The Times has been synonymous with news for well over 200 years since the time of the French Revolution, reporting from the frontline of history covering conflicts that shaped the nation, among them World War One and World War Two, and tragedies such as the sinking of the Titanic and the Messina earthquake that stunned the world. Divided into Georgian Times, The Age of Victoria, The Edwardian Era, The Great War, The Twenties and Thirties, The Second World War, From Austerity to Astronauts, The Seventies and Eighties and Modern Times, and then there are the scoops. It was The Times that broke the news of Everest's conquest, just in time for the Coronation, and it was William Howard Russell's reports from the Crimea that changed the nation's opinion of the War, of soldiers and of their right to be nursed. The government first learned of Russia's proposals for peace from the paper. And while The Times may not have stooped to cover the first international football match, it did write up the first cricket Test Match in Australia in 1877. Each extract is limited to approximately 500 words recounting events rather than editorial opinion or comment. With views of the day which were tolerated, the original language, style and format as they appeared in the newspaper, the date the article first appeared and an index of people, places and events. The volume begins with the Fall of the Bastille on 20th July 1789 and the commentary is that for Britons, those property-owners that read the Times at any rate, the French Revolution was the most astonishing and shocking event of their era. The next page is the Battle of Trafalgar 8th November 1805. "It has taken more than a fortnight for news of the battle to be conveyed to London from the waters near Gibraltar." The Abolition of Slavery, the Battle of Waterloo, Peterloo, we move swiftly on until the Fall of the Berlin Wall 10th November 1989, 43 years after Winston Churchill proclaimed that an 'Iron Curtain' had descended across Europe. Within hours, thousands of people had moved backwards and forwards through the formidable barrier with a festive air. The last entry is George Floyd 30th May 2020. 448pp in big glamorous hardback.

In 1922, three men - only one of whom had previously heard of 'broadcasting' - founded the BBC. In doing so, Arthur Burrows, Cecil Lewis, and John Reith set out to accomplish something utterly bold: using what had been a weapon of war - Marconi's wireless - to remake culture for the good of humanity. 20 years later, when George Orwell famously quit the Corporation, he decided he was done 'doing work that produces no result'. Yet the BBC is now one of Britain's most beloved institutions. Stars once fainted at the microphone; now a select few spend their Saturdays waltzing for the nation's entertainment in front of studio cameras. From Daleks to Desert Island Discs, the BBC has blazed a trail for British entertainment. Yet it has also always been at the forefront of global change, both breaking and covering the most important stories of the century on Panorama and BBC News. The first in-depth history of the iconic radio and TV network that has shaped our past and present. Tennis from Wimbledon, the Beatles and the Stones, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Morecambe and Wise and Eastenders - for 100 years, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been the preeminent broadcaster in the UK and around the world, a constant source of information, comfort, and entertainment through both war and peace, feast and famine. The BBC has broadcast to over 200 countries and in more than 40 languages. Mixing politics, espionage, the arts, social change, and everyday life, The BBC is a vivid social history of the organization that has provided both background commentary and screen-grabbing headlines and now facing massive social change, streaming services and competition. Illus, 656 pages.

Chapter one: 'Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar... Whenever I heard something outside of our clenched little circle I'd practically flip... a couple of rounds fired off in the dark a kilometre away and the Elephant would be there kneeling on my chest, sending me down into my boots for a breath. Once I thought I saw a light moving in the jungle...' A groundbreaking piece of journalism which inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket. Michael Herr went to Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire. He returned to tell the real story in all its hallucinatory madness and brutality, cutting to the quick of the conflict and its seductive, devastating impact on a generation of young men. His unflinching account is haunting in its violence, but even more so in its honesty. First published in 1977, Dispatches was a revolutionary piece of new journalism that evoked the experiences of soldiers in Vietnam and has forever shaped our understanding of the conflict. It is now a seminal classic of war reportage. The book conveys all the facades of patriotism, heroism and the whole colossal fraud of American intervention. It all falls away to the bare bones of fear, war and death. With an introduction by Kevin Powers. Remainder mark, 288 page paperback.

