William Collins Secret Pigeon Service. Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe Corera Gordon

As a young civil servant, Jeremy Heywood's insightful questioning of the status quo pushed him to the centre of political power in this country for more than 25 years • He directly served four Prime Ministers in various roles including as the first and only Permanent Secretary of 10 Downing Street, the Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Home Civil Service. He was at the centre of every crisis from the early 1990s until 2018 and most of the key meetings. Invariably, when faced with a new policy initiative a Prime Minister's first response would be: 'but what does Jeremy think?' • Jeremy worked up until his death, retiring just a few days before he died from lung cancer in October 2018. This book began as a joint effort between Jeremy and his wife Suzanne - working together in the last months of his life

The fabled city of Timbuktu has captured the Western imagination for centuries. The search for this 'African El Dorado' cost the lives of many explorers but Timbuktu is rich beyond its legends. Home to many thousands of ancient manuscripts on poetry, history, religion, law, pharmacology and astronomy, the city has been a centre of learning since medieval times • When jihadists invaded Mali in 2012 threatening destruction to Timbuktu's libraries, a remarkable thing happened. A team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the precious manuscripts into hiding. Based on new research and first-hand reporting, Charlie English expertly tells this story set in one of the world's most fascinating places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable

An essential read for anyone who has encountered a crisis of confidence • Where does self-confidence come from? How does it work? Why are some people more confident than others? On the surface, these seem like simple questions – but answers can feel hard to come by when we need them most • In this bestselling book, Charles Pepin brings to light the strange alchemy that is self-confidence. Pepin examines the role confidence plays in the lives of our most respected public figures including the likes of Madonna, Mozart, Frieda Kahlo, Martin Luther King and Serena Williams, and argues that above all, to live a life of confidence is to live a life of action • Drawing on the collective wisdom of philosophers, psychologists and the lives of people we encounter on a daily basis, Pepin invites us to probe the mystery and mastery of self-confidence

The brilliantly compelling new biography of the treacherous and tyrannical King John, published to coincide with the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta • King John is familiar to everyone as the villain from the tales of Robin Hood — greedy, cowardly, despicable and cruel. But who was the man behind the legend? • Drawing on contemporary chronicles and the king's own letters, bestselling historian Marc Morris brings the real John vividly to life. We see how a youngest son with limited prospects became the ruler of the greatest dominion in Europe, but at a terrible cost. His rise to power involved treachery, rebellion and murder, and his reign witnessed oppression on an almost unprecedented scale. It climaxed in conspiracy and revolt, and his leading subjects forced him to issue Magna Carta, a document binding him and his successors to behave better in future

The hilarious and moving new book from funny fiction superstar Sam Copeland, author of the bestselling Charlie Changes Into a Chicken • Uma Gnudersonn has a head full of questions: How can I save my home from being sold? Will my dad ever start talking again? And how do alpacas get drunk? But since her mum died, Uma's life has been short on answers • Then she finds a genius artificial intelligence called Athena who knows everything • Suddenly Uma has the answer to any question she can imagine - from the capital of Mozambique to the colour of her headteacher's underpants - and she's going to use them to save her home and her father • Along the way, Uma will have to confront the sinister inventor who will stop at nothing to get Athena back - and face up to the fact that not all questions have answers

On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Taylor tells for the first time the gripping story of Operation Chiffon, the top-secret intelligence operation that helped bring peace to Ireland • April 1998: the Good Friday Agreement is signed, ending decades of violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland. The process of getting the IRA to end its so-called 'armed struggle' was always the prerequisite of the search for peace. It was Operation Chiffon that finally helped make it possible • Operation Chiffon takes us inside the top-secret intelligence operation whose roots go back to the bloodiest years of the conflict in the early 1970s, involving officers from MI6 and, later in the 1990s, MI5. The remarkable story, which has remained hidden for forty years, is now revealed by legendary BBC journalist Peter Taylor with unique access to the officers involved

