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The Men Who United the States
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From bestselling author Simon Winchester, the extraordinary story of how America was united into a single nation. For more than two centuries, E pluribus unum – out of many, one – has been featured on America’s official government seals and stamped on its currency. But how did America become ‘one nation, indivisible’? In this monumental history, Simon Winchester addresses this question, introducing the fearless trailblazers whose achievements forged and unified America. Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. He treks vast swaths of territory, introducing these fascinating pioneers – some, such as Washington and Jefferson, Lewis and Clark being familiar, some forgotten, some hardly known – who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States. Throughout, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree. ‘The Men Who United the States’ is a fresh, lively, and erudite look at the way in which the most powerful nation on earth came together, from one of our most entertaining, probing, and insightful observers.
The Last Highlander
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Fans of Outlander must read this Saltire Society Literary Awards Scottish First Book of the Year – a great non-fiction adventure about Scotland’s most notorious clan chief. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, was the last of the great Scottish chiefs – and the last nobleman executed for treason. Determined to seek his fortune with the exiled Jacobite king in France, Fraser acted as a spy for both the Stuarts and the Hanoverians; claimed to be both Protestant and Roman Catholic. In July 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie launched his last attempt to seize back the throne, supported by Fraser and his clans. They were defeated at Culloden. Fraser was found hiding in a tree. This swashbuckling spy story recreates an extraordinary period of history in its retelling of Fraser’s life. He is surely one of Scotland’s most notorious and romantic figures, a cunning and ambitious soldier who died a martyr for his country and an independent Scotland.
Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum
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‘Intriguing, gleefully contentious and – appropriately enough – fizzing with life, Victorians Undone is the most original history book I have read in a long while’ John Preston, Daily Mail A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians. Why did the great philosophical novelist George Eliot feel so self-conscious that her right hand was larger than her left? Exactly what made Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862, a good five years after his contemporaries had all retired their razors? Who knew Queen Victoria had a personal hygiene problem as a young woman and the crisis that followed led to a hurried commitment to marry Albert? What did John Sell Cotman, a handsome drawing room operator who painted some of the most exquisite watercolours the world has ever seen, feel about marrying a woman whose big nose made smart people snigger? How did a working-class child called Fanny Adams disintegrate into pieces in 1867 before being reassembled into a popular joke, one we still reference today, but would stop, appalled, if we knew its origins? Kathryn Hughes follows a thickened index finger or deep baritone voice into the realms of social history, medical discourse, aesthetic practise and religious observance – its language is one of admiring glances, cruel sniggers, an implacably turned back. The result is an eye-opening, deeply intelligent, groundbreaking account that brings the Victorians back to life and helps us understand how they lived their lives.
Our Land at War: A Portrait of Rural Britain 1939–45
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A rich account of the impact of the Second World War on the lives of people living in the farms and villages of Britain. On the outbreak of war, the countryside was invaded by service personnel and evacuee children by the thousand; land was taken arbitrarily for airfields, training grounds and firing ranges, and whole communities were evicted. Prisoner-of-war camps brought captured enemy soldiers to close quarters, and as horses gave way to tractors and combines farmers were burdened with aggressive new restrictions on what they could and could not grow. Land Girls and Lumber Jills worked in fields and forests. Food – or the lack of it – was a major preoccupation and rationing strictly enforced. And although rabbits were poached, apples scrumped and mushrooms gathered, there was still not enough to eat. Drawing from diaries, letters, books, official records and interviews, Duff Hart Davis revisits rural Britain to describe how ordinary people survived the war years. He tells of houses turned over to military use such as Bletchley and RAF Medmenham as well as those that became schools, notably Chatsworth in Derbyshire. Combining both hardship and farce, the book examines the profound changes war brought to Britain’s countryside: from the Home Guard, struggling with the provision of ludicrous equipment, to the role of the XII Corps Observation Unit. whose task was to enlarge rabbit warrens and badger setts into bunkers for harassing the enemy in the event of a German invasion; to the unexpected tenderness shown by many to German and Italian prisoners-of-war at work on the land. Fascinating, sad and at times hilarious, this warm-hearted book tells great stories – and casts new light on Britain during the war.
