riginating in a forum held in London in 2006, this volume of 22 papers by British and Egyptian contributors examines political, economic and cultural relations between the two countries in the post-Suez era, covering topics as diverse as the BBC Arabic Service, dealing with WMD in the Middle East, and the role of the USA. Off-mint.

This book explores the transformations Russia has undergone over the past three decades through the lives of four people born in the 1980s: Masha, brought up by her scientist grandparents; Seryozha, grandson of one of the architects of perestroika; Lyosha, son of an unmarried teacher from the Urals; and Zhanna, daughter of the liberal politician Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down beneath the walls of the Kremlin in 2015.

In 1945, Europe lay in ruins. Drawing on archival material and the personal testimonies of refugees, politicians, writers and church leaders, this history charts its physical and moral reconstruction. It examines the political systems erected on either side of the Iron Curtain, the establishment of new norms of behaviour in civic and private life, decolonization, the creation of the European Union, and today’s issues of race and multiculturalism.

During the late 1970s a series of security breaches within the US Embassy in Moscow led not only to several CIA agents being expelled from Russia, but to the execution of their Russian-born ‘assets’. This story of how the embassy was compromised follows several CIA and National Security Agency officers in their investigations into innovative Soviet tradecraft, uncovering advanced surveillance technology, moles, ‘walk-ins’ and microwave attacks.

A momentous year in world events, the dramatic images of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia are emblematic of a turning point in history. Also included in this photographic summary are the protests in Tiananmen Square, the Hillsborough disaster, the fall of Ceaușescu in Romania and the opening of the Louvre pyramid.

From Hiroshima to Chernobyl, and Windscale to Bikini Atoll, humanity’s management of the power of atomic energy has been riven with danger, secrecy, deceit, human error and short-sighted politics. Environmental journalist Fred Pearce travels through former test sites, closed Soviet cities and toxic wastelands where radioactive wolves roam the streets, to explore the growing legacy of our nuclear past and the dilemmas facing us over decommissioning and future safety. Off-mint.

With tensions high between Iran and the West, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw examines the history of Anglo-Iranian relations since Anthony Jenkinson’s visit in the 16th century. Iran’s hostility, he argues, is rooted in Britain’s former dominance of its oil, tobacco and banking industries, its role in the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, and its support for the last Shah.

By exploring the stories of nine contemporary Chinese artists, foreign correspondent O’Dea shows how China's four-decade rise from economic ruin to global powerhouse released both creativity and long-running tensions between the individual and the state. The challenges faced by these cultural figures in their artistic lives up to 2016 cast light on the long-running struggle for freedom of expression.

The New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick witnessed the tumultuous events in Egypt in 2011 first-hand, avoiding gunfire with demonstrators on the streets of Cairo. Drawing on interviews with politicians, generals and opposition figures, he examines the assumption that the Arab Spring was doomed from the start, demonstrating how it was deliberately and systematically supressed by powerful interests.

In this photographic project, Sheila Pree Bright pairs her series of portraits of civil rights activists from the 1960s, including Roslyn Pope and Lonnie King, with figures from the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement and her series of documentary images of BLM protests in American cities in 2015 and 2016.

After the Second World War, the initiative to divide Korea at the 38th Parallel was put forward by America. The war that followed resulted in the death of around three million civilians. This critique of America’s involvement in the Korean War of 1950–53 examines the origins of the conflict, America’s response to China’s involvement, including the chemical weapon bombing campaign, and the legacy of militarism and bitterness that remains in North Korea.

The end of Cold War in 1991 left the United States the world’s sole superpower. Drawing on a lifetime’s study and experience, one of its leading historians analyses the nature of that power, and traces its decline through inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, disengagement from international alliances, growing inequality at home, and the seemingly inexorable rise of China.

The fast-moving 20th century brought extraordinary medical and technological advances as well as some of humanity’s darkest hours. These 50 snapshots encapsulate the century through defining moments from the Boxer Rebellion to the exponential growth of the World Wide Web.

