About Andrew Hughes: Born in Co. Wexford, ANDREW HUGHES was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. A qualified archivist, he worked for RTE before going freelance. It was while researching his acclaimed social history of Fitzwilliam Square – Lives Less Ordinary: Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Square, 1798-1922 – that he first came across the true story of John Delahunt that inspired his debut novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt. 
 
Andrew Hughes lives in Dublin.

Andrew Hughes

About Andrew Hunter Murray: Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer and broadcaster from London. His three previous novels (The Last Day, The Sanctuary, and A Beginner’s Guide To Breaking And Entering) have between them hit the Sunday Times top 10 bestseller charts, been Waterstones' Thriller of the Month and have been nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. 
 
When not writing, Andrew presents The Naked Week on BBC Radio 4, co-hosts the award-winning smash podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, writes jokes and journalism for Private Eye magazine, and hosts the Eye’s podcast, Page 94. 
 
 
 Andrew lives in London, in a house which largely belongs to someone else (Barclay’s).

Andrew Hunter Murray

Andrew Hussey

About Andrew James: Author Andrew James spent three years living in a snake and scorpion infested oasis, in the shadow of the Oracle of Ammon, the ram-headed Egyptian god, to research and write Blood of Kings. The result is a book that is full of evocative scenes of the desert, vividly capturing both the savagery and the beauty of the Sahara.

Andrew James

Andrew Jeffrey

About Andrew Jenkinson: Dr Andrew Jenkinson is a consultant surgeon with a special interest in advanced laparoscopic, or keyhole surgery. He is part of an expert team developing advances in gastrointestinal (stomach and bowel) surgery at University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, central London. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Why We Eat (Too Much).

Andrew Jenkinson

Andrew Jennings

Andrew Jotischky

Andrew Joyner

About Andrew Kenrick: Dr Andrew Kenrick teaches Creative Non-fiction at the University of Cambridge. His interdisciplinary studies have taken him from ancient history and archaeology to the movie Gladiator and Roman cooking, as well as researching new methods for writing ancient biography. His proposal for Rex Juba won the Biographers' Club Tony Lothian Prize.

Andrew Kenrick

Andrew Lane

About Andrew Lane: Andrew Lane has written more than 30 books in various genres - fiction and non-fiction, adult and Young Adult, crime and science fiction. Most recently he has been responsible for the internationally successful Young Sherlock Holmes series of novels (8 and counting) while the first book in his new Crusoe series will be published this year. His first novel was a licensed Doctor Who book - the Seventh Doctor novel Lucifer Rising - and he also writes Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish Productions.

Andrew Lawrence

Andrew Leach

Andrew Lees

Andrew Leigh

About Andrew Likierman: Sir Andrew Likierman was dean of the London Business School for ten years from 2008 to 2017. He has also been a non-executive director for the Bank of England as well as Barclays, Beazley and the market research firm MORI.

Andrew Likierman

LW Entertainment is an entertainment company with musical theatre at its heart. Founded in 1977 as the Really Useful Group, the company manages Andrew Lloyd Webber’s body of work all over the world and has shared his work with hundreds of millions of people. Today, LW Entertainment builds on that legacy through creative collaboration and thoughtful brand development, ensuring these iconic works continue to evolve and connect with audiences for generations to come. 
 
Musical theatre sits at the heart of the business. LW Entertainment shapes the long-term vision for some of the most celebrated titles ever written, including Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Evita, Sunset Boulevard, and Starlight Express. LW Entertainment partners with industry-leading creative teams, producers, and organisations to deliver ground-breaking experiences and products across multiple entertainment formats – from theatrical productions, immersive experiences and music to film, publishing and consumer products. 
 
Andrew Lloyd Webber has composed the scores of some of the world’s most famous musicals. His shows have run continuously in London’s West End for 50 years and ran for 43 uninterrupted years on Broadway. When the original Sunset Boulevard joined School of Rock, CATS, and Phantom of the Opera, he equalled Rodgers &amp; Hammerstein’s record of four shows running simultaneously on Broadway. He is one of the select group of artists with EGOT status, having received Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. 
 