Air Force Blue: The RAF in World War Two – Spearhead of Victory
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Patrick Bishop is the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling ‘Fighter Boys’, ‘Bomber Boys’, ‘3 Para’ and ‘Ground Truth’. Previously, he was a foreign correspondent for over twenty years, reporting from conflicts all over the world.
Sons and Soldiers: The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned for Retribution
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Bruce Henderson is the author or coauthor of more than twenty nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller And The Sea Will Tell, which was made into a highly-rated TV miniseries. General Colin Powell has called the Los Ba?os raid "a textbook operation for all ages and all armies." An award-winning journalist and author, Henderson is a member of the Authors Guild and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He has taught reporting and writing courses at USC School of Journalism and Stanford University.
The Otters’ Tale
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Simon Cooper is one of the UK’s leading chalkstream conservationists. He lives and works on the English rivers, where otters are once again thriving.
Wounds: A Memoir of War and Love
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Fergal Keane OBE was born in London and educated in Ireland. He is one of the BBC's most distinguished correspondents, having worked for the corporation in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Asia and the Balkans. He has been awarded a BAFTA and has been named reporter of the year on television and radio, winning honours from the Royal Television Society and the Sony Radio Awards. He has also been named Reporter of the Year in the Amnesty International Press Awards and won the James Cameron Prize and the Edward R.Murrow Award from the US Overseas Press Association.
Postcard From The Past
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Tom Jackson started putting old postcards on Twitter in 2016. He lives in South London. @pastpostcard
Border Collie (Collins Dog Owner’s Guide)
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Writer and canine behaviourist Carol Price has owned, trained and bred Border Collies for over 15 years. She is a member of The UK Registry of Canine Behaviourists, specialising particularly in Border Collies and rescue dogs, and the author of the best-selling books Understanding the Border Collie and Understanding the Rescue Dog. She has written extensively for The Times on canine and other animal behaviour subjects, and is a regular contributor and training advisor for both of the UK’s top-selling dog magazines, Dogs Today and Your Dog.
Exotic Pets (Collins Need to Know?)
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By picking up this book, you are probably either considering keeping exotic pets, or you already have an interest in them. Not only are many of these creatures extremely beautiful to look at but they are also much simpler to look after than some of the more traditional pet mammals and birds with whom we choose to share our lives.Among the most popular pet amphibians, tree frogs are remarkably easy to look after and many species are suitable for handling by keepers.
Unlocking German with Paul Noble: Your key to language success
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Who is Paul Noble?Paul Noble is a genius, yet he still left school unable to speak a language – he found that the traditional learning methods left him feeling ‘confused, incapable and unable to really say anything’. Determined that there must be a better way to learn, Paul spent years devising his own unique method of learning languages which cuts out all of the grammar, all of the rote learning, and all of the stress. He began using his method to teach in his Language Institute and, hundreds of students later, he prides himself on never having had a student fail.
Street Boys
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The shocking, powerful true story of the lives of 7 young kids, marred by guns, gangs and violence on one of Britain’s toughest estates. ‘Eight years old. That’s when life went downhill. From eight years old nobody looked after me. I just lived on the streets and made do by myself. There was no one except me and my friends.’ Simon This is the story of 7 young boys who have one thing in common – they grew up in a London street gang. JaJa looks out of his kitchen window and sees drug dealers, pimps and whores. He ends up as a kid leading a street gang. Phat Si comes home from school one day to find his mother gone so he takes to the streets. He’s 8 years old. Ribz's mother sells crack and is sent to prison. He doesn't know who his father is but does know that his dad has an unknown number of children living on the same estate. He’s determined to find some kind of family. Street Boys tells a powerful and important true story of courage, determination and hope – of creating a family from your friends and starting again when the world seems against you.