Edward Lansdale was a CIA agent who has been compared to Graham Greene’s ‘Quiet American’. He refused to participate in the overthrow of South Vietnam’s Diem government, a key turning point in the escalating conflict, and continued to argue for a less aggressive approach with more focus on winning hearts and minds. This biography explores his life and the impact that the different approach he advocated might have had.

Reflecting in its title the fragmentary nature of the nation it describes, The Archipelago tells how, after emerging from the war in ruins, Italy became an economic and cultural powerhouse. It explores the multifaceted nature of Italian society through TV, cinema, football and popular songs, and celebrates its capacity for reinvention despite deep political divisions, crime, terrorism, corruption and industrial unrest. Finally, it examines the career of Silvio Berlusconi and the rise of populism in the 21st century.

Amy Knight, an expert on the KGB, describes today’s Russia as ‘a truly criminal regime’. She first traces the long Kremlin tradition of covert violence and the development of the country’s post-war security services. In the remainder of the book she investigates the background to several recent killings – including the Litvinenko poisoning and the 2015 shooting of outspoken Putin critic Boris Nemtsov – and examines the evidence for Russian involvement in the Boston Marathon bombings. (Previously sold in Postscript as Orders to Kill).

This year-by-year account tracks the Syrian civil war from the first peaceful protests in Damascus in 2011 to 2016. Based on interviews with civilians, Free Syrian Army fighters and Islamist militias, it offers a human account of the devastation inflicted by the conflict, the ideological and religious passions involved, and the secret deals that armed and then betrayed the uprising.

Tracing the long-running policies of Western nations and their manipulations of leaders and groups in the Arab and Islamic world, this study explores how they have contributed to the failure of the Arab Spring, the emergence of Islamic State and conflicts across the Middle East.

Since its foundation in 1948 Israel has been torn between its ambition to be ‘a light unto nations’ and its desire to expand its borders. Drawing on declassified documents, personal archives and interviews, this epic history demonstrates how military service binds Israelis to lifelong loyalty and secrecy, making democracy a hostage to the armed forces. A compelling study of character, rivalry, conflict and the competing impulses for war and peace in the Middle East. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge.

From Trump’s United States to Erdogan’s Turkey, the press is under attack as never before. Can it survive the post-truth age of fake news? In this wide-ranging, documented survey, John Lloyd assesses the state of journalism around the world, and the commercial and political threats it faces, arguing that a free world is only possible with a free press.

Located deep in the north Kenyan desert, far from any other settlement, Dadaab is home to half a million refugees from Somalia and elsewhere. Over four years, Ben Rawlence came to know this sprawling city of mud, wood and plastic shacks. Through the stories of Tawane, a youth leader, Guled, a former child soldier who lives for football, the bright schoolgirl Kheyro, and six others, he shows that its inhabitants should not be reduced to statistics. Off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

In the 70 years since the CIA was formed, it has become increasingly effective at sidestepping government control and accountability for its actions. Focusing on the activities of key figures in the agency, John Prados examines its history of covert operations, intelligence analysis and technological development and reveals how the culture that developed led to high profile disasters and the current dysfunction between the agency and the White House.

One of the Arab world's most distinguished commentators explores the origins, leadership and organization of Islamic State, especially the way it combines over 1,000 years of ideology with 21st-century information technology and the dark web to spread its violent fundamentalist message.

Was the Prime Minister of Australia a Chinese spy, and did the Soviets abduct a British frogman from Portsmouth harbour in 1956? As secret documents from the Cold War period become declassified, this exploration into a range of spying revelations and exposés investigates the veracity of the stories and the credentials of their authors and finds that many do not stand up to scrutiny.

In 1962, a year after the Berlin Wall went up, a group of young West Germans risked imprisonment, torture and death to liberate friends, lovers and even strangers from the East. Based on interviews with the participants, and previously unavailable Stasi and CIA files, this history tells how two US TV networks financed their tunnel-building in return for the rights to screen the escapes, and how JF Kennedy’s White House, fearful of confrontation with Russia, tried to suppress the results.

Tracking John F Kennedy’s exploits in Britain between 1935 and 1963, from the era of the Great Depression in the USA to the Cold War arms race, Christopher Sandford looks in depth at how Britain shaped JFK throughout his adult life, and how he in turn charmed British society. Set against the Second World War and its aftermath, the story of this ‘special relationship’ suggests how certain experiences of Britain may have influenced Kennedy’s basic thinking as president.

