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‘His book is timely and a triumph. Roberts manages to convey all the reader needs to know about two men to whom battalions of biographies have been devoted’ EVENING STANDARD

Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill were two totally opposite leaders – both in what they stood for and in the way in which they seemed to lead. Award-winning historian Andrew Roberts examines their different styles of leadership and draws parallels with rulers from other eras. He also looks at the way Hitler and Churchill estimated each other as leaders, and how it affected the outcome of the war.

In a world that is as dependent on leadership as any earlier age, HITLER AND CHURCHILL asks searching questions about our need to be led. In doing so, Andrew Roberts forces us to re-examine the way that we look at those who take decisions for us.

From the author of SOPHIE’S WORLD, ‘A masterful mixture of fantasy and reality…a simply wonderful read’ SHE.

Panina Manina, a trapeze artist, falls and breaks her neck. As the ringmaster bends over her, he notices an amulet of amber around her neck, the same trinket he had given his own lost child, who was swept away in a torrent some sixteen years earlier.

This tale is narrated by Petter, a precocious child and fantasist, and perhaps Jostein Gaarder’s most intriguing character since Sophie. As an adult, Petter makes his living selling stories and ideas to professionals suffering from writer’s block. But as Petter sits spinning his tales, he finds himself in a trap of his own making.

The true story of the most famous SAS operation in history.

‘Bravo Two Zero’ was the code-name of the famous SAS operation: a classic story of bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. BRAVO TWO ZERO by patrol commander ‘Andy McNab’ became an international bestseller, as did the book by ‘Chris Ryan’ (THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY). Both men became millionaires. Three members of the patrol were killed. One, veteran sergeant Vince Phillips, was blamed in both books for a succession of mistakes.

As Michael Asher reveals, the stories in BRAVO TWO ZERO and THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY grew considerably in the telling. Their heroic tales of taking out tanks with their rocket launchers, mowing down hundreds of Iraqi soldiers, the silent stabbing of the occasional sentry, were never mentioned at their post-war debriefings… In an investigation literally in the footsteps of the patrol, Michael Asher tells the true story.

The extraordinary drama of Malta’s WWII victory against impossible odds told through the eyes of the people who were there.

In March and April 1942, more explosives were dropped on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta – smaller than the Isle of Wight – than on the whole of Britain during the first year of the Blitz. Malta had become one of the most strategically important places in the world. From there, the Allies could attack Axis supply lines to North Africa; without it, Rommel would be able to march unchecked into Egypt, Suez and the Middle East. For the Allies this would have been catastrophic. As Churchill said, Malta had to be held ‘at all costs’.

FORTRESS MALTA follows the story through the eyes of those who were there: young men such as twenty-year-old fighter pilot Raoul Daddo-Langlois, anti-aircraft gunner Ken Griffiths, American Art Roscoe and submariner Tubby Crawford – who served on the most successful Allied submarine of the Second World War; cabaret dancer-turned RAF plotter Christina Ratcliffe, and her lover, the brilliant and irrepressible reconnaissance pilot, Adrian Warburton. Their stories and others provide extraordinary first-hand accounts of heroism, resilience, love, and loss, highlighting one of the most remarkable stories of World War II.

A portrait of a civilisation which flourished within living memory and left an indelible mark on history

In the 13th century Yiddish language and culture began to spread from the Rhineland and Bavaria slowly east into Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, then to Poland and Lithuania and finally to western Russia and the Ukraine, becoming steadily less German and more Slav in the process. In its late-medieval heyday the culturally vibrant, economically successful, intellectually adventurous and largely self-ruling Yiddish society stretched from Riga on the Baltic down to Odessa on the Black Sea.

In the 1650s the Chmielnicki Massacres in the Ukraine by the Cossacks killed 100,000 Jews, forcing those that were left to spread out into the small towns (shtetls) and villages. The break-up of Poland-Lithuania – a safe haven for Jews in previous centuries – in the late 18th century further disrupted Yiddish society, as did the Russian anti-Jewish pogroms from the 1880s onwards, at the very time when Yiddish was producing a rich stream of plays, poems and novels.

Paul Kriwaczek describes the development, over the centuries, of Yiddish language, religion, occupations and social life, art, music and literature. The book ends by describing how the Yiddish way of life became one of the foundation stones of modern American, and therefore of world, culture.

