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Madame du Deffand’s intelligence and ‘taste for defiance’ were notable from childhood and after being forced to marry a husband ill-suited to her she threw herself into Regency Paris society, where her infidelity and opinions shocked even the most liberal-minded. This volume makes use of her extensive correspondence, particularly with Voltaire, Montesquieu and Horace Walpole, to trace her unconventional life. Slightly off-mint.

When Lord William Russell was killed in 1840, his murderer claimed that he was inspired by William Harrison Ainsworth's novel about the notorious thief Jack Sheppard, causing a public sensation. Recreating the atmosphere of Victorian London, this volume explores how the leading writers of the day were drawn into the debate about the literary glorification of crime. American-cut pages.

Kevin Flude’s history of Britain's kings and queens in bite-sized chunks includes legendary kings, Dark Age warlords, Scottish monarchs and kings of Wales as well as Normans, Plantagenets etc – up to the House of Windsor and Elizabeth II.

For more than 20 of her 63 years on the throne, Queen Victoria had at her side a brilliant, energetic and visionary husband. Drawing on royal archives and Albert’s own extensive correspondence, this biography highlights his far-reaching contributions to national life, including his promotion of science, industry and the arts, his reform of university education and, above all, his shaping of a constitutional monarchy fit for a democratic age. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge.

In 1776, during the early stages of the Revolutionary War, the governor and mayor of New York were involved in a bungled plot for George Washington’s bodyguards to kidnap or assassinate him and his chief officers. This proposed account of the conspiracy, and its discovery via a jailhouse confession, also casts light on the broader events that led to American independence.

Sir Laurence Gomme’s original idea for a county history was realized by the publisher Herbert Arthur Doubleday, who not only gained Queen Victoria’s consent that the History should bear her name, but secured a special arrangement with the Public Record Office. The first volume (Hampshire I) appeared in 1900 and new volumes continue to be published, now much improved and updated, but remaining comprehensive, factual, reliable and unbiased reference works, based on original research. In the General Introduction, published in 1970, RB Pugh gives a full account of the Victoria History’s origin and its progress over the first 70 years, providing a conspectus of the 150 volumes published in the series up to 1970, a bibliographical survey, lists of the contents of each volume, and indexes of the titles of articles and authors. Off-mint.

Sir Laurence Gomme’s original idea for a county history was realized by the publisher Herbert Arthur Doubleday, who not only gained Queen Victoria’s consent that the History should bear her name, but secured a special arrangement with the Public Record Office. The first volume (Hampshire I) appeared in 1900 and new volumes continue to be published, now much improved and updated, but remaining comprehensive, factual, reliable and unbiased reference works, based on original research. Volume XVI covers Kinwardstone Hundred, with histories of 15 settlements including Buttermere, Chute and Chute Forest, Savernake and Wooton Rivers. Index. Off-mint.

Sir Stamford Raffles' vision of a 'collection of living animals such as never yet existed in ancient or modern times' came to fruition in 1928 with the founding of London Zoo. Isobel Charman's novelistic retelling of the institution's first 25 years focuses on key figures, including Veterinary Surgeon Charles Spooner and Head Keeper Devereux Fuller – and notable residents such as Tommy the homesick chimpanzee and Obaysch the hippo.

Sympathetic yet balanced, this biography offers a very human account of Victoria’s lonely childhood and youthful attempts to escape her domineering mother, her ascent to the throne at just 19, and her passionate, unashamedly physical love for her husband Albert. It also explores the strength of character that enabled her to exercise far more than her limited constitutional powers throughout a long reign in which British society changed beyond recognition.

Following the Peterloo massacre, a series of similarly dramatic events occurred across Glasgow, central Scotland and Ayrshire. Mass meetings were held, after which 60,000 weavers went on strike, radicals marched under a ‘Free Scotland’ banner, and militia clashed with a crowd approaching the ironworks to obtain cannons. Maggie Craig tells the detailed story of the uprising and its brutal suppression.

In the three years following the Montgolfier brothers’ first hot-air balloon flight in 1783, the craze for balloons spread across Britain, then subsided. However exciting the ‘aerostation’ adventures were, the balloons defied navigation and went wherever the wind took them. This study explores the sort of madness that gripped aeronauts and spectators; how reason, science and magic accompanied balloon launches; the response of popular culture; and the impact of the new, aerial view of the world on Enlightenment sensibility.

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Thea Tomaini explores changes in English attitudes to the dead during the period 1700–1900 through the investigations of antiquarians who disinterred historical figures of earlier centuries. In studies of men and women including King John, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Shakespeare and Charles I, whose graves were opened for academic purposes, Tomaini shows the diverse ways in which corpses were ‘read’ and understood.

