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‘Haunted by history’, Barcelona’s extraordinary architecture and atmospheric barrios have inspired writers for centuries. This guide explores its topography and culture through the work of 50 authors writing in English, Spanish and Catalan, including Orwell, Hemingway, Lorca and the Nobel Prize-winner Salvador Espriu. Also includes a basic map of the city’s historic districts, including the Ramblas, the Raval and the Gothic Quarter.

An Anzac veteran, Sydney Loch (1888–1955) and his wife Joyce settled in Thessalonika, in the last village where women were allowed before the wall of the male-only Athos peninsula. Drawing on 25 years of living there and exploring the Holy Mountain, this is Loch’s account of the autonomous region inhabited only by Orthodox monks, living in monasteries on the flanks of the mountain and keeping Byzantine time, in which the day begins at sunset. First published in 1957. Small print

Though never a soldier himself, Kipling wrote extensively about war. This selection of his journalism, fiction and verse ranges from Egypt and India to Sudan and South Africa. Featuring his eye-witness reports from the Boer War, his commentary on the First World War, and celebrated poems such as ‘Tommy’, ‘Gunga Din’ and ‘Recessional’, it reflects both his sympathy for the lot of the common soldier and his opinion of high command.

Marcel Krueger’s grandmother, Cäcilie Barabasch was from a farming family in what is now Poland but was then East Prussia. In the severe cold of January 1945, aged around 20, Cäcilie was ‘mobilized’ and taken by the Red Army to the Soviet labour camps in the Urals, where she remained for five years before returning to Germany. Marcel Krueger tells her story and his own, as he retraces her journey by road and rail across today’s Poland and Russia.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) often travelled by sea and he had a keen interest in all things nautical. This selection of his letters, journalism, books and poems ranges from a brief account of his first journey from Bombay to England in 1871 to correspondence with Sir Percy Bates, Chairman of Cunard, in the 1930s, and illustrates Kipling’s impressive maritime knowledge and his deep respect for the ocean.

Aged just 21 when he conquered Constantinople in 1453, Mehmet II was known to Europe as a brutal tyrant, whose advancing Ottoman empire, reaching across Asia Minor to Hungary and Italy, led three Popes to call for Crusades. He was 'the present Terrour of the World', but as John Freely’s biography reveals, Mehmet’s court was filled with poets, astronomers, scholars and artists, and his military conquests brought Greco-Islamic science to the West at the dawn of the Renaissance. Slightly off-mint.

This anthology presents a highly readable selection of extracts from a wide range of female sources, usefully grouped by theme. Topics naturally include motherhood, marriage and domestic life, but here is also commentary on religion, politics, work and education by contributors from all walks of life. These are the authentic voices of British women's experience (and the occasional man's), from the close of the 18th century to the outbreak of the First World War. No jacket.

Struggling to write a novel set in South America, John Hopkins decided to revisit the continent, travelling slowly by train, bus and river boat from Mexico City to Argentina, via Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay, savouring every experience along the way. The diary he kept is a vivid portrait of Latin America, a tequila-soaked chronicle of solitude and writer’s block, and an angst-ridden account of his troubled love for his travelling companion Madeleine.

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?

After a brief history of the ‘Viking Age’, which saw the movement of peoples from Scandinavia to the British Isles, Eleanor Parker turns to medieval chronicles and legends about the Vikings or ‘Danes’. Although the medieval narratives often portray the Scandinavians as raiders whose purpose was plunder and destruction, Parker’s close study of the stories reveals other motives – including participation in English politics and the need to settle – and she traces the positive Viking contribution to culture and identity in England.

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 1925 the young American architect Barry Dierks and his lover Eric Sawyer built Le Trident, a Modernist home at Miramar on the Côte d’Azur. Word of Barry’s talent spread, and the commissions that followed propelled them into the heart of Riviera society, with clients including Somerset Maugham and the Marquess of Cholmondeley. This biography recalls Barry and Eric’s time with their glamorous circle of friends, contrasting the lifestyle of the Jazz Age with the hardships that were to come under German occupation.

Ancient Greek science and philosophy began in the sixth century BCE in the wealthy city of Miletus in Asia Minor, where Thales and Anaximander proposed theories about the nature of the universe. This sweeping history of the Greek scientific tradition follows the chain of knowledge from these early physicists, through such thinkers as Aristotle and Archimedes, to the twilight of the classical age, the transmission of Greek ideas to the Islamic world and their revival in Europe during the Renaissance.

Francis Young, himself at the forefront of the search to locate the lost coffin of King Edmund, tells the story of the historical search for the real man behind the legendary East Anglian king killed by the Vikings in 869. The book traces Edmund’s progress from martyred king to England’s national saint in medieval times; and describes current research into Edmund’s burial in the abbey at Bury St Edmunds and the present whereabouts of his mortal remains.

Italy's surrender in September 1943 opened the opportunity for the Allies to take control of strategically important Greek islands. The British moved to strengthen the Italian garrison on Leros, only to lose it in one of the last significant Allied defeats of the war. Drawing on first-hand accounts, this book tells the story of the siege and battle, the daring escapes from the German invaders and the years of incarceration for those captured.

Adele Smith's history celebrates the first 100 years of the society founded by Sir Evelyn Wrench in 1910 and dedicated to 'supporting the Commonwealth through its own social, music, arts and welfare activities'. Foreword by HM the Queen.

Drawing on a wealth of scholarly research and firsthand source material, this is a comprehensive survey of the modern religious world. Encompassing traditional faiths, indigenous religions and new religious movements, the book focuses on the historical development and teachings of each religion and examines how these traditions have evolved into contemporary beliefs and practices. This revised and updated edition also explores new approaches to spirituality, the spread of religious pluralism and the movement towards interfaith dialogue.

After taking over the family rubber business, Edouard Michelin's striking innovation, in 1891, was a removable pneumatic bicycle tyre. This idea, together with brother André's marketing genius, was the foundation of a phenomenal rise in the company's fortunes. This highly readable history tells the story of how the two brothers' groundbreaking efforts built a global empire and helped to create a tourist industry around motoring with their famous Michelin guides and maps. Off-mint.

In 1809, at the height of the struggle against Napoleon, Britain's Secretary of State for War, Lord Castlereagh, challenged the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, to a duel. The two men met on Putney Heath, and Canning was wounded in the thigh. Drawing on previously overlooked private papers, this detailed history examines the rivalry that led two eminent statesmen to risk their lives in the midst of a national emergency, and traces the far-reaching consequences of this bizarre incident.

From Abdul Rahman (1903–90) to Zulu, this A–Z of more than 400 entries, each with a brief bibliography, offers 'a compendium of all things British Imperial', from the Empire's origins to around 1980.

Luke Pitcher's very accessible study of 'ancient history-writing in action', merges two approaches of modern historiography: that concerned with reliability and sources; and that focussed on works of history as literary productions. No jacket.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Sir William Hamilton was George III's ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples and his letters to the English court, 1798 to 1799, provide a vivid, day-by-day account of European events.