Najnovšie - Knihy - História strana 3 z 25

Discover the forgotten story of Britain’s final bloody battles against Nazi Germany in this Sunday Times top ten bestseller. Based on audio interviews with those who fought their way to victory, Voices of Victory is a compelling and immersive account of a crucial period in the Second World War by the bestselling author of D-Day: The Unheard Tapes. February, 1945. Eight months have passed since the D-Day landings, when the Allies gained their foothold in North-West Europe. Since then the British Army has fought near continuously against the German military. Now, they stand ready for their final test: the battle for the German homeland. Drawing on the sound archive of the Imperial War Museums and other personal accounts, military historian Geraint Jones brings this often-overlooked period of the war vividly to life in the words of British soldiers who were there, from war-weary men who have survived many months of combat to new recruits facing Hitler’s fanatics for the first time. In Voices of Victory we join the soldiers battling to break through the Siegfried Line and clear the Reichswald forest, where fighting was from one tree to the next. At the crossing of the Rhine we go into action with the commandos, and jump behind enemy lines with the Paras. We are taken into the horror of Belsen when the concentration camp is liberated, hear from the witnesses of the forgotten battles of April, and end the war deep in Germany, with victory in Europe. ‘Enthralling and enlightening . . . A wonderful look into the personal experiences, that heart and soul of the fighting soldier, towards the end of the Second World War’ – John Nichol, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Unknown WarriorVoices of Victory was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller w/e 03/05/2025.

'Punchy. Trenchant. Heavyweight. Mark Urban’s Tank blows the doors off, just as you’d expect from such an accomplished author. Take cover!’ Damien Lewis, author of SAS Great EscapesAn authoritative history of the tank and the remarkable individuals who designed them and fought in them, from a former officer and best-selling historianTanks are the ultimate embodiment of industrial age warfare. In the popular imagination, they represent both a terrifying beast of destruction and a potent symbol of liberation. The technology behind these war machines has evolved relentlessly, and yet the coming of the information age has led many to predict that drones, missiles, and Artificial Intelligence have made the tank obsolete. Time and again, however, tanks have continued to shape – and be shaped by -- battles around the world, from their introduction in 1916, through the Second World War and tank-on-tank fights in 1990s Iraq, to the current conflict in Ukraine. In TANK, best-selling historian and former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment Mark Urban draws on wide-ranging accounts from soldiers, designers, and politicians, from Winston Churchill to Volodymyr Zelensky, to tell the remarkable story of one of the most important developments in military history. Through the ten most important vehicles ever made, Urban chronicles the incredible advances in tank technology – starting with the Mark IV, the first British tank to be used in large numbers in WW1, and following the story through the T-34 and Tiger to the M1 Abrams, a product of huge American Cold War investment that is still used to this day. Officially supported by The Tank Museum and using never-before-seen archival sources, interviews and declassified documents, this is a fascinating history of the vehicle that changed conflict forever. ‘An illuminating and exciting drive through the mud and blood of twentieth-century warfare' Dr Robert Lyman, author of Operation Suicide

Until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, America did not want war, with the 1930s marked by strong isolationism and an emphasis on defense. However, in December 1941, it wasn't defensive aircraft the Army Air Corps had been steadily procuring, but offensive long-range heavy bombers, whilst US pursuit planes were decidedly inferior to their European counterparts. In this new history of the development of American air power, Phillip Meilinger dispels the notion that young air zealots pushed for a bomber-heavy force, revealing instead the technological, economic and bureaucratic forces which shaped the air force. He examines the role of scientists and engineers, developments in commercial aviation, and conflicting priorities of the Army and Air Corps, as well as how these were in turn influenced by America's political leaders. Building an Air Force is essential for understanding a conflict in which whoever controlled the skies controlled the land and seas beneath.

