William Collins Viking Britain. A History Williams Thomas

London was reborn in the fires of the Viking Age, transformed by immigrants and natives, kings and commoners, warriors and saints • In this short history, bestselling historian Thomas Williams explores the profound impact of the Vikings on London. Under the hammer of their assaults the city emerged as a hub of trade, a financial centre, a political prize, and a cauldron of voices and perspectives – a place that, a thousand years ago, already embodied much of what London is today

There is not just one story of silk • In silk is science, history and mythology • In silk is the future • Aarathi Prasad’s Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia • Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history, natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia • For silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired – from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms – continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet

This stunning book by renowned television historian Dan Cruickshank tells the history of architecture through the stories of 100 iconic buildings • Journeying through time and place, from the ancient Egyptian pyramids to the soaring skyscrapers of Manhattan, renowned architectural historian Dan Cruickshank explores the most impressive and characterful creations in world architecture • His selection includes many of the world’s best-known buildings that represent key or pioneering moments in architectural history, such as the Pantheon in Rome, Hagia Sophia in Turkey, the Taj Mahal in India and the Forbidden City in China • But the book also covers less obvious and more surprising structures, the generally unsung heroes of an endlessly fascinating story

История Британии во время долгого правления королевы Елизаветы II. Узнайте, как изменилась Британия, в этом захватывающем, живом портрете британской елизаветинской эпохи, написанном автором бестселлеров и телеведущим Эндрю Марром • Британия коренным образом изменилась за время долгого и выдающегося правления королевы. Так кто же сделал современную Британию такой страной, какой она является сегодня? Как мы можем подвести итог тому, что мы за люди? Что значит быть новыми елизаветинцами? • В этой чудесно рассказанной истории, восходящей к тому времени, когда королева Елизавета стала королевой в 1953 году, Эндрю Марр прослеживает людей, которые сделали Британию той страной, какой она является сегодня. От активистов до артистов, от героев спорта до новаторов - эти люди подталкивали нас вперед, меняли тему разговора, побуждали нас лучше питаться, петь, думать и протестовать

«Баламут предлагает тост» – продолжение одной из самых известных книг британского писателя и теолога Клайва Стейплза Льюиса. Оригинальное произведение, «Письма Баламута», было оформлено в виде писем старого беса Баламута, опытного искусителя и верного прислужника «всенизшего». Письма были адресованы его племяннику, юному бесу Гнусику, и попали в руки Льюиса тайным путём, который он отказывался рассекречивать. Несмотря на колебания автора, через несколько лет после публикации «Писем» читатель всё же смог добиться от него продолжения • Теперь, в 75-ю годовщину первой публикации «Писем», издательство William Collins представляет новое издание книги «Баламут предлагает тост», включающее также и другие произведения автора • «Баламут предлагает тост», книга выдающегося британского писателя Клайва Стейплза Льюиса, является знаковым произведением для направления популярной теологии

Britain's gardens are a vast, living landscape and the home to hundreds of species of birds. Learn to pay attention to these visitors to your own garden or local park and you'll have a front-row seat to the unfolding drama that is the garden bird's year • As dawn breaks across your back garden, if you were paying attention, you would notice that the robin and the blackbird are always the first birds to arrive. These ground hunters have large eyes, so don't mind the dim light of the early morning. And that's just the beginning of what you can learn watching your own back garden. Ornithologist Mike Toms has spent a year avidly observing his own garden, and the result is a comprehensive picture of the lives of garden birds • From the crowded yet quiet January garden populated by migratory fieldfares and bramblings, to the riotous gardens of spring, filled with songbirds competing for mates, the garden ecosystem changes throughout the year

Coal is the commodity that made Britain. Dirty and polluting though it is, this black rock has acted as a midwife to genius. It drove industry, religion, politics, empire and trade. It powered the industrial revolution, turned Britain into the first urban nation and is the industry that made almost all others possible • In this brilliant social history, Jeremy Paxman tells the story of coal mining in England, Scotland and Wales from Roman times, through the birth of steam power to war, nationalisation, pea-souper smogs, industrial strife and the picket lines of the Miner’s Strike • Written in the captivating style of his bestselling book The English, Paxman ranges widely across Britain to explore stories of engineers and inventors, entrepreneurs and industrialists – but whilst coal inevitably helped the rich become richer, the story told by Black Gold is first and foremost a history of the working miners – the men, women and often children who toiled in appalling conditions down in the mines; the villages that were thrown up around the pit-head

A fresh, opinionated history of all the brilliant women you should have learned about in school but didn't • For hundreds of years we have heard about the great men of history, but what about herstory? • In this freewheeling history of modern Britain, Cathy Newman writes about the pioneering women who defied the odds to make careers for themselves and alter the course of modern history; women who achieved what they achieved while dismantling hostile, entrenched views about their place in society. Their role in transforming Britain is fundamental, far greater than has generally been acknowledged, and not just in the arts or education but in fields like medicine, politics, law, engineering and the military • While a few of the women in this book are now household names, many have faded into oblivion, their personal and collective achievements mere footnotes in history

From the bestselling author of Who Owns England?, a mesmerising chronicle of our forgotten rainforests – and an inspiring intervention to help restore them to the places they once were • In 2020, writer and campaigner Guy Shrubsole moved from London to Devon. As he explored the wooded valleys, rivers and tors of Dartmoor, Guy discovered a spectacular habitat that he had never encountered before: temperate rainforest. Entranced, he would spend the coming months investigating the history, ecology and distribution of rainforests across England, Wales and Scotland • Britain, Guy discovered, was once a rainforest nation • This is the story of a unique habitat that has been so ravaged, most people today don’t realise it exists. Temperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain and played host to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s most loved creations

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands? • With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies • Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union. It also challenges entrenched assumptions about abused trust, corruption and Establishment cover-ups that began with the Cambridge Five and the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean on the night boat to Saint-Malo in 1951 • In a book that is as intellectually thrilling as it is entertaining and illuminating, Richard Davenport-Hines traces the bonds between individuals, networks and organisations over generations to offer a study of character, both individual and institutional

Our wild places and wildlife are disappearing at a terrifying rate. This is a story about going in search of the people who are trying to save our birds, as well as confronting the enormity of what losing them would really mean • In this beautiful and thought-provoking blend of nature and travel writing Patrick Galbraith sets off across Britain on a journey that may well be his last chance to see some of our disappearing birds. Along the way, from Orkney to West Wales, from the wildest places to post-industrial towns, he meets a fascinatingly eclectic group of people who in very different ways are on the front line of conservation, tirelessly doing everything they can to save ten species teetering dangerously close to extinction • In Search of One Last Song mixes conservation, folklore, history, and art

Starting from the ocean and from the forgotten histories of ocean-facing communities, this is a new history of the making of our world • After revolutions in America and France, a wave of tumult coursed the globe from 1790 to 1850. It was a moment of unprecedented change and violence especially for indigenous peoples. By 1850 vibrant public debate between colonised communities had exploded in port cities. Yet in the midst of all of this, Britain struck out by sea and established its supremacy over the Indian and Pacific Oceans, overtaking the French and Dutch as well as other rivals • Cambridge historian Sujit Sivasundaram brings together his work in far-flung archives across the world and the best new academic research in this remarkably creative book