A portrait of a civilisation which flourished within living memory and left an indelible mark on history

In the 13th century Yiddish language and culture began to spread from the Rhineland and Bavaria slowly east into Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, then to Poland and Lithuania and finally to western Russia and the Ukraine, becoming steadily less German and more Slav in the process. In its late-medieval heyday the culturally vibrant, economically successful, intellectually adventurous and largely self-ruling Yiddish society stretched from Riga on the Baltic down to Odessa on the Black Sea.

In the 1650s the Chmielnicki Massacres in the Ukraine by the Cossacks killed 100,000 Jews, forcing those that were left to spread out into the small towns (shtetls) and villages. The break-up of Poland-Lithuania – a safe haven for Jews in previous centuries – in the late 18th century further disrupted Yiddish society, as did the Russian anti-Jewish pogroms from the 1880s onwards, at the very time when Yiddish was producing a rich stream of plays, poems and novels.

Paul Kriwaczek describes the development, over the centuries, of Yiddish language, religion, occupations and social life, art, music and literature. The book ends by describing how the Yiddish way of life became one of the foundation stones of modern American, and therefore of world, culture.

The follow-up to THE MEANING OF THINGS which continues A.C. Grayling’s philosophical journey through life

The most important question we can ask ourselves is: what kind of life is the best? This is the same as asking: How does one give meaning to one’s life? How can one justify one’s existence and make it worthwhile?
How does one make experience valuable, and keep growing and learning in the process – and through this learning acquire a degree of understanding of oneself and the world?

A civilised society is one which never ceases debating with itself about what human life should best be. Some would, with justice, say that if we want ours to be such a society we must all contribute to that discussion.
This book is, with appropriate diffidence, such a contribution. It consists of a collection of Grayling’s regular ‘Last Word’ columns in the Guardian. This time topics include Suicide, Deceit, Luxury, Profit, Marriage, Meat-eating, Liberty, Slavery, Protest, Guns and War.

The follow-up to THE MEANING OF THINGS which continues A.C. Grayling’s philosophical journey through life

The most important question we can ask ourselves is: what kind of life is the best? This is the same as asking: How does one give meaning to one’s life? How can one justify one’s existence and make it worthwhile?
How does one make experience valuable, and keep growing and learning in the process – and through this learning acquire a degree of understanding of oneself and the world?

A civilised society is one which never ceases debating with itself about what human life should best be. Some would, with justice, say that if we want ours to be such a society we must all contribute to that discussion.
This book is, with appropriate diffidence, such a contribution. It consists of a collection of Grayling’s regular ‘Last Word’ columns in the Guardian. This time topics include Suicide, Deceit, Luxury, Profit, Marriage, Meat-eating, Liberty, Slavery, Protest, Guns and War.

How the simple commodity of coffee came to rewrite the experience of metropolitan life

When the first coffee-house opened in London in 1652, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from Turkey. But those who tried coffee were soon won over. More coffee-houses were opened across London and, in the following decades, in America and Europe.

For a hundred years the coffee-house occupied the centre of urban life. Merchants held auctions of goods, writers and poets conducted discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments and gave lectures, philanthropists deliberated reforms. Coffee-houses thus played a key role in the explosion of political, financial, scientific and literary change in the 18th century.

In the 19th century the coffee-house declined, but the 1950s witnessed a dramatic revival in the popularity of coffee with the appearance of espresso machines and the `coffee bar’, and the 1990s saw the arrival of retail chains like Starbucks.

A stylish thriller featuring unlikely spy hero David Audley. From the award-winning author of OTHER PATHS TO GLORY.

When David Audley, that most subtle of Intelligence chiefs, sends his insubordinate protégé Paul Mitchell off to investigate a KGB operation by researching a long-forgotten naval engagement off France in 1812, it doesn’t look to Mitchell as if it will lead anywhere. But the fate of the crew of the Vengeful has more than a few surprises in store for Mitchell and suddenly the past throws a dazzling and very dangerous light on the present.

Who are we? The story of the peoples of Britain and Ireland, drawing on new genetic discoveries, language, buildings and landscape.

