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Three of Patrick O’Brian’s glorious adventure novels in one ebook for the first time. If you love the Aubrey-Maturin series then you’ll adore these.These three novels set the way for the Aubrey-Maturin and match the series in their rich detail, adventurous prose and comic nuance that all Patrick O’Brian readers can expect from the master of historical fiction.The Road to Samarcand finds newly orphaned Derrick thrown into the care of his gruff Uncle Sullivan, the captain of The Wanderer. Captain Sullivan, their cousin the Professor and his new ward set off for Central Asia with their sights set on treasure. Chinese warlords loom and the glint of a priceless piece of Jade send the group up into the mountains of Tibet stalked by something they do not know and cannot name.The Golden Ocean sees Peter Palafox, son of a poor Irish parson, signing up as a midshipman on Anson's 1740 circumnavigation of the globe, never before having seen a ship. Together with his life-long friend Sean, Peter sets out to seek his fortune, embarking on a journey of danger, disappointment, foreign lands and excitement.The Unknown Shore sees midshipman Jack Byron and his friend Tobias Barrow, an alarmingly naive surgeon's mate aboard The Wager. The ship is parted from Anson's squadron in the fierce storms off Cape Horn and struggles up the coast of Chile until she hits rocks and sinks. Isolated, the survivors are soon driven to drunkenness, mutiny, and bloodshed. But a handful of men make their way northward under the guidance of a band of Indians, at last finding safety in Valparaiso. This is a saga of survival and Aubrey-Maturin series fans might recognise Jack and Toby as precursors of the famed heroes of the great Aubrey-Maturin series.

In this inspiring and original book, former editor of The Times, Sir Peter Stothard, re-traces the journey taken by Spartacus and his army of rebels.In the final century of the first Roman Republic an army of slaves brought a peculiar terror to the people of Italy. Its leaders were gladiators. Its purpose was incomprehensible. Its success was something no one before had ever known.The Spartacus Road is the route along which this rebel army outfought the Roman legions between 73 and 71BC, bringing both fears and hopes that have never wholly left the modern mind. It is a road that stretches through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside and out into 2,000 years of world history.In this inspiring and original memoir, the former editor of The Times, Peter Stothard, takes us on an extraordinary journey. The result is a book like none other – at once a journalist’s notebook, a classicist’s celebration, a survivor’s record of a near fatal cancer and the history of a unique and brutal war.As he travels along the Spartacus road – through the ruins of Capua to Vesuvius and the lost Greek cities of the Italian south – Stothard’s prose illuminates conflicting memories of times ancient and modern, the simultaneously foreign and familiar, one of the greatest stories of all ages. Sweepingly erudite and strikingly personal, “On the Spartacus Road” is non-fiction writing of the highest order.

A wonderful collection on topical themes from the controversial ‘product-placement’ author of The Bulgari Connection.A superb new collection of stories: shrewd, sharp, insightful, with a cheerfully dark view of the world.The wronged wife remains a lingering presence even after the mistress has moved in to her home. Oriole, an enormously successful businesswoman married to the ineffectual Hugh, begins to re-evaluate her life, when her best crockery keeps mysteriously flying through the air. A sculptor finds love while protecting a Roman graveyard from property developers. A Christmas gathering turns murderous for one unhappy guest. A travel writer watches, horrified, as her father runs of with her best friend, but is soon planning revenge.The entire collection is shot through with Weldon's trademark mischievous deceitfulness, her hidden meanings and agendas. Rich, mad, greedy, deceitful, vulnerable her characters may be, but the stories maintain a defiantly optimistic air and sparkle with the irrepressible wit with which Weldon writes about the lives of modern men and women.

Praise for Gill Paul:The year is 1854, and Britain is in the grip of a gruesome war. Dorothea Gray has not seen her little sister Lucy since she eloped with the handsome Captain Charlie Harvington and set sail for the Crimea.Now, as the war worsens and the battlefields darken with blood, Dorothea must risk everything to find her sister and join Florence Nightingale in the Crimean hospitals, nursing the injured soldiers back to health. But the young Lucy is fighting her own battles, and not everyone wants to be found…Against the backdrop of one of history’s most heartbreaking wars, can these two sisters find their way back to each other? Or will tragedy intervene?A spellbinding tale of courage, adventure and true love from the bestselling author of The Secret Wife.

