Regional & National History

In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its doors: a glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world.

Lyse Doucet first checked into the Inter-Continental on Christmas Eve 1988.

In 1962, Edward Wong's father, disillusioned with Communism, fled China for Hong Kong and later the USA. From then on, he rarely spoke of his homeland, or his years crisscrossing the country in Mao's People's Liberation Army. 

The Siege is the remarkable story of what really happened on those fateful six days, and the first full account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself.

Thomas Pakenham's story of the conquest of Africa is recognised as one of the finest narrative histories of the last few decades.

Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine - now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories - and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

A major work by one of the great public intellectuals of the twentieth century, The Question of Palestine was the first book to narrate the modern Palestinian experience in English. 

This much needed new edition provides a complete and essential guide to this fast developing, ever changing and often tense region.

The deeply moving and surprising story of the attempt to build a truly independent media company in contemporary Afghanistan. 

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think?

Shadows at Noon tells the subcontinent's story from the British Raj through independence and partition to the forging of the modern nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of one of Italian football's most heartbreaking tragedies.

The Little Book of Limerick is a compendium of fascinating information about the city and county, past and present.

How far would you go for the missing? When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. . . 

The Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates.

Newly updated, this accessible history explores the origins and development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why has it proved so intractable, and what are the implications of escalating tensions for both the Middle East and the world?

From the bestselling author of The Long Weekend: a wild, sad and sometimes hilarious tour of the English country house after the Second World War, when Swinging London collided with aristocratic values.

A spectacular, definitive portrait of ordinary life within one of the world's most repressive states - North Korea. 'A most perceptive and eye-opening account of everyday life in North Korea' Jung Chang.

How did a small-minded, low-level KGB operative come to control the world's largest country and, in an astonishingly short time, destroy years of progress, making Russia once more a threat to her own people and to the world?

Why do human beings fight one another? In this exhilarating and bracing book, we learn the common logic driving vainglorious monarchs, dictators, mobs, pilots, football hooligans, ancient peoples and fanatics.