From humble beginnings as slaves in Egypt, the Mamluks trained as soldiers and rose in status to seize control of the largest empire in Islam. They ruled over Egypt and Syria for …
‘Old John of Gaunt, time-honour’d Lancaster’ John of Gaunt (1340–1399) was the son of one king and the father of another. He claimed a Spanish kingdom via his wife, daughter of …
New paperback edition - The first ever comprehensive history of the queens, princesses and ladies of the Tudor family. Always more than mere foils of men, these Tudor women are …
In 1445 a fifteen-year-old French girl left her homeland to marry the son of the great warrior Henry V. Sixteen years later, her husband had lost his throne and she had fled into …
This is an in-depth re-assessment of the life of Magnus Maximus, Roman Emperor ruling in the west from 383 to 388, drawn from Classical sources and archaeology, which provides a …
The soldiers of the First World War left a little-known legacy in forgotten caves along the Western Front: thousands of inscriptions and wall carvings that tell stories of courage, …
The Highland Clearances was a dark episode in Scottish history when many thousands of people were forced off lands that they and their kin had lived on for generations. Some …
According to legend, Rome was a settlement of warlike young men, from Alba, an area in the Alban Hills just southeast of Rome. When they settled there, they inaugurated the …
In late eighteenth-century Yorkshire a powerful gang of counterfeiters held the local community in its spell. In a remote valley near Halifax called Cragg Vale, gold coins of the …
When Lenin and the Bolsheviks shut down the Constituent Assembly after only one session, it was said to mark the end of Russia’s one-day experiment with democracy. However, with …
