This is the story of life in Wales over a period of 1,500 years, as gleaned from the remains its inhabitants left behind. These people had no writing so they have left us no names and no records of their deeds. Instead we have the possessions they treasured in life, the broken remains of their bodies and the marks they left on the landscape. The people of these 15 centuries have remained essentially anonymous, in the shadows of prehistory. In part, these shadows have fallen by choice: from...

Deep in the beautiful Worcestershire countryside lie a number of secret places that played a special part in protecting a generation from the onslaught of a world war.Travellers passing through leafy Worcestershire lanes may catch a glimpse of a structure that seems out of place against the backdrop of fields and hills – the dish of a gigantic radio telescope.How did such an incongruous structure arrive in the middle of nowhere, and what does it do?This book answers...

History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, with a new census appearing in 2011 and after more than ten years of a new parliament. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies and we carry the ancient story of Scotland around with us. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting our history in spectacular fashion.In The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat explores t...

The last Ice Age, which came to an end about 12,000 years ago, swept the bands of hunter gatherers from the face of the land that was to become Britain and Ireland, but as the ice sheets retreated and the climate improved so human groups spread slowly northwards, re-colonizing the land that had been laid waste. From that time onwards Britain and Ireland have been continuously inhabited and the resident population has increased from a few hundreds to more than 60 million. Britain Begins is ...

The story of the archaeology behind the dig that found Richard III, told through a fascinating array of photographs, diagrams, and firsthand accountsIn August 2012 a search began and on February 4, 2013 a team from Leicester University delivered its verdict to a mesmerized press room, watched by media studios around the world: they had found the remains of Richard III, whose history is perhaps the most contested of all British monarchs.History offers a narr...

'An extraordinary history' - Peter Ackroyd, The Times'A lively account of (Bazalgette's) magnificent achievements. . . graphically illustrated' - Hermione Hobhouse'Halliday is good on sanitary engineering and even better on cloaca, crud and putrefaction . . . (he) writes with the relish of one who savours his subject and has deeply researched it. . . splendidly illustrated' - Ruth Rendell...

A passionate and informative celebration of trees and of man's ingenuity in exploiting their resources: the perfect gift for anyone who cares about the natural world.Trees are marvels of nature, still-standing giants of extraordinary longevity. In a beautifully written sequence of essays, anecdotes and profiles of Britain's best-loved species (from yew to scots pine), Max Adams explores both the amazing biology of trees and humanity's relationship with wood and forest across the ce...

From the author of ‘Britain BC’, ‘Britain AD’ and ‘Britain in the Middle Ages’ comes the fourth and final part in a critically acclaimed series on Britain's hidden past.The relevance of archaeology to the study of the ancient world is indisputable. But, when exploring our recent past, does it have any role to play? In ‘The Birth of Modern Britain’ Francis Pryor highlights archaeology’s continued importance to the world around us.The pioneers of the Industrial Revolution wer...

When the Celts first arrived in Ireland around 200 B.C., the island had already been inhabited for over 7000 years. Drawing on a wealth of archaeological evidence and the author's own mastery of the subject, Ancient Ireland returns to those pre-Celtic roots in a bid to discover the secrets of the island's first inhabitants: Who were they? And how did they live? Few accounts of the period are as exhaustively researched; fewer still are as alive with historical insight and compelling detail....

During the reign of Queen Victoria, industrialisation changed every aspect of rural life. Industrial diversification led to a decline in agriculture and mass migration from country to town and city – in 1851 half the population lived in the countryside, but by 1901 only a quarter did so. This book outlines the changes and why they occurred. It paints a picture of country life as it was when Victoria came to the throne and shows how a recognisably modern version of the British countryside h...

In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface.There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to penetrate history, and Ackroyd's book is filled with the stories unique to this underworld: t...

From the author of Earth: An Intimate History, an exuberant "biography" of four acres of woodland, evoking a cosmos of living and inanimate things and imagining its millennia of existenceA few years ago, award-winning scientist Richard Fortey purchased four acres of woodland in the Chiltern Hills of Oxfordshire, England. The Wood for the Trees is the joyful, lyrical portrait of what he found there.With one chapter for each month, we move t...