Had the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 escalated to nuclear strikes, American missiles would have been launched from sites in England and those locations were therefore targets themselves. Drawing on interviews with the RAF personnel responsible for holding the Thor ballistic missiles in a state of constant readiness, this analysis explores the most dangerous period of the Cold War from the perspective of Britain as the front line.

The former British Ambassador in Germany and France, Sir Christopher Mallaby began his diplomatic career in the USSR; and in 1962 he was in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis. It was the first of several crucial moments in world history which Sir Christopher witnessed – including the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Falklands War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany – and his memoirs offer an insider’s view of international diplomacy and the diplomatic world.

Amy Knight, an expert on the KGB, describes today’s Russia as ‘a truly criminal regime’. She first traces the long Kremlin tradition of covert violence and the development of the country’s post-war security services. In the remainder of the book she investigates the background to several recent killings – including the Litvinenko poisoning and the 2015 shooting of outspoken Putin critic Boris Nemtsov – and examines the evidence for Russian involvement in the Boston Marathon bombings.

In 2018 Latvia’s politicians released KGB files seized when the Soviet Union collapsed almost three decades earlier. Alongside eyewitness interviews, they form the basis of this disturbing account of 50 years of tyranny that saw dissidents tortured and killed and 45,000 exiled to the gulags.

As the Cairo bureau chief of the New York Times from 2011 to 2015, Kirkpatrick arrived in Egypt shortly before the popular uprising against the Mubarak regime; he watched as a new president was elected and then deposed in a military coup that brought a ferocious crackdown on dissent. This eyewitness account of the turmoil combines analysis of Egyptian politics with the author’s experiences among ordinary people caught up in perplexing and heartbreaking events.

US foreign policy has undergone a troubling change in recent decades. Drawing on newly uncovered materials, his own experience in the State Department, and interviews with warlords, whistleblowers and every living Secretary of State including Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton, Farrow analyses the systematic dismantling of the diplomatic service. Under successive presidents, in his view, a shoot-first policy has replaced the skilled, patient statecraft that once secured America’s interests across the globe.

The Second World War was one of the most destructive in history, but also one of the most innovative, sweeping away empires and creating new global institutions. Ranging over five continents, this study examines how the war shaped the modern world, inaugurating the arms race and the space race, the United Nations and Bretton Woods, decolonization and globalization. With demagoguery on the rise again, it argues, we cannot afford to ignore this legacy.

As the chief reporter and news editor for the News of the World, Neville Thurlbeck was one of Fleet Street's most prominent journalists for over 20 years. In this memoir he recalls the most sensational scoops and scandals, including the Jeffrey Archer perjury case, the David Beckham and Rebecca Loos affair, and a variety of stories involving politicians, celebrities, serial killers and even MI5.

The former BBC industrial editor Martin Adeney blends memoir and history as he surveys the ruins of great industries and the rise of Thatcherism to reveal how the long decline of the British Empire has shaped the nation.

A graduate of Britain’s top-secret Joint Services School for Linguistics, Douglas Boyd was posted to an RAF airbase in Berlin in 1958 to spy on the armed forces of Warsaw Pact countries. He was subsequently arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Potsdam, where he was interrogated by the KGB. In this memoir, Boyd describes his work as a signals interceptor in Berlin, where he listened in on pilots flying over East Germany, and his encounters with key security personnel.

Celebrated director Oliver Stone filmed a number of interviews with Vladimir Putin between 2015 and 2017, discussing his childhood and rise to power as well as current policies and relationships with Western politicians. These transcripts of the interviews give a detailed insight into the Russian leader and question whether his demonization by the West in recent years is justified. Off-mint.

Edited in cooperation with Breaking the Silence, an NGO of former Israeli soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories, this collection of essays reflects on the human cost of 50 years of occupation, conflict and destruction in the West Bank and Gaza. The contributors include such celebrated international writers as Mario Vargas Llosa, Colm Tóibín, Eimear McBride, Hari Kunzru, Dave Eggers and Rachel Kushner.

