Features a story of saints and spies, of fishermen and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know.

For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world's most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business. This book tells the history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is also a case history of how the world works.

The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. This title describes the selection process for colonial officers, the importance of sport, the sweating domestic life of the colonial officer's wife and the crazed end for General Gordon of Khartoum.

Within twenty years of victory in the Second World War Britain had ceased to be a world power and her global empire has dissolved into fragments. With what now seems astonishing rapidity, and empire three centuries old, which had reached its greatest extent as late as 1921, was transformed into more than fifty sovereign states.

Villages have held a sway over our collective imaginations for well over a millennia. But how well do we really know these bastions of Britishness?

Villages have held a sway over our collective imaginations for well over a millennia. But how well do we really know these bastions of Britishness?

Detailed examination of Southampton's trade with its extensive region and commercial development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Seventeen papers investigate Southampton's interaction with Salisbury, London, Winchester, and many other places, long-term trends and short-term fluctuations.

An introduction to the architectural development, the social significance and, in the last century, the dramatic fall and rise of the English railway station.

Throughout their evolutionary history, humans have affected the natural environment, sometimes with a promise of sustainable balance, but also in a destructive manner. This book investigates the ways in which environmental changes, often the result of human actions, have caused historical trends in human societies.

Part historical treasure trove and part contemporary reflection, Exotic England is also a surprising love letter to the country from one of its most outspoken and insightful migrants

Current approaches to the archaeological understanding of permanence and transience in the early modern period,

Taking his title from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Sven Lindqvist traces Europe's dark history in Africa in the form of a travel diary and a historical examination of European imperialism and racism over the past two centuries.

What was it like to be caught in the firestorm that destroyed Pompeii? To have dinner with Attila the Hun? To watch the charge of the Light Brigade? To see the Titanic slide beneath the waves? This title offers an account from memoirs, travel books and newspapers.

Was there ever such a beast as the monstrous Kraken? Did a Welsh prince discover America, centuries before Columbus? What happened to the missing crew of the Mary Celeste? This title deals with these questions.