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Investigating the life of her distant ancestor, a Victorian bobby, Gaynor Haliday found herself researching the world of 19th century policing. Stories of how various police forces were established, the subtle craft of crowd control (including times when cutlasses replaced truncheons), and the myriad laws surrounding prostitution are accompanied by newspaper quotes, police records and photographs to recount how the foundations of modern policing were laid.

Charlotte Furness looks at the lives of three aristocratic women who flourished in defiance of the restrictions of 19th-century society. Two of the women engaged in major rebuilding and restoration projects in their houses and estates – Lady Mary Isham at Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire, and Elizabeth Manners, Duchess of Rutland at Belvoir Castle – while the third, Lady Harriet Leveson-Gower, née Cavendish, travelled widely as a diplomat’s wife and left a legacy of fine correspondence.

Without statutory right of appeal, a condemned prisoner’s only chance of reprieve was through direct petition to the Crown. This examination of a broad range of such petitions, including those from common thieves, bigamists, resurrection men and middle-class forgers, reveals the state of contemporary crime and punishment while also offering insights into the everyday lives of the offenders.

Elijah Dixon was Britain’s first mass-producer of matches, and also a Christian convert and an early advocate of Chartism, temperance and votes for women. This book relates how, as a prominent Manchester Radical, he played a role in both the 1817 March of the Blanketeers, after which he was imprisoned without trial, and the demonstration that culminated in the Peterloo Massacre.

Established in May 1804 as a small personal escort, the Garde Impérial rapidly grew into a formidable tactical unit comprising a third of Napoleon’s field forces. This narrative study, complete with uniform illustrations and military maps, tells of the unit’s 12-year history up to its disbandment in 1815 when Napoleon abdicated.

Rising from bandit leader to local ruler, Ali Pasha carved out a near-independent state within the Ottoman Empire in Albania and Greece at the end of the 18th century. This analysis of his career describes his role in world affairs during the Napoleonic Wars, and how he became both a byword for despotism and a force for change in the Ottoman world, which ultimately caused his downfall.

While Wellington was in Iberia, John Hildebrand joined the British garrison in Malta and took part in the defence of Sicily, the campaign in the Ionian Islands and the siege of Ragusa before being sent to Belgium and marching on Paris after Waterloo. The young officer's colourful memoirs are accompanied by maps, illustrations and commentary.

Digby Smith takes a somewhat anti-Napoleon tone in this analysis of the French Emperor's management of military and civic matters in the years up to his downfall in 1815. Among Bonaparte's chief major errors, he argues, were the invasion of Russia in 1812, the failure to invest in the Navy, and diplomatic mistakes that resulted in opponents gathering on all sides.

Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927) was one of the last hereditary peers to hold high office in Britain. Using material from Lansdowne’s own extensive archive, this biography follows his career as Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for War and Foreign Secretary. It also explores his conflict with fellow Liberals over free trade, and describes the opprobrium aroused by his 1917 call for an armistice with Germany.

The decade from 1811 to 1820 – when the profligate Prince of Wales ruled in place of King George III – was one of extraordinary development in politics, science and the arts. This study weaves together the highs and lows of a period that saw the assassination of a Prime Minister, the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Peterloo Massacre and the invention of the steam train.

The 1605 Gunpowder Plot is one of the best-known events in British history, commemorated on 5 November each year. This book re-evaluates the evidence about the origins, depth and extent of the plot. It profiles the conspirators, including Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes, and examines their backgrounds, aims and objectives. It follows their trial and execution, and reveals for the first time how close they came to overthrowing the government. Slightly off-mint.

This new edition reprints Bligh’s account of the 1789 mutiny alongside testimony by the lawyer Edward Christian, brother of the leading mutineer, and crew members. Yachtsman Peter Goss provides an introduction, while a map tracks the course of the voyage.

This detailed history of the famous shoot-out sets out to build the most accurate picture possible of the people behind the many fictionalized versions of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and their altercations with the Clantons and the McLaurys. The author sets this against the context of the growth and decline of the west, particularly Tombstone and the Mexican border.

China’s establishment of military bases on islands in the South China Sea has made these international waters a potential flashpoint. This study examines the threat posed to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and the likelihood – and dangers – of US involvement.

Gareth Glover, a long-time Napoleonic war researcher, has annotated and published for the first time letters and journals in the Waterloo Archives. This volume features the accounts of British soldiers from senior ranks to common soldiers, including the poignant final letters of Major Arthur Heyland, more boisterous accounts of bordello visits and recollections of plundering local farmhouses.

