History

The Twitnam Summer: Friendship, Satire and the Writing of Gulliver’s Travels

‘A rollicking, brilliant book’ GARETH RUSSELL, author of Queen James

‘A very fine piece of biographical work, erudite but accessible’ JOHN STUBBS, author of Jonathan Swift

A rollicking narrative history set during the extraordinary summer of 1726 when Jonathan Swift arrived in London from Dublin, with a draft of Gulliver’s Travels in his bag.

The Spy in the Archive: How one man tried to kill the KGB

LONGLISTED for the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2026

The compulsively readable new book from The Rest is Classified host Gordon Corera. About how one man – Vasili Mitrokhin – turned first disaffected dissident and then traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet archives and smuggling them to the West.

I, Vera: The Many Lives of Vera Gedroits, a Radical Princess

‘Vera Gedroits was a true medical heroine: outrageous, intrepid and devoted to saving lives. Miranda Seymour’s genius as a story teller brings this astonishing woman blazing back to life. I shall never forget her’ LADY ANTONIA FRASER

‘Miranda Seymour has written a wonderful and unputdownable book about an astonishing woman’ MEL GIEDROYC

Forgotten Forests: Twelve Thousand Years of British and Irish Woodlands

Ancient trees, some over a thousand years old, are dotted around the British Isles, the last survivors of a lost world. Now, new scientific studies of these trees and of fossilised forests and of our oldest wooden artifacts can help us to understand the many woodlands that have disappeared from our landscapes.

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER

A Book of the Year in The Times and Financial Times

‘This isn’t a book; it’s a case for revolution’ CAMILLA LONG, SUNDAY TIMES

‘A damning cannonball of truth through the York ramparts’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘Surely has a claim to the title of book of the year, for its seismic impact’ JANINE GIBSON, FINANCIAL TIMES

Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent

This is the simplest tale in the world. Two people meet and fall in love. But the route which brought Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell to a backstreet Venetian restaurant in 1962 was anything but straightforward.

Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global

*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, PROSPECT AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025*

‘The fascinating story of ancient words … new revelations await’ The Guardian

‘A magisterial feat’ New Scientist

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Sword: D-Day – Trial by Battle

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A Times and Waterstones Book of the Year

‘The messy, dirty, bloody reality of Operation Overlord comes alive in Sword, Hastings’s portrait of the individual soldiers who risked their lives on the beaches of Normandy. He brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose’ THE TIMES

Afloat: Small Boats, Swell and Seaspray

‘Prose that is precise and beautiful as northern light … this book is an absolute delight’ MOYA CANNON

Join David Gange on a seabound journey along Atlantic coasts and islands, exploring places and ways of life that have been built on small rowed or paddled boats.

Kafkaesque: Ten Great Writers Translate the Twentieth Century

‘A book to underline endlessly, to carry around until battered, and then to tell all your friends to buy because you’re too reluctant to give up your own copy. A wonder’ Polly Barton

‘Brings a welcome freshness of vision and a dashing style … provocative and illuminating’ The Spectator

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Lifeboat at the End of the World: A Volunteer’s Story

‘Unflinchingly candid and extraordinarily powerful’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘Dominic Gregory hasn’t just delivered a survey of courage and determination – Lifeboat at the End of the World is a hymn to human decency, and that makes it a very timely book indeed’ TIM WINTON

Do you really think all lives are worth saving?

After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order

‘The twenty-first century’s counterpart to Hobbes’s Leviathan.’ EMMANUELE COCCIA

What has happened to the nation-state? From a prizewinning writer, After Nations offers a sweeping history of this most unquestioned of modern structures and a bold speculation about its future.

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