20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000
Showing all 15 results
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A history of the Netherlands
£24.99A history of the Netherlands
This work offers a modern, integrated outline of Dutch history, from the period in which the country took shape as a geographical, administrative and political entity, and undermines the presumption since the 16th century it has been characterised by political consensus and religious toleration. Domestic and foreign politics take pride of place, interwoven with the broad lines of economic and cultural developments, as Friso Wielenga uses the Netherlands’ geographical location and its international relations to better understand its sometimes tumultuous past and present.
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A short history of the Weimar Republic
£14.99A short history of the Weimar Republic
It is impossible to understand the history of modern Europe without some knowledge of the Weimar Republic. The brief 14-year period of democracy between the Treaty of Versailles and the advent of the Third Reich was marked by unstable government, economic crisis and hyperinflation and the rise of extremist political movements. At the same time, however, a vibrant cultural scene flourished, which continues to influence the international art world through the aesthetics of Expressionism and the Bauhaus movement.
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Blood on the snow
£30.00Blood on the snow
The great historian of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russia returns with an enthralling revisionist history of the Russian Revolution.
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Comet madness
£21.99Comet madness
In Comet Madness, author and historian Richard J. Goodrich examines the 1910 appearance of Halley’s Comet and the ensuing frenzy sparked by media manipulation, bogus science, and outright deception. The result is a fascinating and illuminating narrative history that underscores how we behave in the face of potential calamity – then and now.
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Flatlands
£9.99Flatlands
Freda is a twelve-year-old evacuee from East London, who has been sent away at the start of the war, leaving behind everything familiar to her, to escape the expected German bombing. In her new temporary home in Lincolnshire, Freda finds herself billeted with a strange, cold and, ultimately, abusive couple, whose lives mirror the barren landscape in which they live a hand to mouth existence, based upon subsistence farming and poaching. There, deprived of any warmth, she meets a young man – Philip Rhayader – a conscientious objector who has left Oxford and his prospective vocation in the church following a nervous breakdown. Slowly, he introduces her to the wonders of the natural world and its enduring power to heal.
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Henry ‘Chips’ Channon Volume 1 1918-38
£15.99Henry ‘Chips’ Channon Volume 1 1918-38
Born in Chicago in 1897, ‘Chips’ Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, or the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson during the abdication crisis, or the mood in the House of Commons in the lead up to the Munich crisis, his sense of drama and his eye for the telling detail are unmatched.
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Imperial island
£10.99Imperial island
After World War II, Britain’s overseas empire disintegrated. But over the next seventy years, empire came to define Britain as never before. From immigration and race riots, to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, from the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid to the invasion of Iraq, the imperial mindset has dominated Britain’s relationship with itself and the world. The ghosts of empire are there, too, in the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence and in the response to radical Islam, in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics and in scandal of the Windrush deportations – and of course in Brexit. Drawing on a mass of original research into the thoughts and feelings of the British people, pop culture, sport and media, this book tells a story of people on the move and of people trapped in the past, of the end of empire and the birth of multiculturalism, a chronicle of violence and a testament to togetherness.
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Letters for the ages
£12.99Letters for the ages
Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill’s correspondence. Several of the letters included have never appeared in book form before. Winston Churchill has become an iconic figure greatly loved the world over, but maybe especially these days in the USA. Churchill understood the power of words and he used his writing to sustain and complement his political career, publishing over 40 books and receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. This volume concentrates on his more intimate words.
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Rural
£10.99Rural
‘Eye-opening and persuasive’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Brilliant ? I loved it’ KIT DE WAAL
‘Thoughtful, moving, honest’ CAL FLYN
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Servants
£16.99Servants
An original, authoritative look at the social history of the 20th century, brilliantly retold through the eyes of the household servants.
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Spain
£11.99Spain
An incisive account of modern Spain, from the death of Franco to the Catalan referendum and beyond
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Storm’s edge
£25.00Storm’s edge
From Peter Marshall, winner of the Wolfson Prize 2018, Storm’s Edge is a new history of the Orkney Islands that delves deep into island politics, folk beliefs and community memory on the geographical edge of Britain.
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The last days of the Ottoman Empire
£12.99The last days of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire had been one of the major facts in European history since the Middle Ages. By 1914 it had been much reduced, but still remained after Russia the largest European state. Stretching from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, the Empire was both a great political entity and a religious one, with the Sultan ruling over the Holy Sites and, as Caliph, the successor to Mohammed. Yet the Empire’s fateful decision to support Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914, despite its successfully defending itself for much of the war, doomed it to disaster, breaking it up into a series of European colonies and what emerged as an independent Saudi Arabia. Ryan Gingeras explains how these epochal events came about and shows how much we still live in the shadow of decisions taken so long ago.
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The Stalin affair
£25.00The Stalin affair
The true story of the motley group of Allied men and women who worked to manage Stalin’s mercurial, explosive approach to diplomacy during four turbulent years of World War II.
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What’s cooking in the kremlin
£20.00What’s cooking in the kremlin
A tale of feast and famine told from the kitchen, the narrative of one of the most complex, troubling and fascinating nations on earth. We will travel through Putin’s Russia with acclaimed author Witold Szablowski as he learns the story of the chef who was shot alongside the Romonovs, and the Ukrainian woman who survived the Great Famine created by Stalin and still weeps with guilt; the soldiers on the Eastern front who roasted snails and made nettle soup as they fought back Hitler’s army; the woman who cooked for Yuri Gagarin and the cosmonauts; and the man who ran the Kremlin kitchen during the years of plenty under Brezhnev. We will hear from the women who fed the firefighters at Chernobyl, and the story of the Crimean Tatars, who returned to their homeland after decades of exile, only to flee once Russia invaded Crimea again, in 2014.
£20.00