Collection: Adult Non Fiction - History

London, 1772: a young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the grimy backstreets of the capital, on his way to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him in Piccadilly, turning satire into an artform, ...

'Extraordinary. . . it would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original' - Viv Groskop, Observer*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week*The long-awaited translation of the classic oral history of Soviet women's experiences in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Li...

This work is the first history of recorded literature since Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877. It traces the tradition from phonographic books made on wax cylinders to talking books made for blinded soldiers returning from the First World War and, much later, the commercial audi...

In 1953, a man was found dead from cyanide poisoning near the Philadelphia airport with a picture of a Nazi aircraft in his wallet. Taped to his abdomen was an enciphered message. In 1912, a book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich came into possession of an illuminated cipher manuscript once belonging ...

In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how England's monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects' destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits. Taking us right back to King Arthur (sp...

Discover your ancestry on FamilySearch.org, the world's largest free genealogy website. This in-depth user guide shows you how to find your family in the site's databases of more than 3.5 billion names and millions of digitized historical records spanning the globe. Learn how to maximize all of...

'Australian governments find it easy to go to war. Their leaders seem to be able to withdraw with a calm conscience, answerable neither to God nor humanity.' Australia lost 600 men in the Boer War, a three year conflict fought in the heart of Africa that had, ostensibly, nothing to do with Austra...

The first in-depth study of female same-sex desire in twentieth century Australia, this book explores the compelling stories of ordinary women who struggled to build lives and express their love for other women in a hostile society. Focusing on Sydney and country NSW, 1930 - 1978, it traces the d...

A new work of history that seeks to unmake mythologies of pioneers, pastoralism and possession in the Northern Territory. Some stories dominate how we see and interpret a place, while others are obscured from view. Angas Downs is a pastoral station in Central Australia, but pastoralism is only a ...