In the spirit of previous volumes, Damien Lewis reveals the untold stories of the war's most daring and audacious escapes as executed by the world's most famous fighting force, the SAS. Reaching back into the earliest origins of the SAS legend, and Operation Colossus, the volume opens with a series of death-defying escapes in Italy, where bluff, deception and audacity win the day. It moves on to an epic solo escape across the sun-blasted Sahara desert, as one man, long given up for dead, achieves the seemingly impossible. It goes on to chronicle one of the most successful raids by the SAS deep behind enemy lines, and how a terribly injured veteran of that mission used the secret escape lines of the Vatican to make it back to Allied lines, in a tale replete with cloak-and-dagger intrigue. From there, the reader is plunged into a series of daring POW-rescue missions, laced with Robin-Hood-style assassinations and robberies, plus a breathtaking getaway at mission's end. And finally, we learn of how one patrol's desperate, close-quarter battle to take an enemy-held fortress, led to tragic loss but an equally daring getaway. Working with the family members of those portrayed, and relying upon unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, war reports and more, this is gripping narrative history at its finest, delivered in typical Damien Lewis edge-of-the-seat style.

In December 1987, UNESCO bestowed its greatest honour on Bath when it declared the city a World Heritage Site for its outstanding cultural heritage – including its natural thermal spa waters – and landscape setting. Bath was one of the first ten sites to be recognised in the United Kingdom and received its award along with Blenheim Palace, Hadrian’s Wall and the Palace of Westminster. Published to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Bath’s inscription as a World Heritage Site, Water, History & Style is a celebration of Bath’s Outstanding Universal Values. With informative and lively text by Bath scholar Dr Cathryn Spence, Water, History & Style explains the significance of UNESCO’s award in the context of Bath’s economic, social and architectural history. The 25 locations and themes are richly illustrated with a wealth of fascinating historic images representing Bath’s six millennia of human history.

‘One of Tudor history’s rising stars.’ - Steven Veerapen, author of The Wisest FoolFIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER HER DEATH, MARY BOLEYN DESERVES HER STORY TO BE TOLD CORRECTLYMary Boleyn has long been dismissed as the ‘great and infamous whore’, her story overshadowed by scandal and myth. But what if everything we thought we knew about her was wron? rawing on newly retranslated original sources and rare archival material, Mary Boleyn: The Queen’s Slandered Sister peels away centuries of rumour to reveal the true Mary Boleyn. Far from the reckless wanton of legend, she emerges as a woman of ambition, resilience, and intelligence. Acclaimed historian Sylvia Barbara Soberton challenges outdated narratives, uncovering the real extent of Mary’s relationships with Henry VIII and Francis I, her role in the rise and fall of her younger sister Anne, and her life beyond the royal spotlight. This revelatory biography rewrites Mary Boleyn’s story – a must-read for Tudor history enthusiasts.

Relive the history of Edinburgh through the eyes of those who witnessed it. From one of the earliest mentions of its name in the sixth century to the Covid lockdowns of the twenty-first, this is a magnificent portrait of one of the world’s great cities in its many iterations, from ‘Edinburgh, the sink of abomination’ to the Athens of the North and everything – including the home of the Enlightenment, the Festival City, the Aids Capital of Europe and a Mecca for tourists seeking tartan tat – in between. As the nation’s capital it has been critical to its progress and a witness to epochal events, such the tumultuous reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Reformation, the Forty-Five rebellion, the Disruption of the Church of Scotland and the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament. All of these and more feature. But this is not simply a book about the great and good, the famous and infamous. There is testimony aplenty from ordinary folk who may not have made their mark on history but who have contributed to Edinburgh’s ever-expanding tapestry. There are stories of body snatching and murder, drunkenness and drug-taking, sex and shopping, as well rants against inclement weather and the city council.

