Though he couldn't have known it, the various scholars and scientists that Napoleon Bonaparte brought to Egypt during his military campaigning there kicked off modern Egyptology, and a general fascination across the West. Until about 200 years ago, the writing of the ancient Egyptians was an enigma to the world, but that changed when an ancient Egy...

The Peaky Blinders as we know them, thanks to the hit TV series, are infused with drama and dread. Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family have become cult anti-heroes.Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, revealed the true story of the notorious gang in his bestselling Peaky Blinders: Th...

A unique account of the millions of colonial troops who fought in the First World War. Every major battle fought on the Western Front, from the First Battle of Ypres to the Second Battle of the Marne, was fought by Allied armies that were multi-racial and multi-ethnic. Yet from the moment the guns fell silent the role of non-white soldiers was forg...

It should have been a beautiful moment between a man and his dog. Philip Womack made a quip about Cerberus, the three-headed hell-hound, but for Una, the beloved lurcher, it was all Greek. Then she ran off after a squirrel. And Womack was left to wonder what else she didn't know about the great civilisations of the past. The Greeks and the Romans l...

The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe – these determined women often broke through medieval cons...

This is the astonishing story of persistence, comradeship and fighting spirit showed by everyday people in bringing the Nazis down. Patricia and Jean Owtram are possibly the only living sisters to have signed the wartime Official Secrets Act. Raised in a Lancashire country house in the 1920s, the family takes in two Austrian Jewish refugees, and th...

In a brilliantly entertaining, living history of the modern United Kingdom, Andrew Marr traces how radically we have transformed through the course of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. When the Queen stepped into her crown in 1953 at the age of twenty-five, a British expedition was summiting Mount Everest for the first time. Ian Fleming was publishing th...

Gifted storyteller Winston Groom, the bestselling author of Forrest Gump, has written the fascinating story of three extraordinary heroes who defined aviation during the great age of flight: Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Jimmy Doolittle. These cleverly interwoven tales of their heart-stopping adventures take us from the feats of W...

Spitfire Stories, published in association with Imperial War Museums, is a fascinating anthology of first-hand stories from Spitfire heroes and heroines of the Second World War.The Spitfire is the world's most iconic aeroplane. Coming into its own during the Battle of Britain, it became famous during the Second World War as the only plane that coul...

This National Book Award winner by Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough shows how sickly "Teedie" becomes the robust, energetic Teddy Roosevelt. Born in 1858, Teddy finds his priviledged Manhattan family isn't immune to pain and sorrow. Potts disease disables his older sister, and epilepsy haunts his brother. Crippled by deadly asthma, Teddy soon...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Leadership written and read by Doris Kearns Goodwin, with additional narration from Beau Bridges, David Morse, Jay O. Sanders and Richard Thomas. Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make t...

A wonderful, epic story that tells the history of the greatest city in the world, from Roman times to the present day. From the author of Paris, Sarum and New York. London has perhaps the most remarkable history of any city in the world. Now its story has a unique voice. In this epic novel, Edward Rutherfurd takes the listener on a magnificent jour...

Down through the centuries, the castles of Dover, Deal and Walmer have been of prime strategic importance to England, protecting the south-east tip of the country from invasion. This is an account of their national importance and includes fascinating stories of historical characters associated with them, from Henry VIII through to the late Queen El...

When we think of great events in the history of the world, we tend to think of war, revolution, political upheaval or natural catastrophe. But throughtout history there have been moments of vital importance that have taken place not on the battlefield, but between the pages of a book. Here Melvyn Bragg explores a wide and controversial selection of...

This audiobook is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence. With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova...

At midnight on 15 August 1947, India left the British Empire. This defining moment of world history had been brought about by a handful of people: Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery Indian prime minister, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the new nation of Pakistan, Mohandas Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation, and Louis and Edwina Mountbatt...

The Apollo moon programme has been called the last optimistic act of the twentieth century. Over a strange three-year period between 1969 and 1972, twelve men made the longest and most eccentric of all journeys and all were indelibly marked by it. In this audiobook, Andrew Smith sets out to find and interview the remaining moonwalkers in order to l...

Wentworth House in Yorkshire is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain and belonged to the Fitzwilliam family. It is England's forgotten palace which belonged to Britain's richest aristocrats. This audiobook tells the story of its demise: family feuds, forbidden love, class war, and a tragic and violent death played their part. But coal,...

One of the great classics on democracy, this audiobook was first published in England in 1791 as a vindication of the French Revolution and a critique of the British system of government. In direct, forceful prose, Paine defends popular rights, national independence, revolutionary war, and economic growth - all considered dangerous and even seditio...

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

In the wake of its 30th birthday celebrations in 2006, BBC Radio Ulster marked the beginning of a new broadcasting era by embarking on the station's most ambitious project to date, the recounting of the history of Ireland! For easy digestion, and across the course of a year, the story of the island is told in a series of 240 short documentaries - s...