Social & cultural history
Showing 1–16 of 122 results
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50 finds from childhood
£15.9950 finds from childhood
The latest volume in this popular series looks at how objects registered with the PAS inform our understanding of children and childhood through history.
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A cold spell
£20.00A cold spell
Ice has confounded, delighted and fascinated us since the first sparks of art and culture in Europe and it now underpins the modern world. Without ice, we would not feed ourselves or heal our sick as we do, and our towns and cities, countryside and oceans would look very different. Science would not have progressed along the avenues it did and our galleries and libraries would be missing many masterpieces. ‘A Cold Spell’ uses this vital link to understanding our past to tell a surprising story of obsession, invention and adventure – how we have lived and dreamed, celebrated and traded, innovated, loved and fought over thousands of years.
£20.00 -
A northern wind
£30.00A northern wind
How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors. ‘A Northern Wind’ brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston’s masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill – while revealing in all their variety the experiences of the people living through this history.
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A place of our own
£22.00A place of our own
For as long as queer women have existed, they’ve created gathering grounds where they can be themselves. From the intimate darkness of the lesbian bar to the sweaty camaraderie of the softball field, these spaces aren’t a luxury – they’re a necessity for queer women defining their identities. Blending memoir, archival research and interviews, journalist June Thomas invites readers into six iconic lesbian spaces over the course of the last sixty years, including the rural commune, the sex toy boutique, the holiday destination and the feminist bookstore. She also illuminates what is gained and lost in the shift from the exclusive, tight-knit women’s spaces of the ’70s toward today’s more inclusive yet more diffuse LGBTQ+ communities.
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A voyage around the Queen
£25.00A voyage around the Queen
From one of the funniest writers of our time, the award-winning and bestselling author of One Two Three Four and Ma’am Darling turns his attention to Queen Elizabeth II in an unforgettable and fascinating biography.
THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Enthralling ? deliciously gossipy’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘A crown jewel among royal biographies’ OBSERVER
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Age of the city
£12.99Age of the city
Visionary Oxford professor Ian Goldin and The Economist’s Tom Lee-Devlin show why the city is where the battles of inequality, social division, pandemics and climate change must be faced. From centres of antiquity like Athens or Rome to modern metropolises like New York or Shanghai, cities throughout history have been the engines of human progress and the epicentres of our greatest achievements. Now, for the first time, more than half of humanity lives in cities, a share that continues to rise. In the developing world, cities are growing at a rate never seen before. In this book, Professor Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin show why making our societies fairer, more cohesive and sustainable must start with our cities.
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Agincourt
£10.99Agincourt
Anne Curry tells the story of Agincourt, one of the most iconic battles in English history – how it was fought, how it has been remembered, and what it has come to mean.
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All that she carried
£12.99All that she carried
A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a deeply layered and insightful testament to people who are left out of the archives
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An almost impossible thing
£12.00An almost impossible thing
While working at the Royal Horticultural Society, Fiona Davison discovered a cache of letters from a young gardener who was denied a scholarship by the RHS, on the grounds that she was female. Appalled and intrigued to find out what became of Olive, Fiona began to research the wider story of early female professional gardeners and discovered a group of pioneers whose struggles against patriarchy changed forever the rights and opportunities for women gardeners. ‘An Almost Impossible Thing’ follows six hitherto littleknown women gardeners in the years before the First World War, and examines their lives in the context of suffragism, collectivism and Empire.
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Antarctica
£25.00Antarctica
This powerfully relevant work tells the history of Antarctica through 100 varied and fascinating objects drawn from collections around the world. Retracing the history of Antarctica through 100 varied and fascinating objects drawn from collections across the world, this book is published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the first crossing into the Antarctic Circle by James Cook aboard Resolution, on 17th January, 1773.
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Big caesars and little caesars
£12.99Big caesars and little caesars
Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of strong men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it’s become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why caesars seize power and why they fall. There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger.
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Bismarck’s war
£12.99Bismarck’s war
Less than a month after it marched into France in summer 1870, the Prussian army had devastated its opponents, captured Napoleon III and wrecked all assumptions about Europe’s pecking order. Other countries looked on in helpless amazement. Pushing aside further French resistance, a new German Empire was proclaimed (as a deliberate humiliation) in the Palace of Versailles, leaving the French to face civil war in Paris, reparations and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. ‘Bismarck’s War’ tells the story of one of the most shocking reversals of fortune in modern European history. The culmination of a globally violent decade, the Franco-Prussian War was deliberately engineered by Bismarck, both to destroy French power and to unite Germany. It could not have worked better, but it also had lurking inside it the poisonous seeds of all the disasters that would ravage the twentieth century.
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Black Ghost of Empire
£10.99Black Ghost of Empire
To understand why the shadow of slavery still haunts our society today, we must look at the unfinished way it ended. We celebrate the abolition of slavery – in Haiti after the revolution, in the British Empire in 1833, in the United States during the Civil War. Yet in Black Ghost of Empire, acclaimed historian Kris Manjapra reveals how during each of these supposed emancipations, Black people were in fact dispossessed by the moves that were meant to free them. Ranging across the Americas, Europe and Africa, Manjapra unearths the uncomfortable truths about the Age of Emancipations, 1780-1880. In Britain, reparations were given to wealthy slave owners, not the enslaved, in vast sums that were only paid off in 2015. In Jamaica, Black people were freed only to enter into an apprenticeship period harsher than slavery itself.
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Black history for every day of the year
£25.00Black history for every day of the year
With an entry for each day of the year, this is an inclusive, accessible and empowering celebration of Black history by David Olusoga.
£25.00 -
Britain’s ghosts
£12.99Britain’s ghosts
Discover the stories of Britain’s greatest ghosts and ghouls with this spooky supernatural page turner, the perfect gift this Halloween.
- Supported by the National Trust, who look after many of the haunted locations.
- Beautifully atmospheric illustrations.
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British Comics
£15.00British Comics
A unique cultural history of British comic papers and magazines, from their origins in the late 19th century to the present day. It describes the rise of comic publishers and the heyday of comics in the 1950s and 60s, when titles such as ‘School Friend’ and ‘Eagle’ sold a million copies a week.
£15.00