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’.

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.

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.

The overthrow of Qaddafi in 2011 appeared to signal a new dawn for Libya, but the country's future now seems uncertain once again. This comprehensive study navigates Libya's long history of occupation and despotic rule, from the ancient Greeks, through the Ottoman Empire to Mussolini. It provides an in-depth account of Qaddafi's regime, the Lockerbie bombing and the Arab Spring, and assesses the prospects for democracy in this troubled land.

Hilde F Johnson, the former UN Special Representative in South Sudan, provides an insider’s account of the years following the country’s declaration of independence in July 2011. From her vantage point in Juba, Johnson witnessed how the seeds of conflict were sown and the rapid escalation of violence into what Desmond Tutu describes in his foreword as ‘an atrocious and senseless civil war’. This in-depth study of the new nation attempts to answer the question: why?

Slightly off-mint.

A comprehensive overview of the evolution of Shi’i opposition in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 to the ascension of King

Dealing analytically with the movement as a whole, this is a study of the East German uprising that overthrew Honecker's regime and culminated in the transition to parliamentary democracy in 1990. No jacket.

Western commentators usually attribute the turmoil in the Middle East to interference by global powers such as Britain, France, Russia and the USA. This provocative study aims to overturn that view, arguing that it is the culmination of long-existing trends in the region, from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire to the rise of Isil, and that only when Middle Eastern people take responsibility for their actions, and the West drops its condescending approach, can the region look forward to a real Arab Spring.

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was a towering figure, the leader of Cuba's revolution and one of the world's last Communist strongmen; but his fiercely defended privacy meant that biographers could barely scratch the surface of his personal life. Here Juan Sanchez, once Castro’s bodyguard, but later persecuted by the regime, shares his intimate knowledge of this 'man of the people' who amassed vast personal wealth (partly through government-sanctioned drug-running) and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle including a luxury yacht and secret island marina.

Subtitled The Impact of the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland, this volume looks at post-conflict peace- building efforts in the political, social and economic long-term peace.

Now best known as the author of the bestselling Millennium Trilogy crime novels, as a professional journalist Stieg Larsson was an untiring crusader for democracy and equality. While editor of the journal Expo he researched the extreme right both in Sweden and internationally. This book brings together his essays and articles on right-wing extremism, racism, violence against women, homophobia and honour killings. Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson; introduction by Tariq Ali.

This study explores the political and cultural mobilization of the two largest French veterans’ associations during the inter-war years: Union fédérale and Union national des combatants. Cultural History of Modern War series.

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’.

Focusing on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this book explores the role of unarmed resistance in the Palestinian national movement, and surveys the history of such resistance throughout the Liberation struggle.

Wylie’s adventures start with a text message: her best friend Cassie needs help, but finding her isn’t easy as Cassie’s messages become ever more cryptic. Something is dangerously wrong – but for an Outlier who can read minds, there is always danger. Young adult.

No sooner had the Second World War ended than the governments of the victorious powers were promoting their ideology (and the folly of the alternative) to their peoples and beyond. This collection of posters, many by leading artists, ranges from propaganda regarding the reshaping of Europe on either side of the Iron Curtain, and responses to the nuclear threat, to a selection of cinema posters for films encouraging a partisan reading of the political situation.

Muslim and Bengali-speaking Bangladesh was once East Pakistan, created when India achieved independence in 1947. The country gained its own independence from Pakistan in 1971 after a war in which many hundreds of thousands died. More conflict was to follow, exacerbated by natural disaster, famine and corruption. Salil Tripathi, an Indian journalist and Bengali-speaker, presents the first in-depth account of Bangladesh’s struggle for independence and the troubled aftermath.

While the Cuban Missile Crisis is remembered as a period when Cold War tension peaked, the world came nearer to destruction in 1983 – the year of Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ speech and Star Wars programme, when the Soviets shot down the Korean flight KAL 007, and a NATO exercise unnerved Andropov into believing war had started for real. Drawing on hundreds of recently discovered documents, this book reveals how genuine the threat of nuclear catastrophe became.

