For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was backward and benighted, locked into the Dark Ages and barely able to tell the time of day. Augustine had decreed that belief not reason should be the guiding light of Christian thinking, and partially as a result its people lived in a world of nominal literacy and subsistence farming, where blind faith, superstition and sorcery took the place of medicine and the church harnessed nascent aggression among the kingdoms to its own ends in the pursuit of astonishingly violent and cruel holy wars - the First Crusades. Arab culture, however, was thriving, and had become a powerhouse of intellectual exploration and discussion that dazzled the likes of Adelard of Bath who ventured in search of its scientific riches in cities like Antioch or Baghdad, whose House of Wisdom held four hundred thousand books at a time when the best European libraries housed at most several dozen. The Arabs could measure the earth's circumference, a feat not matched in the West for eight hundred years; they discovered algebra, sine and other trigonometric functions, and the use of zero; were adepts at astronomy and navigation, charted the constellations, made maps, accurately told the time, developed the astrolabe, translated all the Greek texts including, importantly, those of Aristotle; they made paper and lenses and mirrors. Without them, and the knowledge that travellers like Adelard brought back to the West, Europe would in all likelihood have been a very different place over the last millennium.

From the gold potatoes at the Sun Temple in Cuzco, Peru, the muddy ones in Ireland and those grown in China for MacDonalds chips, via Mrs Beeton, Charles Darwin, Lenin and Chairman Mao, to the mapping of the potato genome, the story of the spud is both satisfying and fascinating. John Reader follows the thread of the potato's story through the tapestry of human history, from its origins and evolution to its mysterious arrival in Europe, where it became a crucial part of gastronomic and social fabric. As global population swells and environmental sustainability becomes ever more crucial, Reader asks what role the potato still has to play - in this lively, readable study of our most humble foodstuff.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. As Tony Judt argues persuasively in Reappraisals, we have entered an "age of forgetting." Today's world is so utterly unlike the world of just twenty years ago that we have set aside our immediate past even before we could make sense of it. We literally don't know where we came from, and the results of this burgeoning ignorance are proving calamitous, with the clear prospect of worse to come. We have lost touch with three generations of international policy debate, social thought and public-spirited social activism. We no longer know how to discuss such concepts and we have forgotten the role once played by intellectuals in debating, transmitting and defending the ideas that shaped their time. In Reappraisals, Tony Judt resurrects key aspects of the world we have lost and reminds us how important they still are to us: now and to our hopes for the future.

Mary I is notorious for her persecution of Protestants and has been vilified by generations of partisan historians. H.F.M. Prescott brings a more humane and measured perspective to the life of this tormented woman. First published in 1940 under the title SPANISH TUDOR, Prescott's biography won the James Tait Black prize the following year. An extensively revised and updated edition was published in 1953 under the title MARY TUDOR. Prescott sums up her subject's life as follows: 'Perhaps no other reign in English history has seen such a great endeavour made, and so utterly defeated. All that Mary did was undone, all she intended utterly unfulfilled...mistaken often, almost always misguided in her public office, with much blindness, some rancour, some jealousy, some stupid cruelty to answer for, she had yet trodden, lifelong and manfully, the way that other sinners know.'

"What is the moment in history that you would like to have witnessed; and why?" This is the thought-provoking question that Theodore Rabb and Byron Hollinshead posed to 20 of our finest historians. Their answers can be found in this fascinating and thoroughly readable book, which trains a lens on crucial moments of our past and brings them to vivid life. Contributors include Tom Holland, John Elliott, John Julius Norwich, Margaret MacMillan and John Keegan and with these – and other – peerless scholars as their guides, readers will be transported to the death of Alexander the Great, Christmas 800CE when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, Hannibal's legendary crossing of the Alps, Runnymede where King John was forced to sign Magna Carta, the Spanish Armada, the Battle of the Nile, Paris 1919, the German surrender in 1945 and the end of the First Gulf War. Imaginatively executed and vividly written, the result is a pageant of character and event that will attract and delight readers of history.

Robert Hutchinson made his debut as a popular historian with the critically acclaimed and commercially successful LAST DAYS OF HENRY VIII. His biography of Sir Francis Walsingham, ELIZABETH'S SPY MASTER was published in 2006. This new biography works as both a sequel and 'prequel' to his existing books, telling the dramatic story of the Dukes of Norfolk.The richest and most powerful noble family in Britain, after the king himself, they regarded themselves as the power behind the throne and regularly tried to act as 'kingmakers'. Thomas Howard, the second duke, fought for Richard III at Bosworth and was imprisoned in the Tower by Henry VII. A brilliant politician, he negotiated his way out and became a key minister in the new Tudor regime.Late in life he commanded the English army that annihilated the Scots at Flodden in 1513. However, his descendants were a louche lot of plotters and conspirators; Henry VIII and Elizabeth I both beheaded a Norfolk for treason (although another led the Royal Navy against the Spanish Armada).The rise and fall of this mighty dynasty sheds new light on the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth as well as providing enormous entertainment.