To coincide with the Channel 4 series to be aired at the end of this year – David Starkey's ‘Monarchy’ charts the rise of the British monarchy from the War of the Roses, the English Civil War and the Georgians, right up until the present day monarchs of the 20th Century.David Starkey’s magisterial new book Monarchy charts the rise of the British crown from the insurgency of the War of the Roses, through the glory and dangers of the Tudors, to the insolvency of the Stuarts and chaos of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the rule of a commoner who was ‘king in all but name’, the importing of a German dynasty, and the coming-to-terms with modernity under the wise guidance of another German, Victoria’s Prince Consort Albert. An epilogue brings to story up to the present and asks questions about the future.The crown of England is the oldest surviving political institution in Europe. And yet, throughout this book Starkey emphasises the Crown’s endless capacity to reinvent itself to circumstances and reshape national polity whilst he unmasks the personalities and achievements, the defeats and victories, which lie behind the kings and queens of British history.Each of these monarchs has contributed, in their own way, to the religion, geography, laws, language and government that we currently live with today. In this book,Starkey demonstrates exactly how these states were arrived at, how these monarchs subtly influenced each other, which battles were won and why, whose whim or failure caused religious tradition to wither or flourish, and which monarchs, through their acumen and strength or single minded determination came to enforce the laws of England.With his customary authority and verve, David Starkey reignites these personalities to produce an entertaining and masterful account of these figures whose many victories and failures are the building blocks upon which Britain today is built. Far more than a biography of kings and queens, ‘Monarchy’ is a radical reappraisal of British nationhood, culture and politics, shown through the most central institution in British life.

If British India had not been partitioned in 1947, its population would today be comfortably the world’s largest. At c1.5 billion, Midnight’s Descendants (the offspring of those affected by ‘the midnight hour’ Partition) already outnumber Europeans and Chinese; and they are growing faster than either. By 2020 they will constitute a quarter of the world’s entire population. As well as comprising the peoples of what is now called ‘South Asia’ (the preferred term for the partitioned subcontinent of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, plus Nepal and Sri Lanka) they are widely established across the globe.Midnight’s Descendants is the first general history ever published to treat the region as a whole. Correlating and contrasting the fortunes of all the constituent nations over the last six decades affords unique insights into the tensions and conflicts that divide what is being hailed as one of the world’s most dynamic regions.Written by a widely respected expert on the region, the book will be the first account to incorporate the rich story of South Asia’s transnational, or ‘diasporic’, peoples. It will examine attitudes towards their homeland of the 22 million overseas South Asians, and will assess their contributions to the self-image of the parent states, to economic survival in the case of Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and to India’s globalised achievement.Like Midnight’s Children, Midnight’s Descendants will be expansive and tumultuous in the great tradition of India’s narrative epics.

Amsterdam 1654: a dangerous secret threatens to destroy a young widow’s new life.Following the sudden death of her husband, twenty-five year old Catrin leaves her small village and takes a job as housekeeper to the successful Van Nulandt merchant family. Amsterdam is a city at the peak of its powers: science and art are flourishing in the Golden Age and Dutch ships bring back exotic riches from the Far East.When a figure from her past threatens her new life, Catrin flees to Delft. There, her painting talent earns her a chance as a pottery painter. Slowly, the workshop begins to develop a new type of pottery to rival the coveted Chinese porcelain – and Delft Blue is born. But when tragedy strikes, Catrin has a hard choice to make.Rich and engrossing, Midnight Blue is perfect for fans of Tulip Fever and Girl with a Pearl Earring.