The diverse peoples of Britain and Ireland are revealed not only by physical characteristics but also through structures and settlements, place names and dialects. Using the latest genetic and archaeological research, the author shows how different peoples traded, settled and conquered, establishing the ‘tribal’ and regional roots still apparent today. Its vast scope considers the impact of prehistoric peoples and Celtic tribes, Romans and Vikings, Saxons and Normans, Jews and Huguenots, as well as the increasing population movements of the last century.

Racing from the certain vengeance of Earth’s tyrant ruler, space captain Vance Garamond flees the Solar System.

And discovers the almost unimaginably vast spherical structure soon to become famous as ‘Orbitsville’ – a new home for Earth’s huddled masses.

Behind Garamond comes Earth’s space fleet…

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1975

‘A tale of immense originality and intrigue. The Miniaturist is every bit as perfect and detailed as a Mughal painting should be. Well crafted in all its details of colour and texture, it is an intensely passionate creation’ Observer

Set in the court of the Emperor Akbar in 16th-century India, this is a richly detailed and sensuous tale of art, sex and political intrigue. Bihzad is the son of the emperor’s chief artist and as such, he is groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps. A child prodigy, Bihzad is shielded from life as he grows up in the stunning fortress town of Agra. But soon word of his talent – his wild, imaginative drawings free from the normal restrictions of court painting – spreads. When the emperor decides to move the court to Fatehpur Sikri, Bihzad is favoured among the other artists and musicians. In his spare time he paints a series of richly, erotic scenes. But as his fame increases, he begins to make enemies who are jealous of his success and who will use his hidden drawings to destroy him.

The story of the amazing discovery of Archimedes’ lost works

Drawings and writings by Archimedes, previously thought to have been destroyed, have been uncovered beneath the pages of a 13th-century monk’s prayer book. These hidden texts, slowly being retrieved and deciphered by scientists, show that Archimedes’ thinking (2,200 years ago) was even ahead of Isaac Newton in the 17th century.

Archimedes discovered the value of Pi, he developed the theory of specific gravity and made steps towards the development of calculus. Everything we know about him comes from three manuscripts, two of which have disappeared. The third, currently in the Walters Art Museum, is a palimpsest – the text has been scraped off, the book taken apart and its parchment re-used, in this case as a prayer book. William Noel, the project director, and Reviel Netz, a historian of ancient mathematics, tell the enthralling story of the survival of that prayer book from 1229 to the present, and examine the process of recovering the invaluable text underneath as well as investigating into why that text is so important.

The story of the amazing discovery of Archimedes’ lost works

Drawings and writings by Archimedes, previously thought to have been destroyed, have been uncovered beneath the pages of a 13th-century monk’s prayer book. These hidden texts, slowly being retrieved and deciphered by scientists, show that Archimedes’ thinking (2,200 years ago) was even ahead of Isaac Newton in the 17th century.

Archimedes discovered the value of Pi, he developed the theory of specific gravity and made steps towards the development of calculus. Everything we know about him comes from three manuscripts, two of which have disappeared. The third, currently in the Walters Art Museum, is a palimpsest – the text has been scraped off, the book taken apart and its parchment re-used, in this case as a prayer book. William Noel, the project director, and Reviel Netz, a historian of ancient mathematics, tell the enthralling story of the survival of that prayer book from 1229 to the present, and examine the process of recovering the invaluable text underneath as well as investigating into why that text is so important.

When a young Russian boy disappears from a top-secret Soviet research establishment and turns up in Tokyo, he presents a major problem for the American security officials. For the boy appears to be part of a sophisticated experiment and to have the mind of a supposedly dead astronaut imperfectly imprinted on his own. If the boy is to be believed, then the experiment has been extended to a whale.

In Mexico, ground-breaking research by Nobel Prize winner Paul Hammond has shown that what we perceive as the Universe is no more than the ghost of the real thing. Signals received by his radio telescope have shown him that the Universe God created no longer exists.

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1977

‘In this comprehensive volume, we see the actor in a range of roles: loving son, wicked gossip, star actor, indecisive director, anguished lover, brilliant anecdotist. This splendid book reveals an infinitely complicated and attractive character. We may not look upon his like again’ Jonathan Croall, Spectator

The above quotes sums it up – this astonishing collection of letters brings us up close to one of the foremost, and best loved, actors of this century. John Gielgud wrote letters almost every day of his adult life. Whether at home in London or abroad, he delighted in recounting what he felt about events around him. Here for the first time – and not previously available to biographers – are Gielgud’s love letters. They show that he was not shy is expressing the intimacies of personal relationships. He also loved gossip and writes about his contemporaries, including the great actors of period: Olivier, Richardson, Redgrave, Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans and the like. A revealing account but also a hugely warm and compelling insight into a man of many sides.