'Brilliant . . . A great book' Rod Liddle'Utterly shocking. Blunt wasn't just an arch-traitor. He was a callous mass-murderer. A war criminal no less. And it's hard to say which is the greater sucker punch - Blunt's dark treachery, or the British establishment's cover up of his crimes. It is high time the truth was revealed. Blofeld's book does just that. Bravo' Damien Lewis'Epic . . . Blofeld analyses the horrifying consequences of Blunt's spy work for the Soviets and takes aim at the moral failings and cover-ups of the British establishment' Independent 'This is intelligence history as it should be written: rigorous, unsettling and startlingly readable. The narrative has the pace of a thriller yet the facts, however extraordinary, are allowed to speak for themselves. One can but gasp at Blunt's audacity, then laugh - incredulously - at the sheer Britishness of it all' The Rt Hon Lord Young of Old Windsor, GCB, GCVO, formerly Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II'Flawlessly researched and illuminating . . . reveals Anthony Blunt as an unbounded monster of treachery masquerading as the Establishment's pet intellectual' Nicky Haslam'In life, Anthony Blunt was the Cambridge spy who "got away with it". Forty years after his death, this riveting book exposes the extent of his betrayals, of his country and his friends. A gripping narrative and a must read' Dr Michael Reynolds, he founded and led the Counter-Terrorism section in Mi6, was an Assistant Director of Mi5 before co-founding Hakluyt, a global leader in commercial intelligence and advisory servicesIn a brilliant feat of literary detective work Master of Lies tells the extraordinary untold story of Anthony Blunt's life as a spy. Based on extensive research into newly released files he is revealed as not simply "the fourth man", but the most dangerous spy of the twentieth century. During the war, as the fate of the world hung in the balance, Blunt's intelligence was being fed straight on to the desks of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill. His hand was secretly guiding our collective fate and his treason led to the deaths of tens of thousands. He casts a shadow which looms large to this day. The official narrative is that Blunt was the least of the Cambridge spies - and yet he was the one who got away with it. While the rest drank themselves to death in dingy Moscow flats, Blunt revelled in his brilliant career as an art historian, Surveyor of the Queen's pictures and Knight of the Realm. He was protected not just by his many friendships with the great and the good, but by the brilliance with which he played the game - his was a secret too big to be told. Master of Lies reads like the best spy fiction but it solves one of the great espionage mysteries of our times.

'Well-researched and enthralling, Peter Ricketts brings the wartime Foreign Office to life.’ – Tim Bouverie'The gripping story of how the men and women of the Foreign Office secured Britain's victory in the Second World War and created a new international order.' – Professor Helen McCarthy“A gripping account of British diplomacy during the Second World War, filled with high drama and moments of tension. Ricketts vividly brings to the fore some of the most fascinating figures in the history of the Foreign Office.”Dr Helen FryDiscover the untold story of the British diplomats who shaped WWII – and the peace that followed – in this vivid exploration of a transformative moment in modern history. While military exploits and Churchill’s leadership dominate history books, Peace Makers reveals how the men and women of the Foreign Office forged alliances, supported resistance movements, managed refugee crises and laid the groundwork for the post-war international order. From the rooftops of Whitehall during the Blitz to embassies under siege across Europe and Asia, diplomats and their families demonstrated extraordinary resilience and ingenuity. They evacuated civilians, backed resistance networks, gathered intelligence and waged battles of persuasion. Some endured years apart from home; others, like staff in Tokyo, survived internment. Figures such as Archibald Clark Kerr in Moscow and Sir Alexander Cadogan in London steered critical alliances and helped shape the world to come. Peace Makers also explores how the war transformed the Foreign Office itself, sweeping away the barriers that had kept women out of top jobs. Through vivid portraits of pioneers like Freya Stark, Nancy Lambton and Elizabeth Wiskemann, you'll learn how women began to rise to senior diplomatic ranks. It also features the first published account from the only surviving member of the wartime Foreign Office, who shares her extraordinary story of travelling with Anthony Eden to the great wartime Summits. Peace Makers brings these stories together in a compelling narrative that blends fresh research with vivid storytelling. It offers a new lens on the war – one that highlights diplomacy as a frontline force and reveals how its legacy continues to shape our world. This is essential reading for anyone interested in history, international affairs or the human stories behind global change. ----------------------------------------------'A fascinating account of how the Foreign Office helped turned wartime victory into postwar peace.’ – Professor David Reynolds'Places the dedicated men and women in the British Foreign Office in the pantheon of WWIl heroes.’ – Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell'Who better than a former Permanent Secretary to take us on a riveting tour of the Foreign Office at war?’ – Professor Peter Hennessy'A fascinating account of the ingenuity and courage required of diplomats in wartime.' – Lord Hague

Buckingham Palace’s greatest fear came true when the FBI arrested then Prince Andrew’s friend Jeffrey Epstein on charges of under-age sex trafficking. Downfall tells the story behind the key players and allegations in this unique, high-stakes royal drama. It provides a gripping and behind-the-scenes insight into the hidden privileges enjoyed by global power brokers, royalty and billionaires, which they defend tooth and nail with lawyers to keep quiet. This is more than the story of one man; it is a portrait of an institution in crisis, revealing how the monarchy as we know it is now deeply at risk.

