prophesy play their part, and where normal life and times are suspended. This important book uncovers forgotten lives and illustrates incisively the critical contribution of this extraordinary period in English history to contemporary politics and society.

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Standard Operating Procedure: A War Story

"Standard Operating Procedure" is the story of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner abuse, as seen through the eyes and told through the voices of the soldiers who took them and appeared in them. It is the story of how those soldiers were at once the instruments and victims of a great injustice. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris' startlingly frank and intimate interviews with the soldier-photographers who gave us what have become iconic images of the Iraq War.

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The French Revolution

Concise, convincing and exciting, this is Christopher Hibbert’s brilliant account of the events that shook eighteenth-century Europe to its foundation. With a mixture of lucid storytelling and fascinating detail, he charts the French Revolution from its beginnings at an impromptu meeting on an indoor tennis court at Versailles in 1789, right through to the ‘coup d’etat’ that brought Napoleon to power ten years later. In the process he explains the drama and complexities of this epoch-making era in the compelling and accessible manner he has made his trademark.

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Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France: Translated by Barbara Mellor

In the summer of 1940, as the German Occupation tightened its grip on Paris, Agnes Humbert helped to establish one of the first resistance cells. Within a year the group was publishing a news bulletin, helping allied airmen escape and passing military information back to London. Then came the catastrophe of betrayal, followed by arrest and interrogation, imprisonment and trial and, for Agnes, deportation to slave labour camp in Germany. Resistance is the secret journal of a woman who never gave up hope.

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A People's Tragedy: Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

Presents an account of the Russian Revolution. This book has won the Wolfson History Prize, the W H Smith Literary Award, and the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award.

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Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception, 1914-1945

This is the story of how the British really won two world wars - by conning the Kaiser, hoaxing Hitler and bluffing their way out of trouble. Pretend German radio stations broadcast outrageous British propaganda in German. British geniuses broke German secret codes and eavesdropped on their messages. Every German spy in Britain was captured and many were used to send back false information to their controllers. Forged documents misled their Intelligence. Bogus wireless traffic from entire phantom armies, dummy airfields with model planes, disguised ships and inflatable rubber tanks created a vital illusion of strength. Culminating in the spectacular misdirection that was so essential to the success of D-Day in 1944, "Churchill's Wizards" is a thrilling work of popular military history.

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D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. The war in northern France marked not just a generation but the whole of the post-war world, profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe. Making use of overlooked and new material from over thirty archives in half a dozen countries, D-Day is the most vivid and well-researched account yet of the battle of Normandy. As with Stalingrad and Berlin, Antony Beevor's gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war.

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Archibald Wavell: The Life and Times of an Imperial Servant

Archibald Wavell was born a few years before Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and died shortly after the end of the Second World War (1883-1950). During that time the country in which he was born and brought up in changed beyond recognition, undergoing a fundamental revision in the attitudes, expectations, prejudices and hopes of the British people. His life epitomises that of a generation of famous men whose education and upbringing equipped them for a future that was to prove an illusion. At seventeen, Archibald Wavell joined the army and as a young officer saw action in the Boer War and on the North West Frontier.In the Great War, he was often close to the greatest generals in the British Army; he fought in the trenches, was decorated for bravery and lost an eye. Between the wars his career included command of troops attempting to keep the peace in Palestine as revolt engulfed the country. His victorious campaigns early in the Second World War attracted a blaze of public admiration and renown; but he also tasted defeat and rejection, both in Africa and from 1941 as commander-in-chief of Allied forces in India, wilting before the Japanese onslaught in Burma and Singapore. In 1943 he was appointed Viceroy of India, where he took on the task of guiding that country's destiny as it crossed the brink of Empire into the turmoil of independence.