Showing results by publisher "HarperCollins Publishers Limited" in History

Former Prime Minister John Major takes a remarkable journey into his own unconventional family past to tell the richly colourful story of the British music hall. Music hall was one of the glories of Victorian England. Sentimental, vulgar, class-conscious, but always patriotic and on the side of the underdog, it held a mirror to the audiences’ hopes and fears - and sometimes the general absurdity of life. Vast, smoke-filled auditoriums were packed night after night in nearly every town and city in Britain.

A fascinating account of the journey towards number 10 Downing street read by Lady Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher's government was, she says, about the application of a philosophy, not the implementation of an administrative programme. These ideas and beliefs were propelled throughout her time in office by a forcefulness and conviction, particularly in critical moments in her premiership - the Falklands War, the miner's strike, the Brighton bomb and her three election victories.

From the author of Wartime and The Thirties comes an outstanding history of the most prolonged and devastating attack ever endured by Britain's civilian population – the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new and terrible form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, widely feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war.

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands? With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies.

Viking London is a short book of the hidden history, archaeology and folklore of London in the Viking Age and its echoes through history. The narrative history that can be told is limited, and this book is, therefore, unorthodox and digressive in its structure and its layering of voices, impressions and characters, stories, objects and buildings.

A deeply engaging and completely original book about nineteenth-century Britain’s fascination with good quality murder. Murder in nineteenth-century Britain was ubiquitous – not necessarily in quantity but in quality. This was the era of penny-bloods, early crime fiction and melodramas for the masses.

We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Generals win battles; politicians run countries; scientists discover truths; artists create genres; inventors make breakthroughs; teachers shape minds; philosophers change minds; priests teach morality; businessmen lead businesses; environmentalists save the planet.

Marking the centenary of the Titanic, A Shape of Ice is an utterly compelling exploration of the lives on board the most famous ship in history. The RMS Titanic was built as one of the world's largest and most luxurious liners. A marine Ritz, it was a 45,000 ton hotel of thin steel plates, travelling at a speed of 21 knots across the unforgiving ocean.On the night of 14 April 1912, the seemingly unsinkable ship hit an iceberg. It sustained a 300 feet gash and six compartments were wrenched open to the sea.

Alan Whicker joined the Army Film and Photo Unit as an 18-year-old army officer, following the Allied advance through Italy, from Sicily to Venice. He filmed the troops on the front line, met Montgomery, and other military luminaries, filmed the battered body of Mussolini after his execution and accepted the surrender of the SS in Milan. This is remarkable account of the Italian campaign of 1943 and 1944 as he retraces of his steps over sixty years later.

For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.

May 2006. Pilot Ed Macy arrives in Afghanistan with a contingent of Apache AH Mk1. It's the first operational tour for the deadly, difficult machines and confidence in the cripplingly expensive attack helicopter is low. It doesn't help that for their first month 'in action', Ed and his mates see little more than the back-end of a Chinook.

For centuries, the Tower of London has been home to a group of famous avian residents: the ravens. Each year they are seen by millions of visitors, and they have become as integral a part of the Tower as its ancient stones themselves. But their role is even more important than that – legend has it that if the ravens should ever leave, the Tower will crumble into dust, and great harm will befall the kingdom.

An inspiring selection of hand-picked adventures, chosen by Ed Stafford. For those who don’t mind a bit of discomfort in order to experience the wilder side of our amazing planet. Open your mind and reboot your soul with these unforgettable adventures.

Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than six billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.

The Westland Apache AH Mk 1 is the deadliest, most technically advanced helicopter in the world - and only the top two per cent of pilots even make it through the training. In 2007, Ed's Apache squadron was dispatched to Helmand, Afghanistan. Their mission: to protect the men on the ground. So when a marine goes missing in action during an attack on a Taliban stronghold, Ed and his team know they are the Army's only hope of getting him out.

Cal Flyn was very proud when she discovered that her ancestor, Angus McMillan, had been a pioneer of colonial Australia. However, when she dug deeper, she began to question her pride. McMillan had not only cut tracks through the bush but played a dark role in Australia's bloody history. Angus McMillan had left the stark, windswept landscape of the Highlands in the 1830s, blighted by the Clearances, for the alien harshness of the Australian frontier and had since been mythologised as a great explorer.

Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology to life.

The shocking true story of a young boy hidden away from his family and the world in a Catholic home for unmarried mothers in 1950s Dublin. Born an 'unfortunate' onto the rough streets of 1950s Dublin, this is the incredible true story of a young boy, a secret child born into a home for unmarried mothers in 1950s Dublin and a mother determined to keep her child, even if it meant hiding him from her own family and the rest of the world.

In her relationship with Charles, which has survived for more than 40 years, Camilla's story has seen a great many myths. This book is the definitive account. The relationship between Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is one of the most remarkable love stories of the age. It has endured against all the odds and, in the process, nearly destroyed the British monarchy.

Arguably no person in history had such a direct and negative impact on the lives of so many as Joseph Stalin. Under the Red Tsar terror knew no limits, it did not discriminate; no one was safe, no institution, no single town or village was immune. Yet, following his death in 1953, Stalin was deeply mourned. He had "received the country with a wooden plough, and left it with a nuclear missile shield." And no-one else, some claimed, could have led the Soviet Union to victory in the Second World War.