Delving into an encyclopaedic array of little-known primary sources, William Beaver uncovers a vigorous intelligence function at the heart of Victoria's Empire. A cadre of exceptionally able and dedicated officers, they formed the War Office Intelligence Division, which gave Britain's foreign policy its backbone in the heyday of imperial acquisition.Under Every Leaf is the first major study to examine the seminal role of intelligence gathering and analysis in 'England's er...

On the brink of the First World War, Scotland was regarded throughout the British Isles as 'the workshop of the Empire'. Not only were Clyde-built ships known the world over, Scotland produced half of Britain's total production of railway equipment, and the cotton and jute industries flourished in Paisley and Dundee. In addition, Scots were a hugely important source of manpower for the colonies. Yet after the war, Scotland became an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased ...

In September 1915, Keith Murdoch, then a young war journalist, wrote an 8000-word letter to the Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher. 'The Gallipoli Letter', as it came to be known, changed the course of the Gallipoli campaign.The letter, protesting against the conduct of the campaign and describing conditions at the front, is both intimate and conversational: 'I shall talk to you as if you were by my side.' It is also at times angry, passionate, vivid and very moving: 'Then in the early ...

Winston Churchill is probably still the best-known Prime Minster of Great Britain. Born at Blenheim Palace, he joined the army after Harrow, but in 1899 resigned his commission to report on the Boer War. Elected to Parliament in 1900, he served in both Conservative and Liberal governments, and became Chancellor of the Exechequer under Baldwin, A period in the political wilderness was ended by the declaration of the Second World War and his appointment to the Admiralty; aft...

"Australia seemed to bring out the worst in Winston Churchill. Often enough to form a discernible pattern, Australia found itself on the wrong side of the very qualities-his strength of will, singleness of purpose, his refusal to 'give way, in things great or small, large or petty', the power of his imagination to set grim reality at defiance, his mastery of the English language-that made Winston Churchill, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin described him, 'the saviour of his country, the la...

The Highland Clearances stands out as one of the most emotive chapters in the history of Scotland.This book traces the origins of the Clearances from the eighteenth century to their culmination in the crofting legislation of the 1880s. In considering both the terrible suffering of the Highland people as well as the stark choices that faced landowners during a period of rapid economic change, it shows how the Clearances were one of many 'attempted' solutions to the ...

Benjamin Disraeli was the most gifted parliamentarian of the nineteenth century and a superb orator, writer and wit - but how much do we really know about the man behind the words?'As Douglas Hurd and Edward Young point out in their splendidly written, finely judged and thoroughly persuasive book, a vast chasm yawned between the real Disraeli and his posthumous reinvention' Dominic Sandbrook, SUNDAY TIMES'Not only, they tell us in this vigorously debunking ...

History of the Ulster Volunteer Force from its birth to defend Ulster against home rule, its major part in the battles of France in world war one, it's reincarnation into the fierce and ruthless paramilitary machine during the troubles that took on the Irish Republican terrorists on all fronts and what it's role is today.

Since 2003, Iraq has rarely left the headlines. But less discussed is the fact that Iraq as we know it was created by the British, in one of the most dramatic interventions in recent history. A cautious strategic invasion by British forces led - within seven years - to imperial expansion on a dizzying scale, with fateful consequences for the Middle East and the world.In When God Made Hell, Charles Townshend charts Britain's path from one of its worst military disasters to ...

Uniquely endowed with talent, energy and determination, Winston Churchill was, as a close wartime colleague put it, 'unlike anyone you have ever met before'.To many, he was the saviour of the nation, even of Western civilization, 'the greatest Briton' who ever lived. Others would have agreed with Evelyn Waugh who described him 'always in the wrong, surrounded by crooks, a terrible father, a radio personality'. Whatever one's view, Winston Churchill remains splendidly unreduced and ...

In this stimulating and original investigation of the decisive battles ofthe English Civil War, Malcolm Wanklyn reassesses what actually happened on the battlefield and as a result sheds new light on the causes of the eventual defeat of Charles I. Taking each major battle in turn - Edgehill, Newbury I, Cheriton, Marston Moor, Newbury II, Naseby, and Preston - he looks critically at contemporary accounts and at historians' narratives, explores the surviving battlegrounds and retells the sto...

From the playing fields of Eton via the horrors of the Western Front to the pinnacle of political power in 20th-century Britain – a brilliant collective biography of Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury, Oliver Lyttleton and Harry Crookshank.Harold Macmillan, Oliver Lyttleton, Bobbety Cranbourne and Harry Crookshank all arrived at Eton in 1906, all served on the Western Front in the same battalion of the Grenadier Guards and all served in Cabinet under Winston Churchill during World Wa...