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Among the highlights of the 1950s: Audrey Hepburn, dressed as a tulip, dances in Sauce Piquant, 500 Morris Minors on London dockside awaiting shipment to Canada, Queen Elizabeth II is crowned, CND protestors march to Aldermaston and Ernest Marples opens the M1.

The 1960s is known as the decade of music, fashion and youth culture; this volume has its share of Beatles but shifts the emphasis to people and events in the news, including Kim Philby, Christine Keeler, the army in Belfast and England collecting the World Cup.

As MP for Chester and a government whip, Gyles Brandreth had a ringside seat at Westminster from the fall of Margaret Thatcher to the election of Tony Blair. His frank and often funny diaries provide an insight into the workings of modern government, profiles of the key players, and the first-ever insider's account of the secret world of the Whips' Office. This updated edition continues the story to the arrival of David Cameron as Tory leader.

When he died, King Bhumibol (1927–2016) was the world’s longest serving monarch, having reigned since 1946. Seen by his people as the living Buddha, he was hailed as the saviour of democracy after a coup in 1991. Subsequently, criticism of his lucrative links to business and the military was firmly suppressed. Defying the ban on investigating the monarchy, this 2006 biography profiles a shrewd political operator who veiled autocracy beneath an egalitarian public image.

John Warwicker, a former Special Branch officer, tells the story of his six years in charge of security at No 10 Downing Street, protecting Prime Ministers Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher during an era in which the Cold War and the IRA were ever-present threats.

The second volume of Ken Wharton’s history offers a month-by-month account of events in the troubled province from January 1988 to December 1990, a period of unremitting bombings, shootings, ambushes and kidnappings. The timeline is interspersed with frank interviews with both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries, members of the security forces, and victims’ relatives. Unapologetically raw and emotional, the book is explicit in its portrayal of the human cost of terrorism, and its condemnation of both sides in the conflict.

Along with a sketch of the social and economic background and a timeline of events, this volume profiles the lives and achievements of Robert Baden-Powell, the fraudster Horatio Bottomley, Marie Stopes, David Lloyd George, Lord Reith and Bertrand Russell.

In this revealing portrait of Philip and Elizabeth, Ingrid Seward, one of the most respected writers on the royal family, addresses the question she is most frequently asked: What are the queen and prince really like? Focusing on their roles as parents and grandparents, including personal photographs, Seward covers their very different childhoods, doubts about their marriage and the experiences that have carried them through 70 years together.

The Long Range Desert Group was the first British special forces unit of the Second World War, carrying out deep penetration missions in the North African deserts and beyond. Centred around the unit’s founder, Ralph Bagnold, who in the 1930s explored miles of desert in a Model T Ford, this history of the unit and its operations also recounts some of its most daring missions.

An unprecedented smog hit London in December 1952, plunging the city into an eerie and poisonous darkness that killed 12,000 people. A few days later, John Christie strangled his wife and, over the following months, committed a further three killings. This true crime story draws together the notorious Rillington Place murders and the environmental disaster to chronicle a dark period in austerity London. Off-mint with a felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge.

Never in the Cold War – not even during the Cuban Missile Crisis – did the world come nearer the brink than in 1983. That was the year of Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ speech and his Star Wars programme, when the Soviets shot down the Korean flight KAL 007, and a NATO exercise spooked a nervous Andropov into believing war had started for real. Drawing on hundreds of recently discovered documents, this book reveals how close we came to nuclear catastrophe.

Created by slave revolution in 1803, Haiti has endured dictatorship, corruption, violence and, recently, a devastating earthquake. Drawing on personal knowledge of the country’s elite, this is a definitive history of a troubled nation. Slightly off-mint.

Retaining conscription after the Second World War, Britain required all young men to serve for 18 months (and after 1950, two years) unless employed in an exempt trade. Through interviews with 27 men across all the services and throughout the period of National Service, this book characterizes the experiences that shaped a generation, from fighting in Korea, Malaya, Kenya and Egypt to whitewashing coal in the local barracks.

