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The fifteenth century was a turbulent age: the Hundred Years War between England and France, and the Wars of the Roses dominated the lives of people both inside and out of the royal courts. Joan of Navarre, Katherine of Valois, Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Wydeville and Anne Neville were the queens who stood by England's sovereigns, caught up in wars that changed the course of their lives, and the course of history. They were also formidable women who defied the limitations of their times, often living out the brutal consequences of their determination.

In 1940, Private Raymond Bailey, a 21-year-old Vauxhall motors apprentice, was captured in northern France, becoming a Nazi prisoner of war. But he wouldn't remain one for long... The Longest Walk Home is the incredible account of his daring 2,000 mile escape across Europe and over the Pyrenees, to the safety of British Gibraltar, and home in time for Christmas. Along the way Ray has nerve-shredding encounters with German soldiers and the Spanish Civil Guard. Often he is exhausted and starving.

Colm Tóibín's Lady Gregory's Toothbrush is a beautiful insight into the life of outspoken Irishwoman, Augusta Gregory. A remarkable figure in Celtic history, she was married to an MP and land-owner, yet retained an unprecedented independence of both thought and deed, actively championing causes close to her heart. At once conservative and radical in her beliefs, she saw no conflict in idealizing and mythologizing the Irish peasantry, for example, while her landlord husband introduced legislation that would, in part, lead to the widespread misery, poverty and starvation of the Great Famine.

Confronting Evil by Bill O'Reilly and Josh Hammer recounts the deeds of the worst people in history: Genghis Khan. The Roman Emperor Caligula. Henry VIII. The collective evil of the 19th century slave traders and the 20th century robber barons. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Putin. The Mexican drug cartels. Collectively, these warlords, tyrants, businessmen, and criminals are directly responsible for the death and misery of hundreds of millions of people.

Caught on the wrong side of an English civil war and condemned by his father to the gallows at age five, William Marshal defied all odds to become one of England’s most celebrated knights. Thomas Asbridge’s rousing narrative chronicles William’s rise, using his life as a prism to view the origins, experiences, and influence of the knight in British history.

As much a sweeping story about lost worlds as it is a philosophical inquiry, Indignity shows what it is like to make choices against the tide of history. Through reports of communist spies, court depositions, anecdotes and characters that live on in Ypi’s memory, we move between “now” and ”then”, fact and fiction, what we learn from archives and what we can imagine, to reckon with the injustices of the past. By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity is a meditation on the fragility of truth, both personal and political.

In March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, lies dying at Richmond Palace. The queen's ministers cluster round her bedside, urging her to name her successor—something she had stubbornly resisted throughout her reign. She dies shortly afterwards and the throne of England passes peacefully from Tudor to Stuart. Or so we've been led to believe... But, as enthralling new research shows, this is not what happened. In the weeks and months that followed, history was literally re-written on the orders of James VI to hide the truth.

In 1894, a remarkably self-possessed American woman, with no formal education to speak of, stood before a British court seeking damages for libel from the trustees of the British Museum. It was yet another stop along the unpredictable route that was Victoria Woodhull’s life. Born dirt-poor in an obscure Ohio settlement, Woodhull was the daughter of an illiterate mother entranced by the fad of Mesmerism—a therapeutic pseudoscience—and a swindler father whose cons exploited his two daughters.

Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle were thrown together by the challenges of war. They incarnated the resistance of Britain and France to the existential threat from Nazi Germany, and their ultimate victory over Hitler has ensured their achievements will never be forgotten. But, as The Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle shows, that is only a small part of a complex story. Both men influenced their countries, and the world around them, long after the war was won.

Prize-winning historian Helen Castor delivers a compelling, eye-opening examination of women and power in England, witnessed through the lives of six women who exercised power against all odds—and one who never got the chance.

Alexander the Great changed the world that he knew—but how he did it, and how much of his story is truth and how much is invented, is hard to tell. One of our most important sources for his achievements and personality is Plutarch's Life of Alexander, and this is the first detailed commentary on it for over fifty years, along with a thorough introduction and translation. It is a sister volume to the author's 2011 edition (also in the Clarendon Ancient History Series) of Plutarch's Caesar, the Life paired with Alexander in Plutarch's series of Parallel Lives.

Arguably the most intellectual, creative, cosmopolitan, and curious of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is the only top-tier Founder not to have served as president. Despite not becoming the Chief Executive, Franklin played an active role in American politics and served the aspiring and young United States in the key European capitals. His prodigious reading and appetite for learning are epic. As he did in works about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Kevin J. Hayes interprets the life and mind of Franklin through what he read.

Richard III is one of the most mysterious figures in English history, and as such is the source of perennial fascination. Comparatively little is known of his early life, his appearance, his interests, for up to 1483 he played second fiddle to his more glorious older brothers, Edward 'this sun of York', and the feckless Clarence. This new edition of a classic royal biography includes an account of the discovery of Richard’s remains in a Leicester car park in September 2012 and what his skeleton revealed about the physical condition of the last Plantagenet and the manner of his death.

One of Rome's most powerful women, Clodia has been maligned over two thousand years as a promiscuous, husband-murdering harlot, thanks to her starring role in one of Cicero's most famous speeches in the Forum. But Cicero was lying, in defense of his own interests. Like so many women libeled or erased from history, Clodia had a life that was much more interesting, complex, and nuanced than the corrupted version passed down through generations.

In eighteenth-century Britain, Edmund Burke and Charles Fox made common political cause for twenty-five years. They supported the rebellious American colonies, attacked the British slave trade, defended religious liberty, and attempted to shield Britain's public credit from the crisis-prone East India Company. The two men did not share social position, a way of life, a political legacy, or even a generation—but improbably, they were friends.

By any measure, Julius Caesar is one of the most significant and well-known figures in ancient Roman history. Self-identified as a "popular" politician, he advocated for effective government to better the lives of the average Roman; however, he believed this government could not be based upon the existing democracy, which he regarded as corrupt and inefficient. It could only be through his personal management and the massive organization he built to overthrow the government that he could ensure the prosperity of all Romans.

Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844) was one of the most successful and controversial religious leaders of nineteenth-century America, publishing the Book of Mormon and starting what would become the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He built temples, founded a city-state in Illinois, ran for president, and married more than thirty women. This self-made prophet thrilled his followers with his grand vision of peace and unity, but his increasingly grandiose plans tested and sometimes shattered their faith.

From the moment John Brown arrived as a servant to Queen Victoria's household, he became known across the land as her loyal companion, her fierce protector, and her right-hand man, their friendship immortalised in print and later on-screen. But what if there was more to their relationship than we know? And what has history been hiding from us? In this provocative exploration of Victoria's emotional world, and her passionate midlife, the acclaimed historian Fern Riddell re-examines everything we thought we knew about one of Britain's most iconic women.

After I'd got him out of harm's way, I dived back in yet again and swam out past the surf-break, out to where the other two lads were floundering. Then, one at a time, I took them back onto the rocks – all done against the raging rip and wild surf. By then an hour or so had passed. Still, severe cuts, bruises and abrasions aside, I'd successfully saved the lives of the four young people who, in all probability, would've otherwise drowned.

Plutarch's Life of Caesar deals with the best known Roman of them all, Julius Caesar, and his vivid narrative covers most of the major events of the last generation of the Republic, as well as painting an insightful picture of this man who sacrificed everything for power. Pelling's volume gives a new translation of the Life together with a full introduction and running commentary on the events it describes.