The Battle of Trafalgar can claim to be one of the most known of the great human events. In Men of Honour, Adam Nicolson takes one of the greatest identifiable heroes in British history, Horatio Nelson, and examines the broader themes of heroism, violence and virtue.Trafalgar gripped the nineteenth century imagination like no other battle: it was a moment of both transcendent fulfilment and unmatched despair. It was a drama of such violence and sacrifice that the concept of total war may be argued to start from there. It finished the global ambitions of a European tyrant but culminated in the death of Admiral Horatio Nelson, the greatest hero of the era.This book fuses the immediate intensity of the battle with the deeper currents that were running at the time. It has a three-part framework: the long, slow six hour morning before the battle; the afternoon itself of terror, death and destruction; and the shocked, exultant and sobered aftermath, which finds its climax at Nelson's funeral in a snowy London the following January.Adam Nicolson examines the concept of heroes and heroism, both then and now, using Nelson as one of the greatest examples. A man of complexity and contradiction, he was a supreme administrator of ships and men; overflowing with humanity, charm and love but also capable of astonishing ruthlessness and ferocity. Nelson's own courage, vanity, ruthlessness and sweetness made him one of the great identifiable heroes of English history.In Men of Honour, Adam Nicolson also traces the stories of many unknown people of the day. He tackles the grand theme of heroism; the move from the age of reason to the age of romanticism; and examines a battle that was not only a uniquely well-documented crisis in human affairs but also a lens on its own time. Adam Nicolson does not approach Trafalgar as a military historian. His book gives a wonderfully immediate recreation of both the battle itself and its aftermath in a rich, concrete and intellectually engaging style.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, priceless documentary heritage records the diversity of languages, peoples and knowledge that has influenced humanity from the early days of human history to the present. This heritage documents important events, discoveries or inventions that have transformed the world.The UNESCO Memory of the World programme was created to preserve these recorded treasures of humanity and mobilize resources so that future generations can enjoy this legacy which is preserved in the major libraries, archives and museums across the globe.This book is a full listing of all entries on the official UNESCO Memory of the World international register:• Unique list of documentary heritage from around the world• Photographs and descriptions for 244 precious documents• All entries identified by the UNESCO International Advisory Committee and endorsed by the Director-GeneralEntries include:• 42-line Gutenberg Bible, printed on vellum• Archives of the International Prisoners of War Agency, 1914-1923• Bayeux Tapestry• Magna Carta, issued in 1215• Philippine Paleographs (Hanunoo, Buid, Tagbanua and Pala’wan)• The Endeavour Journal of James Cook• The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939)• Russian posters of the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries• The Battle of the Somme documentary• The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem

The gripping, epic new historical family saga from the author of A Woman of Substance.From Victorian London to the vibrant port cities of England and France, from gracious stately homes in Gloucestershire to the decadence of Paris, Master of his Fate launches an unforgettable new historical series.London 1884: Queen Victoria is Empress of India and Britain is at its peak of worldwide power.James Falconer works as a barrow boy in a flourishing London market owned by Henry Malvern. But James hungers for more. Turning away from family tradition, he dreams of building an empire of stores like Fortnum and Mason’s and believes that Henry, along with his daughter and heir Alexis, could offer him a way to climb beyond his beginnings.But tragedy and betrayal threaten the dreams of both James and Alexis – and jeopardise everything they hold dear…

Max Arthur, bestselling author of the hugely popular ‘Forgotten Voices’ series, recaptures the day-to-day lives of working people in the Edwardian era.The Edwardian era is often eclipsed in the popular imagination by the Victorian era that preceded it and the First World War that followed. In this wonderful work, Max Arthur redresses this imbalance, combining oral history and rare images and rediscovered film stills from the turn of the century to give voice to the forgotten figures who peopled the cities, factories and seasides of Edwardian Britain.This extraordinary period was fuelled by a relentless sense of progress and witnessed the invention of many of the technologies we now take for granted. The extremes of this upstairs-downstairs world prompted a huge upsurge in political activity, and the Edwardian age saw the rise of socialism and the emergence of the suffragette movement. These years are made all the more poignant by our knowledge that the First World War was imminent and this time of optimistic development would be brutally cut short.This book draws together the experiences of people from all walks of life, capturing the first generation that was able to record its experiences on film.

From the author of ‘Edge of Empire’ comes a fascinating, thought-provoking and alternative history of the American Revolution – that of those Americans who remained loyal to the British Empire.George Washington's triumphant entrance into New York City in 1783 marked the end of the American Revolution; the British were gone, the patriots were back and a key moment inscribed itself in the annals of the emerging United States. Territorial independence had effectively begun.Although widely perceived as a struggle between nations, the reality of the American Revolution is a strikingly different one. This was a war in which Britons fought Britons and Americans fought Americans. It was also one in which hundreds of thousands of American Loyalists, from Georgia to Maine, took Britain's side. And, when George Washington arrived in New York on that November day, they were forced to face up to a very tough situation; would they be free? Would they be safe? Would they retain their property and their jobs? Would they have to leave?As many as 200,000 American Loyalists left the United States. They lost their homes and their possessions and had little choice but to build new lives elsewhere in the British Empire. In ‘The Imperial Exile’, Maya Jasanoff examines the story of the Loyalist refugees, focusing on the life of one woman – Elizabeth Johnston – and her family, who reconstructed their lives in four different imperial settings: St Augustine, Edinburgh, Jamaica and Nova Scotia. Their movements speak eloquently of a larger history of exile, mobility and the shaping of the British Empire in the wake of the American War.A rich, compelling and untold history.