This volume comprises archive material from British sources, by men of all ranks in the cavalry, infantry and artillery. The many revealing details include failed horse charges, friendly fire, letters from surgeons attending casualties and the camaraderie among Peninsular veterans, with authors such as Sir Hussey Vivan; Frederick Ponsonby, who describes his battlefield wounding; and Daniel Mackinnon, famous for the defence of Hougoumont.

Composed of more than 300 eyewitness accounts, official documents and newspaper reports, this collection tells the story of Waterloo, mainly from British participants’ point of view. From the camaraderie among the massed allied troops ahead of the battle to the horrors of the cavalry charges and artillery bombardments, this gives a human view from commanding officers and lower ranks of some lighter moments and the heat of battle.

Writing his popular Sharpe novels about the Peninsular War, Bernard Cornwell drew on these memoirs more than any other first-hand accounts. '[Schaumann] had an eye for detail and an enthusiasm for campaign life that makes him the most immediate of all the war's chroniclers', Cornwell writes in his foreword to this edition.

Non-French mercenaries formed a crucial part of Napoleon's Grande Armée. This comprehensive study examines each foreign unit in turn, giving an overview of its origins, organizational and combat history, uniforms and standards, and eventual fate. Eyewitness accounts from contemporary sources and memoirs illustrate what life was like for soldiers the of the predominantly Polish, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, and other units.

In the freezing winter of 1808, a small British force found itself outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by Napoleon’s army. The only escape route for the British, commanded by Sir John Moore, was through the snow and ice of northern Spain, constantly pursued by the French. This account of their march recalls the desperation of the often barefoot and starving soldiers.

First published in 1894, when the author was still able to interview participants in the war, this book includes accounts of turning points from the Redan and the bombardment of Odessa and Bomarsund to the close of the campaign.

It is often claimed that the internet has subverted the hierarchies that have governed the world for millennia, but in this volume Niall Ferguson argues that informal networks have always been the driving force for innovation. From ancient Roman cults to Renaissance dynasties and the American founding fathers, he demonstrates how personal relationships rather than orders from on high have shaped the world. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Every family has its skeletons, but in 1823 the aristocratic Wallops were about to have theirs laid bare to the world. This biography tells the dramatic story of the Third Earl of Portsmouth. Wealthy and well-connected, a friend of Byron and Jane Austen, he was widely considered a harmless eccentric until – amid accusations of blackmail, abduction and sodomy – his own family set out to have him declared insane in a trial that scandalized the nation. Slightly off-mint.

Lady Longford's classic biography, which drew extensively on Victoria’s journals, is republished in an anniversary edition with a new introduction by Tristram Hunt. It gives a sympathetic, human account of the woman who wore a bonnet instead of a crown at her Golden Jubilee, exploring her public life and emotional challenges, including problems in her marriage to Prince Albert.

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Based on 40 years of research, this well illustrated volume offers insights into the life and career of Gouthière (1732–1813), and a definitive catalogue raisonné of his work. Credited with inventing matt gilding, he secured clients including the Duke of Aumont and Madame Du Barry and was held in such esteem that hundreds of items were attributed to him, yet he fell into obscurity and this is the first major study of him for over a century.

Whether it was an expensive daguerreotype, a piece of studio trickery, or a carte de visite, the Victorians were fascinated by photography, and by portraits in particular. Using contemporary texts and images, Robert Pols describes the experience of the 19th-century photographic studio from the subjects’ point of view, exploring why and how they chose a photographer, pose or style, and their uses for the finished products.

This concise introduction covers many aspects of Victorian society: class, religion, gender roles, the city and the empire. It considers how British views of the era have changed, and how it shaped the modern world, from the infrastructure of British politics and culture to the global struggles of the post-colonial era.

In the 1790s Britain experienced what Edmund Burke called ‘a revolution in sentiments’: Hewitt shows how the French Revolution inspired British radicals to incorporate raw emotion into reformist ideals concerning sex, education, commerce and medicine. However, while this had enduring political effects, the aspirations of Enlightenment figures including Samuel Coleridge, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Wedgwood went unfulfilled as the ensuing Terror led to political crackdowns in Britain.

Mark Braude tells the story of Napoleon's first exile, from his downfall and failed suicide attempt to his return to power in France. He focuses on the emperor’s irrepressible character, revealed through extensive reforms of his tiny realm, establishing courts, a theatre, drainage systems and new crops, and the build-up to his return to power and the Battle of Waterloo.

