History & Classics

Calories and Corsets

Louise Foxcroft

An enlightening and entertaining social history of how we have tried (and failed) to battle the bulge over two millennia.

Da Vinci's Ghost

Toby Lester

The untold story of Vitruvian Man, the drawing that captured the spirit of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance – and that still haunts our own

Lives of the Novelists

John Sutherland

This is the most complete history of fiction in English ever published – now in paperback.

The Glass Bathyscaphe

Gerry Martin

Glass is one of the greatest accidents in the history of humankind.

The New East End

Michael Young

This is a fascinating and honest book which builds upon the classic Family and Kinship in East London published nearly 50 years ago reflecting the aft…

Why The West Rules – For Now

Ian Morris

Why does the West rule? Eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing uniquely on 20,000 years of history and archae…

A Serious Endeavour

Laura Schwartz

A delightfully subversive take on the traditional Oxford college history

The Roman Forum

David Watkin

The ruins of the Forum in Rome, the centre of its ancient Empire, are one of the best known wonders of antiquity and a highpoint of the tourist route…

Churchill's Bunker

Richard Holmes

For the first time, the history of the bunker – and daily life inside it – is revealed, by bestselling historian Richard Holmes.

The Ruin of the Roman Empire

James J O'Donnell

A provocative portrait of the end of Rome's empire in the 5th and 6th centuries by a major historian, who tells the story of the barbarians who mi…

The Tomb of Agamemnon

Cathy Gere

With wit and energy, Gere peels away layers of modern fantasy, literary imagination, political appropriation and fashions of modern scholarship.

Vesuvius

Gillian Darley

Volcanoes continue to grab our imagination – and Vesuvius is the most famous of them all.

Marathon

Alan Lloyd

The clash of civilisations at Marathon was one of the most renowned military battles of the ancient world and a pivotal moment in the course of Wester…

The Colosseum

Keith Hopkins

Award winning classicist, Mary Beard with Keith Hopkins, tell the story of Rome's greatest arena

Westminster Abbey

Richard Jenkyns

Fifteen royal weddings and thirty-eight coronations – Westminster Abbey was the venue for a sixteenth royal wedding, that of Kate Middleton and Prince…

St Pancras Station

Simon Bradley

St Pancras station has long been an iconic landmark on the London landscape and one of its most distinctive monuments. This new edition is published t…