At the beginning of 1864, the Civil War was far from won; terrible and bloody Union setbacks and casualties lay ahead. Abraham Lincoln was facing a re-election battle as some northern Democrats were ready to start peace talks that could leave the Confederacy a separate slaveholding American nation and as his secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Cha...

A special audiobook of interviews featuring some famous names in the world of Shakespeare performance. Discussing their experience of Shakespeare at school and how they have been inspired to pursue careers that involve his work, this is a lovely resource for students who struggle with the Bard's works.

Pat Conroy's father, Donald Patrick Conroy, was a towering figure in his son's life. The Marine Corps fighter pilot was often brutal, cruel, and violent; as Pat says, "I hated my father long before I knew there was an English word for 'hate.'" As the oldest of seven children who were dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat...

Michael Goldfarb looks back to the Europe of the 1930s and asks how artists, writers and film-makers responded to the poverty, mass unemployment and poltical instability of the Great Depression. Through the work of Bertolt Brecht, George Orwell, Jean Renoir and others, Michael charts the devastating impact of the slump as economic crisis impoverish...

1920s America was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered and seduced: jazz, flappers, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene flourishing under prohibition, punctuated by momentous events such as the political show trials and the huge Ku Klux Klan march. It also produced a splendid array of writers, musicians...

London's East End in the 1950s was a vibrant place-a closeknit community of families where children made playgrounds on bombsites and a lively social scene emerged. It was into this world that Jennifer Worth entered as a young midwife. Post-war life could be a stuggle, but there was also warmth and humour. Farewell to the East End chronicles the li...

Were things really better in the good old days? Only if you were healthy, wealthy and male. For most, life in London was one of grinding poverty, binge drinking, prostitution and gun crime. The 19th century was a time of growing awareness of the existence of an impoverished underclass - a terrifying demi-monde of criminals, tarts and no-hope low-li...

At the end of the Second World War, some of the highest ranking Nazis escaped from justice, Aided and abetted by the Vatican, they travelled down secret 'rat lines' and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. Vengeful Holocaust survivors and inept politicains attempted to bring them to justice and there were daring plots to kidnap or assass...

When Alan left school at fifteen little was expected of him. An 'O' level in art is not the most obvious passport to success, but in the ancient greenhouses of the local nursery, Mrs T's little lad found his spiritual home, learning his trade and the strange ways of human nature. But the comfort and familiarity of his home in the Yorkshire Dales wo...

In the insightful narrative tradition of Oliver Sacks, Monkey Mind is an uplifting, smart, and very funny memoir of life with anxiety-America's most common psychological complaint. We all think we know what being anxious feels like-it is the instinct that made us run from wolves in the prehistoric age and pushes us to perform in the modern one-but...

A guided tour of Roman Britain with historian Guy de la B‚doyŠre, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar invaded Britain, which was then on the edge of the known world. But he was unable to conquer it. Where Caesar failed the Emperor Claudius, in AD 43, succeeded and the mighty Roman Empire came to stretch from Cairo to Carli...

In today's Britain, more and more people spend longer at an office than ever before. It dominates lives. It's made more people middle class, transformed the lot of women, raised standards in education and been the reason for many technological advances. But the office itself seems to have no history and people accept without question the way they w...

The patent system in the USA is so distorted it's now more lucrative for companies known as 'patent trolls' to sue manufacturers rather than actually make anything. The problems so serious that President Obama has got involved - and British companies are targeted if they do business in the US. Rory Cellan-Jones investigates and finds one of the wor...

Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth-century's blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. Shir...

Leslie Maitland is an award-winning former New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where, as Jews, they spent four years as refugees-the last two under risk of Nazi deportation. In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed the harbours. Then, barred f...

In July 1957, the press descended in droves on Eastbourne. An inquest had just been opened into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs Bobbie Hullett. She died after months of apparent barbiturate abuse - drugs prescribed by Dr John Bodkin Adams. The inquest brought to the surface years of whispered suspicion that had swept throu...

In the dust and blazing heat of Helmand, the young men of 16 Air Assault Brigade find themselves in the most relentless battles faced by British troops in recent history. As the only writer to have unrestricted access to the front line, Sam Kiley is there to bear witness to the most intense challenges of their lives. Desperate Glory is an unflinchi...

Jane Rochford was sister-in-law to Anne Boleyn and Lady of the Bedchambers to Catherine Howard, who she followed to the scaffold in 1542. Hers is a life of extraordinary drama as a witness to and participant in the greatest events of Henry VIII's reign. Her supposed part in both Anne Boleyn's and Catherine Howard's downfall has led to her being rev...

This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature and his ambition to become a writer. At the heart of the book is an unembarrassed homage by a loving son to a woman who protected him and his sisters from his father's unpredictable moods. His memory of walks...

It's the Second World War and the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridge's teem with those determined not to allow Hitler to impact on their way of life. Spies: Meet Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster, the woman from M15 who has the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas. Royals: Meet Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, born in a suite at Clarid...

A bestselling novelist since 1921, Georgette Heyer is known across the world for her historical romances set in Regency England. Millions of readers love the outrageous lifestyle, fashion and capricious escapades of the elegant bon ton, and no one has captured that world better than Georgette Heyer, with universally beloved novels such as Regency B...