Examining ‘how drunkenness came to be written into the image that the port city presented to the nation’, Beckingham focuses on how Victorian Liverpool’s reputation as one of the most drink-sodden cities in Britain prompted municipal regulation in an attempt to salvage civic pride. Tracing Liverpool’s progress from degradation to temperance, the study offers a more general discussion of the place of drink in British society.

Published by the History of Parliament Trust to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the modern Commonwealth, this illustrated history traces its evolution, from the earliest English colonies in America and the Caribbean, through the demise of Empire and milestones such as the London Declaration of 1949, to the present diverse, informal and resilient organization. In telling that history, the book’s emphasis is on the influence of English, then British, representative democracy on political institutions throughout the Commonwealth.

Between 1808, when British troops landed in Portugal, and 1814 when their advance into France hastened Napoleon’s downfall, the Peninsular War involved numerous battles and sieges. Drawing on letters, diaries and memoirs, this book presents a chronological account of the campaign in the words of the men who fought in it. Six maps illustrate key engagements, including Talavera and Salamanca.

Historian Anthony Dawson draws on previously unpublished sources to cast new light on the most destructive war of the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Siege of Sevastopol, during which artillery bombardments, dysentery, cholera and the freezing winter exacted a huge death toll, the book highlights particular aspects including the storming of the Redan and the Mamelon, and the Battle of the Tchernaya, the Russians’ desperate attempt to break the siege.

Jean-Baptiste Barrès joined Napoleon's Imperial Guard in 1804 and was present at notable events such as the emperor’s coronations in Paris and Rome, the torchlight procession on the eve of Austerlitz, and the meeting of the two Emperors at Tilsit. His memoir modestly recounts such experiences and gives an insight into the everyday life of a Napoleonic soldier who saw conflict in numerous military engagements.

From the blockade and siege of Toulon in 1793, in which Bonaparte first made his name, to his escape from Elba in 1815, naval operations in the Mediterranean were a critical aspect of the Napoleonic Wars. Drawing on an array of primary sources, this study describes the ebbs and flows of the 20-year conflict that included the set-piece battles of the Nile and Lissa and brought to prominence Horatio Nelson.

First published as part of Fortescue’s A History of the British Army in 1920, this classic account is presented here as a single volume. Illustrated with maps and battle plans, it details the tactics deployed by both sides in every engagement from Napoleon’s escape from Elba in March 1815 to his final defeat at Waterloo in June.

Shifting the focus away from the notorious gambling of the aristocracy to the much less risky and more controlled gaming – specifically card playing – of the prospering middle classes in the period following the Restoration, this study presents a new perspective on middling mentalities, preoccupations and priorities.

This volume presents the papers of the Admiral of the Fleet Sir Alexander Milne (1806–1896), who did not see action in war, but whose service career can be viewed as a microcosm of the Navy during the years 1815–1900, the so-called Pax Britannica, and whose papers illustrate how the Navy was employed on behalf of the liberal state. With a substantial introduction and notes. Publications of the Navy Records Society. Vol 162. No jacket.

Presenting in full the correspondence between President Lyndon B Johnson and Harold Wilson over the four years between Wilson becoming Prime Minister in 1964 and LBJ leaving the White House in 1969, this volume illuminates the two leaders’ stated hopes of Anglo-American ‘close and friendly cooperation’ and how they were challenged by issues including the Vietnam War, Rhodesia, the Middle East, relations with the USSR and the Monetary crisis.

In this second volume of their study of police courts and the administration, experience, impact and representation of summary justice in 19th-century Scotland, the authors examine, through a number of case studies, how these civic and judicial institutions regulated everyday activities, pastimes and cultures.

In two parts, on the pre- and post-Reformation chapel, this volume of 26 essays discusses the organization of the chapel within the university; worship; architecture and fittings, including medieval bells and misericords; and the later monuments, stained glass and sundial.

Bethany Kilcrease traces the course of the ‘Church Crisis’, the conflict between the Protestant and Ritualistic (or ‘Catholic’) Parties, and alarm about the growth of Anglo-Catholicism within the Church of England. She identifies three developments that contributed to the sense of ‘crisis’: the publication of Walter Walsh’s Secret History of the Oxford Movement in 1897; the 1898 anti-Ritualist protests of John Kensit; and Sir William Harcourt’s parliamentary speeches against Ritualism.

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Lady Anne Barnard lived at the heart of Georgian society – the Prince of Wales was a friend, and Walter Scott admired her verses – but her defiance of convention made her an outsider. Drawing on her unpublished papers, including six volumes of memoirs, this biography brings the poet, musician, artist and hostess vividly to life, and tells how she travelled to France to observe the Revolution, married an army officer twelve years her junior, and raised an illegitimate child.

