Biography: historical, political & military

As the fate of the world is decided, so too is that of the British, Dutch and French empires. In India a generation committed to independence must decide whether to support 'the Raj' or fight alongside the Japanese. One military family is bitterly divided. Will it be the brother who fights under ...

This is the extraordinary - and never before told - story of Alastair Cram, the British soldier who escaped from prisoner-of-war camps not once but more than twenty times. `The greatest serial escaper of the Second World War' The Times 'Endlessly fascinating. Cram's story sizzles with adventure' ...

A vivid first-hand account of a SOE agent's missions in Nazi occupied France. John Goldsmith's wartime exploits are all the more remarkable considering that at first his services were consistently refused due to his being over 30. Not easily deterred he eventually became a tank driving instructor...

Richard Abels examines the long and troubled reign of Aethelred II the 'Unraed', the 'Ill-Advised'. It is characteristic of Aethelred's reign that its greatest surviving work of literature, the poem The Battle of Maldon, should be a record of heroic defeat. Perhaps no ruler could have stemmed the...

On 27 January 1945, Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz by Russian soldiers. At that point not only did his journey home start, but also his long quest to find out what had happened to his wife Edith, his daughters Margot and Anne, and the four other people with whom he had been in hiding wit...

In the quiet Cotswolds village of Great Rollright in 1942, a thin, and unusually elegant, housewife emerged from her cottage to go on her usual bike ride. A devoted mother-of-three, attentive wife and friendly neighbour, Sonya Burton seemed to epitomise rural British domesticity. However, rather ...

It's November 1974 and John Stonehouse MP, once a star in Harold Wilson's Labour government, is missing in Miami, presumed drowned. His disappearance exposes the most lurid details of his life, including identity fraud, corporate corruption, a love triangle, blackmail, links with the Mafia and a ...

A riveting biography of Alexander the Great's final years, when the leader's insatiable desire to conquer the world set him off on an exhilarating, harrowing journey that would define his legacy.

The lives of the Romanovs were full of colour and drama, but the woman at the heart of the family, the beautiful Tsarina Alexandra, has remained an enigma. Here, the author creates a detailed psychological profile of Alexandra and her family. The lives and deaths of the Romanov family are redolen...

Details the life of Great Britain's Princess Alice, who married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903, a union that plunged her into a life of turmoil, fraught with war, exile, and execution.