Lloyd Webber owns six London theatres including the iconic London Palladium and Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Reopened in July 2021, the latter was completely restored and renovated at a cost of over £60 million. This was one of the biggest projects ever undertaken by a private theatre owner in recent times. His mantra is that every penny of profit made from his theatres is ploughed back into the buildings for their conservation and development. 
 
Lloyd Webber is passionate about the importance of musical education and diversity in the arts. Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation provides 30 performing arts scholarships every year for talented students with financial need and supports a range of projects such as the Music In Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST). In academic year September 2025-2026, 14,885 children are being given free musical tuition and instruments as part of MiSST's Andrew Lloyd Webber Programme. The Foundation also commissions research into diversity in theatre. 
Andrew Lloyd Webber has composed music for globally significant moments. Most recently, he was asked to compose “Make a Joyful Noise”, the anthem for the Coronation of King Charles III. 
 
Andrew Lloyd Webber was knighted in 1992, created an honorary life peer in 1997, and made a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter by King Charles III in 2024. He is the only person in the arts ever granted this personal honour by a monarch.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lockie

Andrew Loog Oldham

Andrew Lycett

Andrew Maguire

Andrew Marr

Andrew Marshall

Andrew Martin

Andrew Marvell

About Andrew Matheson: Andrew Matheson was a founding member of The Hollywood Brats, the band that never really was. When the group prematurely imploded, Andrew left the music industry in a huff to play football in North America. When he became exhausted by chasing a fat man called Eusebio around the pitch for 90 minutes, he rejoined the world of music with ‘Monterey Shoes'. He has since been writing music, producing, publishing magazine articles and recording more critically acclaimed music. Although now thrice removed from the louche lounge-wizard he once was he still has all his own hair and the majority of his own teeth, and is looking forward to the re-release of the classic Brats music by Cherry Red Records.

Andrew Matheson

Andrew Matthews

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Paul Ginsborg

In this long-awaited book (already a major bestseller in Italy) Ginsborg has created a fascinating, sophisticated and definitive account of how Italy has coped, or failed to cope, with the past two decades. Contemporary Italy strongly mirrors Britain - the countries have roughly the same extent, population size and GNP - and yet they are fantastically different. Ginsborg sees this difference as most fundamentally clear in the role of the family and it is the family which is at the heart of Italian politics and business. Anyone wishing to understand contemporary Italy will find it essential to have this enormously attractive and intelligent book.

Italy and its Discontents 1980-2001

Richard Sennett

THE FALL OF PUBLIC MAN is a book in the great tradition of sociological scholarship.  Sennett writes first of the tension between the public and private realms in which we live, arguing that different types of behaviour and activity are appropriate in each.  He argues that the barrier between these different realms has been eroded, and that this breakdown is so profound that public man has been left with no certain idea of his role in society.  Sennett sees the development of the city as the single most important element of the social change he describes, and puts his argument in its historical perspective through an analysis of the changes in our built environment from the 18th century to the present day.

The Fall of Public Man

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

An enthralling account of day-to-day life in a medieval French village. Using records gathered by the Catholic Church in its pursuit of heretics, the book recreates the lives of a rich cast of village characters.

Montaillou

Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324

R F Foster

Each of Foster's books has generated vigorous discussion, but in THE IRISH STORY he breaks fresh ground even by his own standards. Driven by his sense of the seriousness of history and a fascination with those who distort it, THE IRISH STORY examines how key facets of Ireland's past have been tampered with to serve a multiplicity of purposes. 
 
THE IRISH STORY is endlessly varied, surprising and funny. It is also a rallying cry for those anxious that contemporary Ireland may be in danger ofturning itself into a meretricious historical theme-park.

The Irish Story

Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland

Gwendolyn Leick

Situated in an area roughly corresponding to present-day Iraq, Mesopotamia is one of the great, ancient civilizations, though it is still relatively unknown. Yet, over 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the very first cities were created. This is the first book to reveal how life was lived in ten Mesopotamian cities: from Eridu, the Mesopotamian Eden, to that potent symbol of decadence, Babylon - the first true metropolis: multicultural, multi-ethnic, the last centre of a dying civilization.