As their nation stood on the brink of Civil War, Americans were captivated by a new postal service that, for just 18 months, carried mail almost 2,000 miles across the continent using a relay of daring young horseback riders. In this book the coauthor of American Sniper explores the origins and development of the Pony Express, debunks myths that quickly grew up around it and considers its lasting relevance as a symbol of American enterprise. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge. American-cut pages.

Challenging the conventional narratives of cotton mills and inspired innovators, Priya Satia argues that the constant state of war and Britain’s thriving gun trade were driving forces in the Industrial Revolution. Discussing the economic impact of war on political and industrial progress, she scrutinizes the claims by Samuel Galton Jnr, the leading gun manufacturer, that his industry was no worse than any other as everyone was participating in war manufacturing, and that guns were instruments of civilization, essential for preserving property. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

This new, more extensively illustrated edition of the authoritative 1990 work shows how, in the years after the Battle of Waterloo, British warships developed from sail and wood to steam and iron, culminating in the world’s first iron-hulled, seagoing battleship, HMS Warrior. Written by a naval architect, it progresses from the structural innovations of Robert Seppings (1767–1840) to subsequent refinements of steam and the paddle-fighting ship, metal hulls and screw propulsion, and the evolving role of the Royal Navy.

Born in Moscow in 1971, Evgeny Kissin made his concert debut at the age of ten and is now internationally renowned for his interpretation of the classical and Romantic piano repertoire. In this collection of reminiscences he answers some of the questions that he is most often asked – about his childhood, his early teachers and his encounters with the world’s great musicians – and muses on topics including fame, inspiration and his favourite composers. Slightly off-mint.

Ideal for helping with school projects, the Eyewitness series explores the natural world and human history. Topics include dinosaurs and oceans as well as periods and events from Ancient Egypt to the Second World War, with illustrations and concise text explaining hundreds of facts and figures. Age 9+

A powerful statesman and inscrutable diplomat, Saionji led a delegation committed to achieving racial equality and international influence. Their lack of success and the Conference’s compromise – the granting of colonial territory – sowed the seeds of further conflict. Slightly off-mint.

During the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779–83), the longest ever endured by the British, the powerful forces of Spain and France blockaded and assaulted the isle from land and sea. Thousands of civilians and soldiers experienced starvation, disease and deadly bombardment. Including maps and illustrations, this book explores the story of the siege and its impact on life back home, while examining the argument that it ultimately cost the British the American War of Independence.

In 1794 during the war against Revolutionary France, the first Earl Grey led a Caribbean campaign to capture Martinique and Guadalope. Supported by maps and illustrations, this book demonstrates that although the campaign ultimately failed, the unorthodox tactics that were deployed showed a flexibility that would influence several notable subalterns who went on to success in Wellington's Peninsular army and Royal Artillery and, in the case of Richard Fletcher, the Royal Engineers.

One of the most inglorious events of Nelson’s career concerned the fate of the short-lived republic established in Naples by revolutionary France. Drawing on accounts by Nelson himself, Lady Hamilton and others, this book tells how, after being offered safe passage, the republicans were handed over to the besieging Royalists, from whom they received no mercy. It also investigates whether Nelson was personally guilty of this betrayal, or whether the orders came from London.

‘Oh, if the queen were a man, she would like to go and give those horrid Russians ... such a beating!’ wrote Victoria; while in Russia, Alexander III described the queen as a ‘pampered, sentimental, selfish old woman’. In this study of the hostility between the British and Russian royal courts, Coryne Hall begins with the disastrous marriage of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saarfeld, Victoria’s ‘Aunt Julie’, to Grand Duke Constantine in 1795, then traces 60 years of the queen’s fear and distrust of the Romanov dynasty.

‘By the seventeenth century the detection, conviction, and punishment of illegitimate lethal violence were firmly and irrevocably tied to the central government.’ Matthew Lockwood’s study shows how definitions of legitimate and illegitimate violence were negotiated in coroners’ courts from the late 15th century and gradually gave government the power to enforce a monopoly of violence – a basic prerequisite of a modern state.

Focusing on one critical year, this study identifies the developments that paved the way for the prosperity of Victorian Britain. It demonstrates how, amid widespread poverty and disease, industry flourished and railways spread across the land, bringing millions from the countryside to the cities, while Robert Peel’s abolition of the Corn Laws split the Tory party and ushered in an era of free trade.