Social and cultural history

The Second World War was, for Britain, a 'total war'; no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy.

The seventeen months from April 1814 to August 1815 were an extraordinary period in European history; a period which saw two sieges of Paris, a complete revision of Europe's political frontiers, an international Congress set up in Vienna, civil war in Italy and international war in Belgium.

Get out in your garden and discover the history hidden in the hedges.

Jonothan Green offers a time trip from lat-fifties CND, beatniks and bop to the threshold of our own decade's designer revolutionaries and style warriors.

For much of the world, Iran's 2009 summer of upheaval was an epic piece of theatre distantly observed.

Recycling, buying locally-sourced food and vintage clothing, checking air miles and carbon footprints - our ever-growing obsessions with saving money and preserving the planet is beginning to affect the way many of us shop, travel and eat every day.

A TRUE STORY OF LIES, BEAUTY AND BLACKMAIL IN VICTORIAN LONDON_________________________Madame Rachel had everything.

This unique and brilliant book is a history of human knowledge.

The Myth of the Blitz was nurtured at every level of society.

What in the world has the power to liberate women in Iran while provoking antagonism between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland, to lure Nigerians to the cold of the Ukraine while heating up class warfare in the US heartlands, and both profit local gangsters and create local - and international - celebrities?

Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman PrizeWinner of the Longman History Today Trustees' AwardLonglisted for the Orwell PrizeUnflinching and revealing, Black and British is a vital history that reveals how black British lives have been woven into the fabric of the nation for centuries - from Roman Britain to the Black Lives Matter protests.

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.

Most studies of ancient Greek politics focus on formal institutions such as the political assembly and the law courts, and overlook the role that informal social practices played in the regulation of the political order.

In Truevine, Virginia, in 1899 everyone the Muse brothers knew was either a former slave, or a child or grandchild of slaves.

Walls Come Tumbling Down charts the pivotal period between 1976 and 1992 that saw politics and pop music come together for the first time in Britain's musical history; musicians and their fans suddenly became instigators of social change, and 'the political persuasion of musicians was as important as the songs they sang'.

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived.

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived.

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived.

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived.

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived.

Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived.

'Enchanting, often moving and sometimes hilarious' Daily MailFull of wit, hilarity, acute observation and a deeply held sense of duty, the Queen Mother's letters give readers a vivid insight into the person behind the public face.

'Enchanting, often moving and sometimes hilarious' -Daily MailFull of wit, hilarity, acute observation and a deeply held sense of duty, the Queen Mother's letters give readers a vivid insight into the person behind the public face.

'Enchanting, often moving and sometimes hilarious' - Daily MailFull of wit, hilarity, acute observation and a deeply held sense of duty, the Queen Mother's letters give readers a vivid insight into the person behind the public face.

'Enchanting, often moving and sometimes hilarious' - Daily MailFull of wit, hilarity, acute observation and a deeply held sense of duty, the Queen Mother's letters give readers a vivid insight into the person behind the public face.

As read on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Clive James tackles burning issues and shining personalities, from Barry Humphries to Barry Manilow and Michael Jackson to Michael Foot, in Snakecharmers in Texas - his fourth collection of essays, originally written between 1980 and 1987.

A heartbreaking and moving true story of two sisters separated at birth, and their journey towards finding each other, celebrating the true meaning of family.

In Victorian London, the age of consent was just thirteen.

The third book in V.

From the fierce and funny Clive James, this is Britain in the twenty-first century - from wheelie bins to plastic surgery, and from Britain's Got Talent to contemporary art.

Like their modern counterparts, the 'first ladies' of Rome were moulded to meet the political requirements of their emperors, be they fathers, husbands, brothers or lovers.

Littlejohn s large-hearted nostalgia and aggression tempered with humour, remain a necessary tonic.

A crime scene.

When this book begins, in the reign of Edward VII, Great Britain commands the mightiest empire the world has ever seen.

People, not abstract ideas, make history, and nowhere is this more revealed than in A.

Just across the River Thames from St Paul s Cathedral stands an old and elegant house.

'Cities cover just 2% of the world s surface, but consume 75% of the world s resources .

This is a book about football.

The seventeenth-century London Wenceslaus Hollar knew is now largely destroyed or buried.

In 1939 London was not merely the greatest city in the world, it was the most tempting and vulnerable target for aerial attack.

Meena founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan in 1977 as a twenty-year-old Kabul University student.

This illuminating biography of Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-75) unravels fully the famous Cornish parson-poet's rich personality.

In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief:a new religion.

Winner of the Jewish Chronicle Harold H.

In late eighteenth-century Britain a handful of men brought about the greatest transformation in human history.

Jerry White's London in the Nineteenth Century is the richest and most absorbing account of the city's greatest century by its leading expert.

By following a group of four contemporary girls - including her younger self - as they come of age in the seventies, Wolf shows how our culture tries to shape and confine women's desire.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JAMES FENTONSubtitled 'An education in the twenties', this work blends autobiography and fiction to describe the inner life of a writer evolving from precocious public school boy to Cambridge drop-out at large in London s Bohemia.