A unique approach to describing life at sea in the Royal Navy. Despite the introduction of modern-day technology, Ships and Submarines of the Royal Navy still operate on the basis of main broadcast announcements, known in the Royal Navy as Pipes. Before the introduction of main broadcasts, a Crew (or Ship’s Company) would be alerted to forthcoming ship’s activity either using a Bosun’s Call (which is a small pipe or whistle) or a Bugle. Whilst those methods are still in place, and still used, a Pipe is now the term for any verbal announcement made over a ship’s main broadcast in the Royal Navy. This book aims to translate their meanings, not simply to make the seemingly incomprehensible understandable, but also to conjure up often humorous anecdotes that provide an insight into life at sea in the RN. Each Pipe is provided with a brief description of its meaning followed by longer observation of what it meant to different members of the Ship’s Company.

A provocative new history of America’s constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imaginedThe American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain’s constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain’s had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. This book charts the history and aims of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today. Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson’s riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little. Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future.

Places Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia in the context of a broader Atlantic intellectual world and investigates the entanglement among books, knowledge, and colonialismThe Atlantic Republic of Letters offers an alternative intellectual history of early America. Focusing on Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia, the book frames Euro-American colonialism as an intellectual enterprise, which was established not only through military and economic means but also through books, ideas, and cultural institutions. Through research in dozens of archives and rare book libraries, Diego Pirillo brings together two interconnected histories. First, he recovers the place of British America in the cosmopolitan world of the Republic of Letters, studying the communication system that facilitated the transatlantic circulation of knowledge. Second, he shows that knowledge was weaponized in the effort to survey and control North America. While fashioning themselves as independent and cosmopolitan scholars, Franklin and his associates, including James and Martha Logan, Isaac Norris II, Pierre Eugene Du Simitiere, and Jane Colden, among others, were in fact deeply tied to political power and tailored their ideas to the needs of their patrons. They served as agents of empire and helped to devise and put into practice the colonial project. Not only were books, libraries, and cultural institutions funded by the wealth created by the slave trade and the expropriation of Indigenous land, but, as Pirillo argues, the very taxonomies and classification systems that Euro-American scholars devised directly shaped the colonial enterprise. In this respect, The Atlantic Republic of Letters illuminates the relationship among books, intellectuals, and colonial governance, and explores the ways in which knowledge circulated and shaped conquest.

Abolitionists of the Northeastprofiles the little-known yet historically prolific Black figures who actively participated in the abolitionist movement in America. The movement, which began in the 1820s in Northeastern America, was about ending slavery in the United States. History books have long emphasized the lives and work of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Thomas Garrett, but it’s no secret that the most influential Black advocates are missing from the pages of our textbooks. This book offers intimate profiles of 29 Black abolitionists in the Northeast along with historical black and white photographs that give readers a full picture of who these people were, the work they did to combat the nation’s greatest sin, and how their legacy has lived on. From the underrated to the overlooked, Abolitionists of the Northeast educates readers on the most influential advocates in the earliest beginnings of the United States’ anti-slavery movement.

A story of faith, fanaticism, and the uncanny power of the imagination. The dawn of the Victorian era: the world is changing rapidly. Poverty and the workhouse cast long shadows across rural England, and a traditional way of life is coming to an end. In the villages and fields of Kent, the discontented find an unlikely champion in John Nicholls Tom. Calling himself 'Sir William Courtenay', he appears to the local magistrates and gentry as a madman, a charlatan, or a dangerous radical. But for the labouring people he is the New Messiah, come to lead them in a revolt against the forces of oppression, and to herald the end of the world. In May 1838 Tom's crusade ignites into bloody violence. The confrontation that follows will shock the country, and become known as the last battle ever fought on English soil. Mad Tom's Rising presents an alternative vision of early Victorian England, as a place of mystical religious faith, riot and disturbance, surveillance and insecurity, arson and uproar. Drawing on original sources, it reconstructs the strange and astonishing events of that time, and the lives and experiences of those forever marked by them.

