This history of the pivotal WWII Battle of Stalingrad reveals newly translated firsthand accounts from Russian and German soldiers as well as civilians.In August of 1942, the German Army and Axis Powers invaded the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The ensuing battle was one of the most protracted and bitterly fought conflicts of the Second World War. More than five months later, Germany was forced to retreat in what would be a major turning point in the war.

D-Day - June 6, 1944 - was a pivotal day in human history. This was the great turning point of the Second World War, when the largest armada ever assembled took a third of a million Allied men across the English Channel.The invasion force of 150,000 troops from Britain, the United States, Canada and many other nations fighting on the Allied side on D-Day under the command of Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery landed on five beaches to spearhead Operation Overlord, the invasion of German-oc...

Journey to the seventeenth century and a dramatic period of political upheaval, plague, and fire, with this "vivid portrait of Restoration England" ( History Today).Inside Pepys' London reveals a vivid picture of London at a critical point in history, as it was poised to become a major center of international commerce and culture. It provides accounts of all aspects of contemporary life, from the arts and entertainment, to politics and religion.

Since its purchase in 1604 by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, the house at Knole, Kent, has been inhabited by thirteen generations of a single aristocratic family, the Sackvilles. Here, drawing on a wealth of unpublished letters, archives and images, the current incumbent of the seat, Robert Sackville-West, paints a vivid and intimate portrait of the vast, labyrinthine house and the close relationships his colourful ancestors formed with it.Inheritance is the story o...

Following a youth of poverty and bitter exile after his father's execution, the ousted king first challenged, then made his magnificent escape from, Cromwell's troops before he was eventually restored to his throne in triumph in 1660.Spanning his life both before and after the Restoration, Antonia Fraser's lively and fascinating biography captures all the vitality of the man and the expansiveness of the age.

Samuel Pepyss London was a turbulent, boisterous city, enduring the strains caused by foreign wars, the Great Plague and the Great Fire, yet growing and prospering. The Restoration in 1660 brought the reopening of the theatres, with women appearing on the stage for the first time, and the period saw the development of English opera and the first public concerts. Pepys lived through a time of change in a city of contrasts, which maintained a sophisticated cultural scene, yet was a focus for...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKHere are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-ch...

Adam Nicolson tells the story of England through the history of fourteen gentry families – from the 15th century to the present day. This sparkling work of history reads like a real-life Downton Abbey, as the loves, hatreds and many times of grief of his chosen cast illuminate the grand events of history.We may well be ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, but for generations England was a country dominated by its middling families, rooted on their land, in their locality, with a healthy inte...

In London: The Autobiography the life of the capital is told, for the first time, by those who made it and saw it at first hand.From Roman times to the 21st century, Londoners and visitors to the city have recounted the extraordinary events, everyday life and character of this unique and influential city - from politics, culture, sport, religion, and reportage.This book brings to vivid life the human trial of the capital including invasions by the Vikings, ...

(This ebook does not include illustrations.)This social history records the daily life of the English people from the time of the Norman Conquest to our own.Based on diaries, letters, memoirs, official reports, the works of modern social historians and the literature of every period, it traces the development of English society over 900 years.The chapters range over life in the castles, palaces and monasteries, in the homes of rich merchants and in the hovels of pea...

William Hogarth is a house-hold name across the country, his prints hang in our pubs and leap out from our history-books. He painted the great and good but also the common people. His art is comically exuberant, 'carried away by a passion for the ridiculous', as Hazlitt said.Jenny Uglow, acclaimed author of Elizabeth Gaskell, Nature's Engraver and In These Times, uncovers the man, but also the world he sprang from and the lives he pictured. He moved in th...

'Fascinating scholarship. Todd conveys Behn's vivacious character and the mores of the time' New York Times'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn; for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,' said Virginia Woolf. Yet that tomb, in Westminster Abbey, records one of the few uncontested facts about this Restoration playwright, poet of the erotic and bisexual, political propagandist, novelist and spy: the date of her death,...