‘Cain was not just a great hard-boiled novelist but a great novelist, period … To read MILDRED PIERCE now is to experience a double vision, in which we confront both how much and how little things have changed’ LA TIMES

‘Vivid, gritty, real…this is crime writing at its very best’ MY WEEKLY

Mildred Pierce is the story of a determined and ambitious woman who, after her feckless husband abandons her, by hard work and sacrifice builds a successful business to ensure the future of her pampered and selfish daughter. But she isn’t prepared for the intrigues and devastating betrayals of those closest to her. This is James M. Cain’s most substantial novel and a classic of the Depression years.

One minute, down-and-out actor Lorenzo Smythe was – as usual – in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars.

Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake – failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe’s own life was on the line – for if he wasn’t assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!

‘Perfectly crafted, intricate and haunting stories’ from the bestselling author of THE READER.

A mesmeric collection of stories about love. In his characteristically unsentimental, elegant and spare prose, Schlink unveils characters and relationships haunted by betrayal and guilt, in situations where self-examination is inescapable.

FLIGHTS OF LOVE consists of seven stories, all of them weaving around the idea of love – why people are drawn to it and why some run away. Schlink shows us in turn love as desire, love as confusion, love as a quick affair, love as a drastic life-changing rebellion, love as a force of habit, love as self-betrayal. The cumulative effect is a book which uses effortlessly beguiling language to examine the universal human desire to find a lasting loving relationship, however thwarted that desire ultimately is.

‘I can’t make your girl come back if she doesn’t want to. I told you that on the phone’ But something changes…

‘The finest series of detective novels ever written by an American’ William Goldman

‘A beautiful job, rich in plot and character…surprising and shocking’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘I love the Lew Archer books’ James Ellroy

When Lew Archer is hired to find out the truth about a suspiciously suave Frenchman who has run off with his client’s girlfriend, it looks like a simple enough case. But things start to look very different when Archer connects the elusive foreigner with a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts.

BLACK MONEY is Ross Macdonald at his very finest, revealing the skull beneath the sun-kissed skin of Southern California.

She was beautiful and evil – she murdered minds as well as bodies…

‘A work of art – terrifyingly believable’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘Superb … BEAST IN VIEW is cunningly plotted and has an ingenious final twist’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘Millar was the master of the surprise ending (exemplified in BEAST IN VIEW)’ INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

At thirty, Helen Clarvoe is alone: her only visitors are the staff at the hotel where she lives, and her only phone calls come from a stranger.

Until that stranger, with a quiet, compelling voice, lures the aloof and financially secure Miss Clarvoe into a world of extortion, pornography, vengeance, madness and murder.

But who is the hunter and who is the victim…?

A gothic chiller which still feels incredibly modern, BEAST IN VIEW is a true classic of the crime fiction genre.

No secret remains buried for ever… The award-winning first book from the author of OTHER PATHS TO GLORY.

When an RAF Dakota, presumed lost at sea in 1945, is discovered in a drained lake in Lincolnshire, together with its pilot and a cargo of worthless rubble, it falls to David Audley of the MOD to puzzle out just why the Russians are so interested, and what the plane was carrying that is important enough to kill for.

The first general history of the English middle classes, based on BBC TV programme of which Will Self said “No simple overview can do justice to this programme – an exemplary series and mandatory viewing’.

Afternoon tea, the Women’s Institute, Mrs Beeton, department stores, suburbia, seaside holidays and cycling clubs – all preserves of the great middle class. But where did the middle classes come from? And what makes a person middle class today?

Although the term ‘middle class’ is part of our everyday language, the middle class has not been a feature of the British social scene from time immemorial. Drawing on the memories and life stories of individuals and families, as well as the words of distinguished historians and social commentators, this fascinating portrait of a people traces the roots of middle-class values in Victorian England through to the great educational reforms of the twentieth century. Panoramic and personal, this book provides a compelling picture of this influential social group and looks at what their future might be.