With personal access to world leaders over a period of nearly 70 years, the Queen has witnessed profound political changes as well as experiencing crises in her own family, such as the assassination of Louis Mountbatten and the death of Princess Diana. With historical notes and profiles of leading figures, this photographic biography explores the pageantry and the intrigues of the House of Windsor from the abdication crisis to the Diamond Jubilee.

Fidel Castro was the revered leader of Communist Cuba for half a century. In this revelatory memoir, Juan Sánchez, once Castro’s personal bodyguard and later persecuted by the regime, tells the story of his service, imprisonment and escape. He reveals the extent of Castro's vast personal wealth, which was partly amassed by government-sanctioned drug-running, and describes his lavish lifestyle, which included a luxury yacht and a secret island marina.

Fidel Castro’s 1959 triumph in Cuba sparked Eric Hobsbawm’s interest in Latin America, ‘a continent apparently bubbling with the lava of social revolutions’. The 31 essays and articles collected here represent his sustained fascination with the area and its politics. They cover topics including revolutionaries (not least Che Guevara), the Chilean road to socialism, the region’s peasant movements and its agrarian structures.

Having been raised in an Irish family in South Africa, the poet-novelist Christopher Hope grew up with a deep insight into apartheid. He returned to the country, after twelve years’ absence, during the 1987 whites-only election. Recalling a childhood road trip (as a white boy running through the landscape) he gives an objective account of the historic grievances of both Afrikaners and the black townships.

A quarter of a century after the end of apartheid, Christopher Hope embarks on a road trip through his homeland from Cape Town to the Zimbabwean border, meeting exploited black miners and embittered white nationalists. In the face of persisting economic inequality and interracial bitterness, he concludes that Nelson Mandela’s dream of a ‘rainbow nation’ is fading, and it might be the turn of the whites to hear what anti-apartheid politician Oliver Tambo called ‘the Move-on Blues’.

Mohamed Makhzangi was an Egyptian doctor studying in Kiev in April 1986 when the nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl, just 85 kilometres away. This book is his literary response, as an exile, to the tragedy of radiation and lies that befell the Soviet people.

Legendary spy chief James Jesus Angleton was the head of CIA Counterintelligence during the Cold War, which inspired his obsessive hunt for Communist moles. He played a significant role in major KGB defections, the obstruction of investigations into the JFK assassination and the first US forays into mass surveillance. This biography presents another side to him, showing an intriguing, reclusive figure whose friends included Ezra Pound, TS Eliot and members of the underground Washington gay scene.

Aimen Dean was a bomb maker for al-Qaeda and was well respected in the organization, but grew sceptical of their philosophy and defected to become an MI6 agent. Recalling his life as a spy, which included meeting Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and many other key figures, his extraordinary memoir provides a deep insight into the terrorists’ world. Off-mint.

The internet has become a market for data, amassing behavioural and factual information about its users. In the face of online and ‘real-life’ threats, investigative journalist Yasha Levine traces the origins of the internet as a method to control insurgents in the Vietnam War; follows the case of Edward Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency information about America’s global surveillance apparatus; and traces the covert links between tech giants such as Google and Facebook and intelligence agencies.

This investigative history of Reagan, Gorbachev and the Cold War’s final decade draws on many previously unpublished sources, including classified Kremlin documents and interviews with political leaders, scientists, military officials and diplomats. As well as cataloguing the Russian automatic nuclear-control system called the ‘Dead Hand’, the book shows how the regime persisted in their paranoid belief that the US was planning a first strike strategy.

Andrew Roberts follows Britain’s relations with the United States and the Commonwealth over the last 120 years. He examines the Western Alliance’s response to the challenges of two world wars and the Cold War, arguing that the unity of the English-speaking peoples is a bastion of liberty, and warning that the ‘wasted breathing space’ between 1991 and 2011 left us ill-prepared to meet the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

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Starting with the growing nationalist demands for independence that followed the Second World War, Guy Arnold’s magisterial history describes the momentous changes that transformed Africa from a collection of European colonies to fifty independent nations. After an introduction to the post-war continent, the book examines how the hopes of the 1960s were followed by the realities of foreign interference, internal tyrannies and corruption. This 2017 edition ends with the growing influence of China, the Arab Spring and the refugee crisis.

