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.

After the Battle of the Nile in 1798, Sultan Selim III presented Horatio Nelson with a chelengk – a diamond-studded turban ornament, its central star rotated by clockwork. Worn in the admiral's hat, it became his emblem. This book tells the story of its creation, and how it passed down through the family to be exhibited at the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where it was stolen in a 1951 burglary and never seen again.

John Hall explores the myths and controversies surrounding Italian nobleman Theodore Paleologus, heir apparent to the throne of Byzantium, who in 1597 arrived in England to murder a traitorous compatriot, then remained in the pay of the Earl of Lincoln to sow misery among the English aristocracy until his death in 1636. The biography also scrutinizes Paleologus’s offspring, who fought one another in the English Civil War, and backs their father’s long-dismissed claim to the imperial throne.

Nelson never enjoyed robust health, and was even seasick when he first set sail. As this book demonstrates, it was his experience of illness and the serious injuries he suffered that made him uniquely aware of the importance of health and fitness to the Navy, using his fame and influence to improve the welfare of his men through better diet, shipboard hygiene, more modern surgical practices and greater attention to convalescence and aftercare.

By the autumn of 1536 Henry VIII had broken with Rome and was eyeing the wealth of the monasteries. In the north of England, 30,000 men loyal to the Catholic Church took arms against him in the uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Using the rebels' own testimony, this history examines their motives and beliefs, traces the course of the ill-fated insurrection, and describes the rhetoric, bribery and retribution employed by Henry's minister Thomas Cromwell to overcome them.

In this compelling study of Henry VIII, the Tudor historian John Matusiak takes a fresh approach to the king’s reign, concentrating on Henry’s qualities – or lack of – as a ruler, rather than the usual business of his six wives, to paint a colourful and unforgiving portrait of a man wholly unfit for power.

English colonizing efforts in North America were painfully unsuccessful in comparison with Spain's empire-building further south. Investigating the reasons for England's slow progress, Childs uses primary sources to examine vessels and voyages from Cabot's Matthew in 1497 to Winthrop's fleet in 1630; the unrealistic ambitions of promoters like Ralegh; the nature of the conflict with Native Americans; and the lack of leadership and co-operation that doomed English attempts to settle on the American coast to failure.

Less than 30 years after Charles II was restored to the throne, his brother James II was forced to make way for his son-in-law, William of Orange. Describing momentous days that shaped the nation's future, this narrative history tells of a stubborn and bigoted king at odds with his subjects, of religious conflict and political intrigue, and shows how the Revolution of 1688 created a constitutional monarchy and paved the way for modern parliamentary democracy.

The city founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and variously known as Sankt Peterburg, Petrograd and Leningrad has been home to some of Russia's greatest cultural figures, including Pushkin, Tchaikovsky and Nijinsky. Well known too for its physical appearance, with baroque palaces, bridges and promenades, the city nonetheless suffered depredations in the 1905 Revolution and the Nazi siege. Arthur George, who lived in St Petersburg for several years, charts the high and low points of this most European of Russian cities. Off-mint.

Life in Tudor England was ordered in a very strict social hierarchy, and the divisions between the classes were firmly maintained: it was understood that everyone, apart from the monarch, served someone, and service was valued rather than denigrated. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, Tudor expert Alison Sim investigates the role of service at every level of society, and provides an informative and entertaining account of the lives of the people who kept the wheels of daily life turning.

As the great-niece of Henry VIII, Jane Grey was a pawn in the power game of Tudor politics. The dying Edward VI made Jane his heir and, on 6 July 1553, aged 16, she became queen. Her reign lasted nine days: when Mary Tudor claimed the throne, Jane was sent to the Tower and beheaded in 1554. In this compassionate biography, Plowden tells the story of a gifted, scholarly girl, doomed by her royal blood.

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.