Since its foundation in 1948, the NHS has come to define our national identity; it even topped the "what makes Britain great" poll in 2022. It has made history (and the headlines) again and again - from cutting edge discoveries like the first 'test tube baby', to its heroic response to the Coronavirus crisis. But the NHS has also become a battleground for some of the fiercest political contests of our time, perceived either as a national treasure, or as a lumbering piece of state machinery in need of renovation • In Fighting for Life, bestselling journalist Isabel Hardman cuts through the sentimentality and sloganeering on all sides of the political spectrum. Packed with gripping stories from the people at the beating heart of this venerated institution - its nurses, its doctors, its patients and the politicians who decide its fate - this is the essential book for understanding our NHS, and who we are as a nation

A fascinating insight into the untold story of how British-French rivalry drew the battle-lines of the modern Middle East • In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, two men secretly agreed to divide the Middle East between them. Sir Mark Sykes was a visionary politician; Francois Georges-Picot a diplomat with a grudge. They drew a line in the sand from the Mediterranean to the Persian frontier, and together remade the map of the Middle East, with Britain’s 'mandates' of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, and France's in Lebanon and Syria • Over the next thirty years a sordid tale of violence and clandestine political manoeuvring unfolded, told here through a stellar cast of politicians, diplomats, spies and soldiers, including T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle

A New York Times Bestseller, the real story of Damian Lewis's character in BILLIONS: The rise and fall of Steven Cohen and the largest insider trading investigation in the history of Wall Street • Nominated for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year • Nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Amazon Top 5 Business Books of 2017 • 'A prodigious feat of reporting' - Malcolm Gladwell • 'Black Edge has the grip of a thriller . Everyone should read this book' - David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of THE LOST CITY OF Z • How do super-rich bankers get away with it? • There is a powerful new class of billionaire financiers in the world, who use their phenomenal wealth to write their own rules and laws. Chief among them is Steven Cohen, a Wall Street legend, and the basis for Damian Lewis's character in BILLIONS, who built his hedge fund into a $15 billion empire on the basis of wizard-like stock trading, and who flies to work by helicopter and owns one of the largest private art collections in the world

World-renowned psychologist Paul Bloom presents a captivating scientific account of why a rich and meaningful life is rarely an easy one - and why we should embrace that fact • Why do we seek out painful experiences? From horror movies and roller-coaster rides to mountain-climbing, religious abstinence and - most painful of all - parenthood, humans are drawn irresistibly to activities that they know are going to hurt. Many people have something missing in their lives, and a whole 'happiness' business has grown up in response. In The Sweet Spot, psychologist Paul Bloom takes a different approach • Drawing on studies of the evolutionary value of play and the science of morality, he presents an alternative account of human behaviour in which our desire for meaning is far greater than our desire for happiness, and shows not only that chosen suffering - including pain, fear and sadness - can be a source of pleasure, but that suffering is an essential part of achieving a complete and fulfilling life

Легко упустить из виду, что в большинстве случаев войны не происходит. По всему миру существуют миллионы враждебных соперничеств, но лишь незначительная их часть выливается в насилие. Используя нелогичный подход, в своей книге "Почему мы сражаемся. Корни войны и пути к миру" Блаттман напоминает нам, что большинство соперников спокойно ненавидят друг друга. Это потому, что война обходится слишком дорого. Враги почти всегда считают, что лучше разделить пирог пополам, чем портить его или бороться за тонкие ломтики. Итак, в тех редких случаях, когда завязывалась борьба, что удерживало соперников от компромисса? • Книга на английском языке • Based on two decades of research, the five causes of wars and four ways to stop them • It's easy to overlook that most of the time, war doesn't happen

Without a moment's pause, we share our most intimate thoughts with trillion-dollar tech companies. Their algorithms categorize us and jump to troubling conclusions about who we are. They also shape our everyday thoughts, choices and actions - from who we date to whether we vote. But this is just the latest front in an age-old struggle • Part history and part manifesto, Freedom to Think explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. Connecting the dots from Galileo to Alexa, human rights lawyer Susie Alegre charts the history and fragility of our most important human right: freedom of thought • Filled with shocking case-studies across politics, criminal justice, and everyday life, this ground-breaking book shows how our mental freedom is under threat like never before