'The best of these Darwins is that they are cut out of rock - three taps is enough to convince one how immense is their solidarity.' So wrote Virginia Woolf affectionately of Gwen Raverat, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin. In this first full biography, Frances Spalding looks beyond the artist Gwen Raverat's childhood memoir;

A history of the Habsburg monarchy from the end of the Holy Roman Empire to the monarchy's dissolution in 1918. It offers an insight into the problems inherent in the attempt to give peace, stability and common loyalty to a heterogeneous population.

This introductory text relates events in the Hapsburg empire to broader European trends. It includes material on the social and economic aspects of the empire, as well as providing a political account.

"In this assiduously researched and tightly argued volume, Baptist gives us what is by far the finest account of the deep interplay of the slave trade (especially within the nation's borders) and the development of the U.S. economy."-Bloomberg View, Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2014

Moving from the Middle-Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s, to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, this book tells the story of two German men whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an unusual way.

George I and his son, George II, continued to spend much time in Germany, insisting on the interests of Hanover influencing on British foreign policy. This work, in a series of personal portraits, shows how these kings, though constitutional monarchs, continued to exert considerable influence, crystallising politics and society.

Gerard Magliocca'sThe Heart of the Constitution is the untold story of the most celebrated part of the Constitution. Until the twentieth century, few Americans called the first ten amendments the Bill of Rights. When they did after 1900, the Bill of Rights was usually invoked to increase rather than limit federal authority.

A piano attachment for camp concerts is just one of the absurd inventions to be found in this book of cartoons designed to keep spirits up during the Second World War. These intricate comic drawings poke gentle fun at both the instruments of war and the indignity of the air-raid shelter in Heath Robinson's inimitable style.

Tells the story of the rise of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The author evokes every aspect of the 'great adventure', ranging from ships and botanical gardens to hill stations and sugar plantations, as she traces the impact of empire on places as diverse as Sierra Leone and Fiji.

The Hell-Fire Clubs scandalized eighteenth-century English society. This book explores the social and economic context in which the clubs emerged and flourished; their various phases, which first involved violence as an assertion of masculinity, then religious blasphemy, and later sexual indulgence.

The first book to tell the remarkable story of Oxford University's hedonistic Hypocrites Club and its (in)famous members

Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize: "[A] commanding and important book."-Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

The Past has become a national obsession, spawning innumerable heritage organisations and occupying hours of TV time. How and when did this passion for the past become a collective fixation? This title traces the rise of heritage consciousness over the years since its origins in the writings of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century antiquarians.

From the author of 'The Pike' - winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction - a compelling story of heroism told through eight famous lives that span from Achilles to Sir Francis Drake.

A startling, revelatory history of Rudolf Hess's 1941 flight to Scotland, containing new evidence of his aims, and of official British suppression of them.

A startling, revelatory history of Rudolf Hess's 1941 flight to Scotland, containing new evidence of his aims, and of official British suppression of them.

This is an accessible history of the Central Intelligence Agency that takes the reader from its early days of intelligence gathering and analysis to its more recent execution of foreign policy by covert operations.