The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean 1935–1949
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A gripping history of the Mediterranean campaigns from the first rumblings of conflict through the Second World War and into the uneasy peace of the late 1940s. The Mediterranean Sea lies at the very heart of recent world history. To the British during the Second World War, the Mediterranean was the world’s great thoroughfare. To the Americans, it represented the answer to anti-imperialism. And to Mussolini, it encapsulated his violent vision of conquest. These three great powers attempted to overthrow the existing order in the Mediterranean, resulting in a collision of allies as well as enemies that hadn’t been seen before: the Germans fought against the Italians, the Americans against the Arabs, the Jews against the British, the French against nearly everyone. The Mediterranean was indeed ‘the bitter sea’. In this masterly history, Simon Ball takes us through the tumultuous events set in motion by Mussolini’s lust for conquest that ended with the creation of Israel. Long drawn-out battles on land, sea and air – dominated by WWII’s most illustrious leaders, Churchill, Eisenhower and Rommel amongst them – resulted in Allied victory in the battle of El Alamein, the terrifying desert campaigns of Africa and the eventual defeat of Italy and then Germany. The wars in the Mediterranean had huge consequences for all those who fought in them, but none more profound than those experienced by the lands, nations and peoples that lived around the sea itself. Based on entirely original research, ‘The Bitter Sea’ is expertly written, utterly compelling and unquestionably important.
How Not to Act Old: 185 Ways to Pass for Cool, Sound, Wicked, or at Least Not To
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Pamela Redmond Satran is a contributing editor for Parenting magazine and a columnist for Baby Talk in the US. Her articles appear frequently in the New York Times and Glamour, and she is the author of five novels: The Home for Wayward Supermodels, Surbanistas, Younger, Babes in Captivity and The Man I Should Have Married. She is the author of Collins Cool Names For Babies.
Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court
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Gareth Russell was a student at Down High Grammar School in Northern Ireland before studying Modern History at Saint Peter's College at the University of Oxford. A playwright, novelist and historian, he writes the blog The Confessions of a Ci-Devant, which profiles his historical research and artistic interests. He has written for the Sunday Times, Tatler and the Irish News. He is the author of the novels ‘Popular’ and ‘The Immaculate Deception’.
Life of a Chalkstream
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This delightful book records a year in the life of an essentially English waterscape, one that is home to a vast array of wildlife and natural habitat of the keen angler – the chalkstream. Simon Cooper grew up in Hampshire, where he first fell in love with fly fishing. Only after moving away did he realise how little people knew about the secret world of the chalkstreams. Chalkstreams are nearly exclusive to England, ranging from Dorset to Yorkshire and including the famous River Test in Hampshire. Every river is special in its own right. Life of a Chalkstream is a lyrical and revealing voyage through the yearly cycle of this unique waterway. From the remarkable spectacle of salmon, sea trout and brown trout spawning in winter, to the emergence of water voles in spring and the explosion of mayflies in the early days of summer, the author evocatively describes the natural wonders of the chalkstream. He introduces us to the fascinating diversity of life that inhabits its waters and environs – the fish, the angling community, the plant life and the wildlife. We learn how neglect threatens these inhabitants and why the fight to save the chalkstreams is so vital, not only for fishermen, but for anybody who values the beauty of rural England.
The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail
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The story of Britain’s colourful maritime past seen through the changing fortunes of the Cornish port of Falmouth. Within the space of few years, during the 1560s and 1570s, a maritime revolution took place in England that would contribute more than anything to the transformation of the country from a small rebel state on the fringes of Europe into a world power. Until then, it was said, there was only one Englishman capable of sailing across the Atlantic. Yet within ten years an English ship with an English crew was circumnavigating the world. At the same time in Cornwall, in the Fal estuary, just a single building – a lime kiln – existed where the port of Falmouth would emerge. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, Falmouth would be one of the busiest harbours in the world. ‘The Levelling Sea’ uses the story of Falmouth’s spectacular rise and fall to explore wider questions about the sea and its place in history and imagination. Drawing on his own deep connection with Cornwall, award-winning author Philip Marsden writes unforgettably about the power of the sea and its ability to produce greed on a piratical scale, dizzying corruption, and grand and tragic aspirations.
Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness
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A high-octane account by a decorated major in the British Army of his high-level dealings with the Bosnian Serb leadership, of his running a ‘Schindler’s List’ operation in Sarajevo, and of his extraordinary subsequent arrest by Ministry of Defence police on suspicion of betraying secrets to the Serbs. Trusted Mole is the powerful and disturbing first-hand account of a British soldier of part Yugoslav origin painfully caught up in the savage maelstrom of the Bosnian war. Armed only with the pseudonym ‘Mike Stanley’ and an antiquated Serbo-Croat vocabulary, Milos Stankovic – an officer in the Parachute Regiment – worked as interpreter and go-between for two British brigadiers and two British UN generals, Mike Rose and Rupert Smith. His experiences plunged him deeper and deeper into Bosnia’s heart of darkness, where all human life was lived in extremis. His own Balkan heritage likewise drew him in: his Scottish grandmother had been a nurse on the Salonika front in the First World War; his father was a former Royalist Yugoslav who had fought in the Second World War; and his mother in 1945 had driven one of the first UN ambulances around Bosnia and Montenegro. In helping to negotiate ceasefires between rival warlords, securing the release of UN hostages and organising the escape from Sarajevo of stricken families, Milos Stankovic was propelled from one nerve-wracking crisis to another. Throughout he was engaged in the highly dangerous game of bridging the gap between alien Balkan and Western mentalities. His was a role for which there was no military rule-book, and in the general climate of suspicion and paranoia his close contacts with the Bosnian Serb leadership of Dr Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic caused him to be branded by the Americans and the Bosnian Muslims as a Serb spy in the UN and later as a British spy – General Rose’s ‘trusted mole’. In a final, horrific twist, the author was arrested by the British authorities on suspicion of being a Serb spy. At journey’s end, Milos Stankovic was now confronted with the awful and inescapable truth of ‘Mike Stanley’.
The Peregrine: The Hill of Summer & Diaries: The Complete Works of J. A. Baker
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Reissue of J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing Despite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles, The Peregrine is set on the flat marshes of the Essex coast, where J A Baker spent a long winter looking and writing about the visitors from the uplands – peregrines that spend the winter hunting the huge flocks of pigeons and waders that share the desolate landscape with them. Including original diaries from which The Peregrine was written and its companion volume The Hill of Summer, this is a beautiful compendium of lyrical nature writing at its absolute best. Such luminaries as Richard Mabey, Robert Macfarlane, Ted Hughes and Andrew Motion have cited this as one of the most important books in 20th Century nature writing, and the bestselling author Mark Cocker has provided an introduction on the importance of Baker, his writings and the diaries – creating the essential volume of Baker's writings. Since the hardback was published in 2010, papers, maps, and letters have come to light which in turn provide a little more background into J A Baker’s history. Contemporaries – particularly from while he was at school in Chelmsford – have kindly provided insights, remembering a school friend who clearly made an impact on his generation. In the longer term, there is hope of an archive of these papers being established, but in the meantime, and with the arrival of this paperback edition, there is a chance to reveal a little more of what has been learned. Among fragments of letters to Baker was one from a reader who praised a piece that Baker had written in RSPB Birds magazine in 1971. Apart from a paper on peregrines which Baker wrote for the Essex Bird Report, this article – entitled On the Essex Coast – appears to be his only other published piece of writing, and, with the kind agreement of the RSPB, it has been included in this updated new paperback edition of Baker’s astounding work.
Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons
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Leading archaeologist Francis Pryor retells the story of King Arthur, legendary king of the Britons, tracing it back to its Bronze Age origins. The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is one of the most enduring in Britain's history, spanning centuries and surviving invasions by Angles, Vikings and Normans. In his latest book Francis Pryor – one of Britain’s most celebrated archaeologists and author of the acclaimed ‘Britain B.C.’ and ‘Seahenge’ – traces the story of Arthur back to its ancient origins. Putting forth the compelling idea that most of the key elements of the Arthurian legends are deeply rooted in Bronze and Iron Ages (the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Sword in the Stone and so on), Pryor argues that the legends' survival mirrors a flourishing, indigenous culture that endured through the Roman occupation of Britain, and the subsequent invasions of the so-called Dark Ages. As in ‘Britain B.C.’, Pryor roots his story in the very landscape, from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, to South Cadbury Castle in Somerset and Tintagel in Cornwall. He traces the story back to the 5th-century King Arthur and beyond, all the time testing his ideas with archaeological evidence, and showing how the story was manipulated through the ages for various historical and literary purposes, by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory, among others. Delving into history, literary sources – ancient, medieval and romantic – and archaeological research, Francis Pryor creates an original, lively and illuminating account of this most British of legends.