After briefly outlining 2,000 years of Vietnamese history, Kerr describes the French and American involvement in the country and the astonishing struggle of the North and some South Vietnamese to fulfil their long-held dream of unification.

After the Second World War, the ‘iron curtain’ divided Germany, leaving the British, American and French sectors of the devastated capital stranded in the Soviet-controlled East. Only three air corridors remained open, and between June 1948 and September 1949, Allied air forces defied the blockade, delivering food and fuel by plane. Barry Turner gives a full account of the crisis developing between East and West, the events leading up to June 1948, and the heroic Airlift that saved a besieged city.

The story of the moon landings begins with the wartime work of German rocket scientists including Wernher von Braun, nascent computer technology and the imagination of post-war science fiction writers such as Arthur C Clarke. Using eyewitness reports and NASA archive material this account of the achievement describes how it all came together, accelerated by the pressure of the technological race with Soviet Russia.

Nelson Mandela stood trial in 1963 alongside ten other defendants accused of plotting to violently overthrown the South African government. Revealing the entrenched bigotry and discrimination faced by the defendants, this account of the case, written by one of the defence lawyers, describes the trial in detail with close observations of all the principal characters. Slightly off-mint.

Aimen Dean was a bomb maker for al-Qaeda and was well respected in the organization, but grew sceptical of their philosophy and defected to become an MI6 agent. Recalling his life as a spy, which included meeting Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and many other key figures, his extraordinary memoir provides a deep insight into the terrorists’ world.

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.

As the Cold War intensified in the late 1950s, an eccentric Greek-American physicist developed a startling idea: to detonate nuclear explosions in space to create a radiation belt that would destroy incoming Soviet missiles. Drawing on newly declassified sources, this book describes the plans for Operation Argus, the New York Times exposé of the project, and the 1963 Test Ban Treaty that prevented high-altitude explosions.

The city of Hue was of major strategic importance to the US Army in Vietnam, but the January 1968 offensive against the city by the North Vietnamese Army led, as the Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden shows, to the war’s costliest campaign.

Foreign correspondent Peter Hessler lived in Cairo through the tumultuous years following the Arab Spring of 2011. Here, he draws parallels between the rise and fall of Mohammed Morsi and the coup that brought Sisi to power and the long timeline of Egypt’s history. The people he encounters – archaeologists, politicians, a teacher and a gay translator – all struggle with the chaos, corruption and repression that ensued.

Beginning with a clever ruse to sow disinformation about emigré Russians opposing the Soviet regime in the 1920s, this study reveals a century of undercover intelligence operations that have sought to exploit political tensions by planting, leaking or forging false stories. The final chapters deal with the emergence of computer hacking, cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns waged through social media.

With a degree in modern languages, Daphne Park joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) in 1943 and was quickly talent spotted and transferred to the Special Operations Executive. This biography details her extraordinary achievements in the Secret Intelligence Service, taking her to Vienna and Moscow during the height of the Cold War, to the Congo and Hanoi, and attaining in the 1970s the Secret Intelligence Service's most senior operational rank.

Off-mint.

Kennedy's visit to West Germany in 1963 and his climactic 'ich bin ein Berliner' speech were key moments in the Cold War and the President's career, assuring the Berlin people that their freedom would be protected. This record of the trip selects the best images taken by Hamburg photographer, Ulrich Mack, who was with the Kennedy entourage throughout the tour.

In 1967 Major Paddy Bates proclaimed himself ruler of an abandoned Second World War fort in the North Sea. Incorporating many rare photographs and interviews with surviving members of Sealand’s royal family, this book tells the story of how this island nation fought off the British government and armed mercenaries for half a century, preserving its independence to this day.

Blum tells the story of the post-war counter-espionage operation that aimed to frustrate Soviet attempts to steal American and British military and nuclear secrets. Meredith Gardner, a brilliant linguist, and Bob Lamphere, an FBI agent (supported by the mainly female codebreakers of Arlington Hall), were unlikely partners in this mission, which ultimately led to the arrest of the Rosenbergs and the notorious Venona files.