Of particular interest given the very recent attacks in Gaza, this is fascinating background history. The Palestine campaign of 1917 saw Britain's armed forces rise from defeat to achieve stunning victory. After two failed attempts in the spring, at the end of the year they broke through the Ottoman line with an innovative mixture of old and new technology and tactics, and managed to advance over 50 miles, from Gaza to Jerusalem, in only two months. As well as discussions of military strategy, Stuart Hadaway's gripping narrative of the campaign gives a broad account of the men on both sides who lived and fought in the harsh desert conditions of Palestine, facing not only brave and determined enemies, but also the environment itself: heat, disease and an ever-present thirst. Involving Ottoman, ANZAC, British and Arab forces, the campaign saw great empires manoeuvring for the coveted Holy Land. It was Britain's victory in 1917, however, that redrew the maps of the Middle East and shaped the political climate for the century to come. The repercussions of the 1917 Palestine campaign continue to be felt today and the book re examines this crucial point in time when the fate of the Holy Land was changed beyond recognition. Chapters cover the first and second battles of Gaza, Ottoman Palestine, trench warfare, Into the Judean mountains and Jerusalem. Colour photos and maps and a note on names, quotes and terminology. 256 pages.

A rollicking tour of the English country home after World War II, when swinging London collided with aristocratic values. As the sun set slowly on the British Empire, its mansions fell and rose. Ancient families were reduced to demolishing the parts of their stately homes they could no longer afford; dukes and duchesses desperately clung to their ancestral seats, and a new class of homeowners bought their way into country life. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in 20th century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished. Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that so many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants' balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers. From the Rolling Stones rocking Longleat to Christine Keeler rocking Cliveden, the book takes us on a lively tour of these crumbling halls of power, as a rakish, raffish, aristocratic Swinging London collided with traditional rural values and the Americans invaded too. Capturing the spirit of the age, historian Adrian Tinniswood proves that the country house is not only an iconic symbol, but a lens through which to understand the shifting fortunes of the British elite in an era of monumental social change. It's all about keeping up appearances, grandeur fit for a queen, a rich interior, country pursuits and balls, plus some jolly bad behaviour. Many colour plates, over 50 photographs. 422 pages.

In 1893, even as Gandhi, Ranji and Vivekananda were seeking to take their ideas and expertise out of India, a Western woman was making the reverse journey, bringing her ideas to India. Mrs Annie Besant and The Theosophical Society became major players in both Indian and International arenas. Benjamin Guy Horniman was a great journalist who believed that Indians should be given the same rights of liberty and freedom that Englishmen enjoyed. Freedom-loving American Samuel Evans Stokes and Madeline Slade who left England for India and became the adopted daughter of Mahatma Gandhi, Philip Spratt and his contributions in the Indian struggle for freedom are some of the seven people chosen to tell their little-known stories. Foreigners to India date from the late 19th century onwards arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence. Their lives thus span a century of tumultuous history incorporating two world wars, Independence and Partition, and the emergence of a state and society. Of the seven four were British, two American and one Irish, four men and three women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work from journalism and social reform to education, organic agriculture and environmentalism. The writer William Dalrymple called them the 'White Mughals' who slowly shed their Britishness and adopted Indian dress, studied Indian philosophy at a time when racial boundaries were more fluid. These renegades came to the sub-continent from diverse social and intellectual backgrounds. They all combined writing with activism, two of them working up north in the high and cold Himalaya, two in the deepest south, close to the hot and humid coast, and two were inspired to settle in villages, marrying Indians and raising children with them. One man stayed unmarried and was almost certainly gay, taking Indian lovers. 476pp, eight pages of photos.