In telling the life story of Elizabeth II, Andrew Marr is concerned with the influences on her and 'why she does what she does'. The result is a study of the monarchy that chronicles the Queen's pivotal role at the centre of state, which is largely hidden from the public gaze, and makes a strong case for the institution itself. Marr presents a vivid account not only of Elizabeth II, but also of the country she has reigned over for six decades.

‘I saw a V1 coming in south of Dover and caught up with it about three miles south of Canterbury. I was flying at 400mph and had no difficulty overtaking …’ This book features long-form interviews with over 40 veteran pilots of the beloved Gloster Meteor, the RAF’s first jet-powered aeroplane, which came into service in 1944 and played a significant role in the early stages of the Cold War, despite being alarmingly accident-prone.

With full employment, a boom in car sales, and washing machines making housework less of a chore, life in the 1950s certainly seemed better than ever before. Following a theme, such as family life, childhood or the rise of television, each chapter in this compendium brings together recollections of those who lived through the decade, remembering everything from sweet rationing to the meagre contents of a Christmas stocking, and how to find Indian spices.

From the Second World War to the ‘War on Terror’, Britain’s secret state has undertaken covert operations and amassed a vast amount of information on its citizens. Drawing on rigorous research and previously unseen material, this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism reveals how the security services have fought unreported wars abroad, forged links with terrorists in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and used a cloak of secrecy to conceal illegal activities, hide official embarrassment and distort the historical record. Slightly off-mint.

David Caute tells the story of Isaiah Berlin’s bitter feud with Isaac Deutscher, not simply as Anglo-American liberal versus Leninist socialist, but as a complex ideological clash between two of the most politically influential intellectuals of the Cold War era.

Margaret Thatcher remains one of Britain’s most polarizing prime ministers. This provocative investigation sheds new light on the Iron Lady’s war against the ‘enemies within’: striking miners, trades unionists, anti-nuclear protestors, feminists, gay rights campaigners and poll tax protesters. Drawing on countless news reports, studies and personal recollections, it sifts the real conspiracies from the theories that flourished in a paranoid age, to chart the lasting effects of the growth of the secret state on British society.

China is rapidly becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and its leader, Xi Jingping, is enshrined in its constitution – an honour not seen since Chairman Mao. This succinct, accessible primer charts his rise to power and explains his world-view, his plans to eradicate poverty and extend his country’s global reach, his thoughts on China’s Communist legacy – and how far he is prepared to go to defend it.

In January 1956, the home of Martin Luther King, the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, was bombed; by December, the black citizens’ campaign had ended segregation on the city’s buses. In this survey of 1956, Simon Hall describes how frustration with the post-war order caused ordinary people across the world – in places as far-flung as Algeria, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Cyprus and Cuba – to speak out, take to the streets and sometimes die in the bid for greater freedoms.

On VE Day, 8 May 1945, Winston Churchill was the victorious leader who had led Britain through five years of war. By VJ Day in August, he had been ejected from office and his great ally Franklin Roosevelt was dead. This absorbing history provides a month-by-month account of how Churchill, increasingly fearful of Stalin’s ambitions in Europe, became a voice in the wilderness once again, warning of the danger of Communism as he had warned against Nazism in the 1930s.

The defining year in a decade of change, 1965 witnessed a social, political, artistic and technological landslide that shaped modern Britain. Blending meticulous research with biting satire, this lively history charts how the old order was laid to rest with Winston Churchill, and the new generation – artist Bridget Riley, filmmaker Ken Loach, radical psychiatrist RD Laing – forged a new world, while the Beatles received MBEs and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins ushered in the ‘permissive society’.

Ideal for students new to philosophy, each book in this series places a major philosopher in historical context, explains their key arguments and considers their legacy.

This series presents engaging, academically credible biographies, written from an explicitly historical perspective.

Taking up the story in the summer of 1948 as the first post-war Olympics opened at Wembley, the second book of Kynaston's engrossing social history follows Labour through its second term (Attlee now being driven by his wife in a Humber instead the Hillman Minx). Quoting from a myriad first-hand accounts and contemporary documents, Kynaston gives an evocative account of British life, particularly in the key areas of industry, education and housing.