The Fall of the Roman Empire has been a bestselling subject since the 18th century. Since then over 200 discrete reasons have been advanced for the collapse of the western half of the Roman empire.Until very recently, the academic view downplayed the death and destruction, to spin a positive story of the 'world of late antiquity'. Barbarian invasions are described in neutral language: the movement of peoples. It is all painfully 'politically correct'. Now Adrian Goldsworthy comes forward with his trademark combination of clear narrative, common sense and a thorough mastery of the sources.In telling the story from beginning to end, he rescues the era from the mealy-mouthed and diffident: this is a red-blooded account of barbarian invasions, palace coups, scheming courtiers and corrupt emperors who set the gold standard for dissipation. It is 'old fashioned history' in the best sense: an accessible narrative with colourful characters whose story reveals the true reasons for the fall of Rome.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. In NEVER SURRENDER Robert Kershaw captures the authentic voices of the ordinary heroes of the Second World War. Read first-hand accounts of the breathless reaction to Chamberlain s declaration of war in 1939. Discover what it was really like to fight in the limitless western desert of North Africa or through the horrific 24 hours of D-Day? How did an entire generation cope in a world with no secure future? What was it like living through the Blitz? Or flying in the Battle of Britain? How did prisoners of war survive the poor conditions, tedium, and physical and psychological trauma of the camps? NEVER SURRENDER features interviews with veterans and civilians from Britain, the Commonwealth and Germany as well as diaries, letters, and first hand accounts to create a remarkable picture of the men and women who lived through the Second World War.

Carlo D'Este's startlingly fresh biography examines Winston Churchill through the prism of this military service as both a soldier and commander. A descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough who, despite never having himself risen above the rank of lieutenant colonel, came eventually at age 65 to direct Britain's military campaigns during the defining conflict of the twentieth century. Even though Churchill became one of the towering political leaders of the century, his childhood ambition was to be a soldier. Using extensive untapped archival materials, D'Este reveals important and previously untold observations from many of those who surrounded Churchill, and also explores Churchill's strategy behind the major military campaigns of World War II (both his dazzling successes and distastrous failures) and tumultous relationships with his generals. Warlord gives us many new insights into the Greatest Briton, and even those who think they know his career well will find much new information as well as many new perspectives here.

n this masterful study, Paul Strathern (author of The Medici, and Napoleon in Egypt) details the incidental convergence of three of Renaissance Italy's most brilliant minds.The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior follows Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia through the mountains, remote villages and hill towns of the Italian Romagna. This was a period of extreme significance and considerable danger, not just for themselves, but for the country they were helping to shape. Borgia has become a byword for brutal and inhuman deeds, marred with the suspicion of incest. Depicted as a savage whose eyes were fixed on the prize of his own kingdom - a province in which he ruled supreme. But he was an educated savage and an unrivalled tactician, relying on surprise and patience. Leonardo, possessed of the most inquisitive mind of his generation, is the exemplar of the Renaissance man. His paintings and drawings are among the finest and most famous in the world and his notebooks portray intricate scientific and technological investigations. But what led this master thinker to work for the tyrannical Borgia and how did he become involved with Machiavelli? Machiavelli was the infamous author of The Prince - a work that was the culmination of all he had learnt throughout his long political career. Driven by an uncanny understanding of human nature, and the way people behave rather than how they ought to behave, Machiavelli became a master politician and diplomatic negotiator, unrivalled in Renaissance Italy. The legacies of these three men shaped the Renaissance and all that came after it and their impact is still felt today. Paul Strathern's new book is a vivid and gripping account of what happened in one short season in 1502.

John Adamson's book traces the careers and fortunes of the small group of English noblemen who risked their lives and fortunes to challenge the king's attempt to create an authoritarian monarchy in the Stuart kingdoms during the 1630s.What was achieved in 1641 astonished - and alarmed - contemporaries: the trial and execution of the king's most powerful minister; a new and sometimes violent, phase of religious reformation; the drastic curbing of the powers of the Crown; the planning of a major Anglo-Scottish military intervention in the Thirty Years' War.The threat of war was rarely absent and the resort to armed force come to seem a viable, perhaps even the only, means of resolving the conflicts within the Stuart realms.

Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, was the archetypal 'Renaissance man': a brilliant soldier, scholar and ally of the pope, he spent much of the vast wealth on commissioning artists to decorate the city.Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of the neighbouring city of Rimini, was also a brilliant soldier and generous patron of the arts. He and Federigo were locked in an epic feud which saw them fight as mercenaries for and against just about every Italian ruler of note, so long as the other was on the opposite side.Together they epitomised the spirit of the condottieri - the contract army leaders who drove the explosion of new political, commercial and artistic ideas that has since become known as the Renaissance.

This book argues that viewing culture as a script that dictates warfare is wrong, and that our obsession with the exotic can make it harder, not easier, to know the enemy. Culture is powerful, but it is an ambiguous repertoire of ideas rather than a clear code for action. To divide the world into western, Asiatic or Islamic ways of war is a delusion, one whose profound impact affect contemporary war and above all the War on Terror. Porter's fascinating book explains why the 'Oriental' warrior inspires fear, envy and wonder and how this has shaped the way Western armies fight.