From the Information is Beautiful author and website is a stunning example of graphic designs pulling together complex information into beautiful graphics and something very uplifting. Which are the happiest countries in the world? According to a 2020 report the UAE, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland. Life expectancy has shot up 38% between 1960 and 2018. There are now 85% of countries covered with domestic violence laws, where there were no such laws in 1970. Leaf area, meat substitutes, same-sex unions (where legal), global literacy, hundreds of new vaccines in the pipeline, women in Parliament around the world, 100 towns and cities now getting most of their energy from renewables like Bogotá, Montreal, Porto and Auckland, some of the poorest nations which are the most generous and Yay Africa! The new African Union passport allows visa free travel between 55 countries. Drones have revolutionised medical deliveries in Rwanda, oil spills have decreased, suicide is at its lowest rate for 46 years in Japan, there are renewable energy superstars, routes for solving plastics, land preservation, unendangered animals, a new device to clean plastic from our seas, and can next-gen nuclear energy get us to carbon zero? Positive, beautiful, statistics and research and data cuts through gloomy news and dark nights. Big bold colourful pages and graphics throughout, 256pp, 19.5 x 25.2cm.
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Sir Horace Wilson was chief adviser to the PM Neville Chamberlain at the time of the Munich crisis, and the policy of appeasing Hitler is always associated with the names of the two men. Wilson was a civil servant with no official cabinet role, reflecting Chamberlain's preference for seeking the advice of those outside official government decision-making. The chief enemy of appeasement was Winston Churchill, an unpopular figure in the Conservative party. Chamberlain's policy of averting war at all costs is often ascribed to the fact that he was buying time to allow Britain to rearm sufficiently to present a credible military challenge to the might of Germany, but the author's examination of the papers of the period reveals that Chamberlain and Wilson were together seeking to avert war entirely. When Wilson was sent to deliver a personal letter and encountered a shrieking rant from Hitler, he refused to be intimidated and Hitler told Wilson, "England could wish for no better friend than the Führer". At the time of Hitler's Nuremberg rally, as Wilson and Chamberlain agreed to try to avert the coming war by sacrificing the claim of Czechoslovakia to its provinces in the Sudetenland, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, began to realise that appeasement was futile. The abandonment of the Czechs under the Munich agreement created a conflict in the Conservative party which was finally resolved by the invasion of Poland and subsequent war. Wilson lost his job with Chamberlain's demotion and was subsequently unemployable. 448pp, photos.

Grayling is Professor of Philosophy and Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University London. He believes that philosophy should take an active and useful role in society and in his book proposes a pragmatic and inspiring solution to the three biggest challenges that face the world today - climate change, technology and justice. In his timely book he asks: can human beings agree on a set of values that will allow us to confront the numerous threats facing the planet, or will we simply continue with our disagreements and antipathies as we collectively approach our possible extinction? As every day brings new stories about extreme weather conditions, spyware, lethal autonomous weapons systems, and the health imbalance between the northern and southern hemispheres, Grayling's question - Is global agreement on global challenges possible? - becomes ever more urgent. As we confront the danger of a warming world, AI and technology, justice and rights, relativism, he proves that it is hopelessly utopian to work for an end of division, and instead for all humanity to find common ground. An incredibly thoughtful read for all interested in philosophy and cultural affairs. 232pp.

A moving and sombre exploration of reality under Hitler's regime. People's fight against censorship, prejudice, beatings, imprisonment and murder are recounted and celebrated as victories against the violence of the Nazi rule, from the 'free university' in Brussels which saw students and teachers setting up underground classes in the face of Nazi 'guest professors' in 1941, to the Danish underground who were unique in seeking the approval of the workers affected by their sabotage. Read about the Nazi's execution of 60,000 people in Poland who were the country's intellectual élite and political and religious leaders, lament the murder of 1,300 civilians and the decimation of two villages in Czechoslovakia after a small group of Czech rebels assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and understand further the violence of the Nazis against Dutch soldiers and workers who decided to strike against the invaders in 1943. In the end the Germans shot 180 strikers dead, wounded 400 more and arrested a further 900 who were transported to concentration and forced labour camps. This historical companion includes tragic diary extracts from Anne Frank which describe how, at any time of night or day, Jewish people were dragged out of their homes and families were torn apart. Photographs include a portrait of an unnamed French resistance fighter from Life magazine in 1944, a picture of a detachment of German troops crossing the river Vlatava in Prague on 23rd March 1939, and a snapshot of the Duke of Windsor visiting a stock factory on 11th October 1937 and sitting beside Robert Ley, whom Hitler liked to mock for his speech defect. Travel from Germany and France, to Denmark, Holland and Norway as you understand the far-reaching, tragic actions of the Nazis and how people stood up against them. Paperback, photographs, 224pp.