What should children eat and why? How should they eat it and what should they learn about food? Answers to questions like these have differed over time. First Helpings explores the relationship between children and food in history, drawing on a rich variety of social records, cookery and etiquette books and children’s literature. Topics covered include breast versus bottle feeding, the difference between ‘adult’ and ‘children’s’ food and drink, table manners, school meals and learning to cook. Albon and Palmer discuss wider social issues, such as teaching children about the ethics of food choices, the role children have played in food production and the ever-present scandal of hungry children in society. First Helpings provides a unique look at childhood and eating that relates past to present and considers ways forward.

An authoritative study of the free people of color in the largest state of the Old South. Virginia was the state with the most enslaved people prior to the Civil War. It was also at one time the state with the most resident free people of color—free from the legal disabilities specifically associated with enslavement but still denied many basic civil rights. Written by an award-winning expert on free people of color in the American South, Freedom in the Age of Slavery is the first modern comprehensive history of free Virginians of color from the colonial period through Reconstruction. Milteer recounts in granular detail the discriminatory policies and resulting hardships that free Virginians of color faced, while also documenting the openings they created for themselves and the successes they enjoyed against overwhelming odds. Throughout, he highlights the commonwealth's significance as the laboratory for legal discrimination throughout the nation, while never losing sight of the ways free people of color seized their opportunities wherever possible and built meaningful lives in the face of massive white resistance.

In the early weeks of 1849, a devastating outbreak of cholera tore through Surrey Hall, a residential school for workhouse children in Lower Tooting. It was a tragedy on a terrible scale, and the loss of life owed much to the appalling conditions in the school, where half-starved boys and girls wearing threadbare clothes were crammed into filthy premises, and were kept in line by tyrannical adults. The owner, Bartholomew Peter Drouet, had been busily turning human misery into handsome profit, but now, in the wake of the tragedy, he found himself on trial at the Old Bailey on a charge of manslaughter. In this book, the first full-length history of the Surrey Hall scandal, the reader is given access to the children’s experiences before, during and after the outbreak of cholera. The stories they told of cruelties perpetrated behind closed doors shocked the nation, and Drouet quickly became a despised household name, a process that was helped significantly by the journalism of an outraged Charles Dickens. However, change was in the air, and the events in Tooting, far from being just a local affair, had important consequences for the future management of the children of the poor.

As the First World War came to a chaotic end, Europeans feared that a wave of crime and anarchy would sweep across their continent. The upheavals of the war and of the subsequent violent breakup of the Habsburg, German, and Ottoman empires magnified longstanding fears that an increasingly interconnected world offered the enterprising and unscrupulous new opportunities to break the law and evade capture. New kinds of international criminals and criminal enterprises demanded novel forms of international cooperation. Thus was born the International Criminal Police Commission, known today as Interpol. In the 1920s and 1930s, Interpol''s police officials and the lawyers who collaborated with them created lasting programs to combat counterfeiting, sex and drug trafficking, terrorism, and human smuggling, and other forms of international crime, which they labelled "a scourge of humanity." Drawing on press reports, police files, and criminal records in numerous languages and across multiple countries, David Petruccelli explores the origins of Interpol and the role Central and Eastern European actors played in developing criminal policing and law during the interwar period to bring stability to their region and reshape international institutions and norms. He shows how legal experts replaced a liberal focus on individual rights with an emphasis on a collective of international societies and of police officers who looked to the international sphere as a space for eluding the constraints of the rule of law at home. In doing so, their initiatives posed an alternative to the imperial and liberal internationalist programs pursued by many Western Europeans and Americans and laid the groundwork for more radical forms of persecution during the Second World War. While bringing to life the stories of individuals involved in shady activities across borders, A Scourge of Humanity explores the vigorous policing and harsh criminal laws established by Interpol to combat their crimes and highlights illiberal forms of internationalism that have left a lasting mark on our world.