Beginning on 10th April 1941, and lasting for 240 days, the siege of Tobruk is a mesmerising tale of human endurance and heroism. It is an epic story of extraordinary resilience as the Libyan port's 24,000 defenders met increasingly desperate attempts by Rommel's Panzer divisions to break through the hurriedly thrown-up defences. It was a battle of bayonets and grenades against tanks, of David versus Goliath. The eventual allied victory came against overwhelming odds, plus the morale sapping knowledge that the defenders were surrounded on one side by the sea, and on the other by Hitler's men and machines (who, only the year before, had brought Western Europe to its knees). Tobruk was defended in the main by the Australian 9th Division, followed by the British 70th Infantry Division who then linked up with the advancing 8th Army. The Royal Navy also played an important role in Tobruk's defence. By December 1941 Rommel had been beaten and forced to withdraw his forces from Cyrenaica. The siege was lifted and the exhausted, gallant defenders able to march out in triumph.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. Far more than an anthology, FOR KING AND COUNTRY is Brian MacArthur's attempt to write a history of the First World War by drawing on the writings of those who were present at the events they describe. Those writings will be drawn from a broad range of sources: from, most obviously, the officers and men who served on the western front at the Somme and elsewhere, accounts of fear and tedium, horror and occasional joy; also from those were left behind on the home front to wait for news of their loved ones.As well as letters, diary entries and memoir extracts, the book will also include the songs sung in the trenches by the men at the front; there are poems too, the less well known alongside the familiar. The material reproduced will be linked by Brian MacArthur's commentary and notes to create a seamless and movingly immediate narrative of the First World War.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. Called an uneasy peace, the twenty years between the wars were a time of turmoil - Britain saw a general strike and the worst economic crisis in its history, armed rebellion in Ireland and open revolt in India, a Prime Minister s resignation and the King s abdication. Crisis followed crisis until Britain was engulfed in the Second World War - a catastrophe that could have been foreseen, possibly even prevented. But there were also moments of triumph: England regained the Ashes and Britain ran to glory in the Chariots of Fire Olympic Games; the BBC was born and became the envy of the free world; there was a renaissance in poetry, sculpture of genius, and cinema lightened the darkness for millions. However it is the politicians who failed who have really come to personify the interwar years - in particular Ramsey MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin. Both prime ministers were better men than history allows. And Winston Churchill? Right or wrong, success or failure, he is the irrepressible force in what he called the 'years for the locusts to eat'. Hattersley's assessment of this doomed era is illuminating, entertaining and bold.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. One of the largest rivers in the world, the Indus rises in the Tibetan mountains, flows west across northern India and south through Pakistan. For millennia it has been worshipped as a god; for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion; today it is the cement of Pakistans fractious union. Five thousand years ago, a string of sophisticated cities grew and traded on its banks. In the ruins of these elaborate metropolises, Sanskrit-speaking nomads explored the river, extolling its virtues in Indias most ancient text, the Rig-Veda. During the past two thousand years a series of invaders Alexander the Great, Afghan Sultans, the British Raj made conquering the Indus valley their quixotic mission. For the people of the river, meanwhile, the Indus valley became a nodal point on the Silk Road, a centre of Sufi pilgrimage and the birthplace of Sikhism. Empires of the Indus follows the river upstream and back in time, taking the reader on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and more than five millennia of history redolent with contemporary importance.

When the abolitionist Granville Sharpe bought land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slaves, one former slave living in London foresaw trouble. 'Is it possible,' asked Ottobah Cugoano, biblically, 'that a fountain should send forth both sweet water and bitter?' Could the slave trade be abolished from West Africa when West Africa was its source? The answer was no. Sweet Water and Bitter is the extraordinary sequel to Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The last legal British slave-ship left Africa that year, but other countries and illegal slavers continued to trade. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, British diplomats negotiated anti-slave-trade treaties and a 'Preventive Squadron' was formed to cruise the West African coast. In six decades, this small fleet liberated 150,000 Africans and lost 17,000 of its own men in doing so. This is the tale of their exciting and arduous campaign. It is also a story of unforeseen consequences.. What to do with the freed slaves? How to manipulate international law so that you could board the ships of other nations? How to fight the intense hostility of African leaders to abolition? In tracing these complex questions Sian Rees shows how the campaign was linked to British imperial and commercial ambition as well as to philanthropy: the colonising of West Africa was a direct, though unintended result. Above all, however, this is a swashbuckling naval adventure, full of sensational, first-hand accounts of life at sea, of the grim 'barracoons' where slaves are held, of the luxurious compounds of the slave-brokers and the lonely garrisons dotting the coast. Sailors speak of the boredom of patrol, the terror of 'detached service' in small boats upriver, the sudden, violent battles and the horror of seeing, close up, the cruelties of slaving. Combining flawless research with an intimate and dramatic narrative, this is a voyage that no one will forget.