Beginning with VE Day and describing the first months of peace and the first years of Attlee's government, up to the launch of National Insurance and the NHS on 5 July 1948, this first book of Kynaston's much-acclaimed series Tales of a New Jerusalem records the reactions of the British people to the austerity of the early post-war years and to wider events such as Hiroshima, the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the arrival of the Empire Windrush.

Books 3 and 4 (The Certainties of Place and A Thicker Cut), here bound in a single volume, continue Kynaston's extraordinarily evocative narrative, from an ailing King George VI opening the Festival of Britain and the Conservative victory that made Churchill once more Prime Minister, to the Suez crisis, Soviet action in Hungary and bus fares raised in Lowestoft to offset petrol rises. Slightly off-mint.

Seventy years ago the British Raj was dissolved and the self-governing countries of India and Pakistan were born at midnight on 14–15 August 1947. But in the months surrounding Partition violence broke out between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, resulting in widespread ethnic cleansing that carved a gulf between the two countries with terrible consequences to this day. This book investigates how things went so very wrong, and left a toxic legacy of extremism, terror and nuclear proliferation.

In this volume, 15 leading scholars offer a critical evaluation of Mao Zedong, from the historical and political context of his emergence as a revolutionary in the early 20th century to his legacy.

Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 gave the young nation new confidence, but not all of its consequences were beneficial. In the final volume of his acclaimed trilogy charting Israel's history, Leslie Stein provides a vivid account of the country's economic, social and political development over the past four decades, its military engagements, its relations with the Palestinians, the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and the varying fortunes of migrants from Russia and Ethiopia.

Coming to London in the 1960s to work in advertising, the German-born Robert Hallman brought an outsider's perspective to his hobby of photographing the metropolis over the next three decades. This collection of his images includes period scenes of famous landmarks and British pageantry as well as reportage of London life, such as 1960s shopfronts, punks in the King's Road in the 1970s and street entertainers in Covent Garden in the 1980s.

During the Cold War a complex infrastructure of defence installations was built across Britain in response to the threat from nuclear weapons. After 1989 many of these formerly secret sites were considered obsolete and abandoned. This volume reports the findings of a project to identify those most in need of preservation, with photographs (both archive and modern) of the buildings, Ordnance Survey images, cutaway diagrams, architectural plans and ephemera, while the detailed text explains their purpose and construction and the historical background.

What did it feel like to be a young woman in the 1950s? Virginia Nicholson examines the pressures under which women lived in a post-war culture characterized by sex discrimination, inhibition, conservatism and hierarchy, and in thrall to the ideals of marriage, home and the perfect wife. With the emphasis on real women's experience, she explores topics from coronation fever, through 'how to get your man' manuals, housework and paid employment to the pervasive fear of atomic war. Slightly off-mint.

John Simpson spent over two decades reporting from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This is his compelling account of his experiences. He examines the period leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, the increasing tyranny of the regime in the years that followed, and the controversial question of the country's weapons programme. He offers his frank assessment of George Bush and Tony Blair's decision to go to war in 2003, and traces its chaotic aftermath up to the capture of Saddam.

Aesthete, sensualist, bookworm and politician of Machiavellian cunning, Francois Mitterrand was a man of exceptional gifts, exceptional flaws and exceptional contradictions. During the Second World War he was both a Vichy official and a Resistance leader, and after entering politics as a conservative, he became the first Socialist President of France. This meticulously researched biography reveals the elusive, secretive and complex man who ruled France for 14 years.

One of the most charismatic and outspoken politicians of the past 50 years, Ken Livingstone has never fought shy of controversy. In this frank and engaging memoir, he recalls his tough South London childhood, his formative political experiences, the demise of the GLC, and his comeback as Mayor of London. It offers an eye-opening insight into his battles with Thatcher and Blair, the committee-room intrigues of civic politics, and the seismic shift in social attitudes in recent decades.Slightly off-mint.

Michael Schoenhals' study of covert operations during the first 18 years of Mao Zedong's China uses detailed examination of agents' recruitment, training and operations to reveal a vast surveillance and control apparatus. No jacket.