Mesopotamia

The Invention of the City

Steven Johnson

It is fast becoming clear that our lives revolve around the powers of emergence. Order arrives from the bottom-up, not top-down. Complexity is resolved through simplicity. Everywhere the same laws are obeyed, the same swarm logic is at work. EMERGENCE looks at the cities we inhabit, the media frenzies we suffer and the games we play, showing how individual actions without central planning often create a wonderfully adaptive communal intelligence. In this compelling, revelatory book, Johnson investigates the artificial emergence which is bringing sweeping cultural and political change in its wake. Rich with insights into the future, this book allows us to witness the exhilating arrival and sudden ascendancy of a potent new idea.

Emergence

The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software

Roy Porter

For generations the traditional focus for those wishing to understand the roots of the modern world has been France on the eve of the Revolution. Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but here makes an overwhelming case for consideringBritain the true home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to twentieth-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution of 1688, had emerged as something new and extraordinary - a society unlike any other in the world.

Enlightenment

Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

A portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.

The Penguin Social History of Britain

English Society in the Eighteenth Century

Christopher Hibbert

This beautifully written, informative study is a portrait, a history and a superb guide book, capturing fully the seductive beauty and the many layered past of the Eternal City. It covers 3,000 years of history from the city&rsquo;s quasi-mythical origins, through the Etruscan kings, the opulent glory of classical Rome, the decadence and decay of the Middle Ages and the beauty and corruption of the Renaissance, to its time at the heart of Mussolini&rsquo;s fascist Italy. Exploring the city&rsquo;s streets and buildings, peopled with popes, gladiators, emperors, noblemen and peasants, this volume details the turbulent and dramatic history of Rome in all its depravity and grandeur.

Rome

The Biography of a City

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Historians relying on written records can tell us nothing about the 99.9% of human evolution which preceded the invention of writing. It is the study of genetic variation, backed up by language and archaeology, which provides concrete evidence aboutthe spread of farming, the movements of peoples across the globe, the precise links between races - and the sheer unscientific absurdity of racism. Genes, Peoples and Languages offers an astonishing investigation into the past 100,000 years of human history and a rare, firsthand account of some of the most significant and gripping scientific work of recent years. Cavalli-Sforza is one of the great founding fathers of archaeogenetics, and in this book he maps out some of its grand themes.

Genes, Peoples, and Languages

Gitta Sereny

Gitta Sereny is one of the world's most respected journalists and historians. This book gathers together the best of her writing on Germany from over sixty years. It amounts to an extraordinary portrait of the country and its people, how they have come to terms with their Nazi past, both collectively and in specific instances - and how the burden of their guilt has altered the national identity. She writes about key individuals - Stangl, Speer - and the questions which their lives raise. Thepenetration and conviction of her writing throughout is startling and she constantly reminds us why it is important to consider the questions she addresses - war guilt, holocaust denial and the temptations of obedience.

The German Trauma

Experiences and Reflections 1938-2001

Lloyd Bradley

The first major account of the history of reggae, black music journalist Lloyd Bradley describes its origins and development in Jamaica, from ska to rock-steady to dub and then to reggae itself, a local music which conquered the world. There are many extraordinary stories about characters like Prince Buster, King Tubby and Bob Marley. But this is more than a book of music history: it relates the story of reggae to the whole history of Jamaica, from colonial island to troubled independence, and Jamaicans, from Kingston to London.

Bass Culture

When Reggae Was King

'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics with the words of historians, diarists and novelists, poets and churchmen: Pepys, Boswell, Fielding, Walpole, Blake, Mayhew, Wells, Woolf, Spark, ... a timely and brilliant book.' CLAIRE TOMALIN, EVENING STANDARD 'A vivid celebration of the city, but also an elegy for its decline, bubbling with statistics and anecdote, from Boadicea to Betjeman.' RICHARD HOLMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR

London

A Social History

Gilda O'Neill

'Every page is a delight. Every chapter made vivid by a writer who has poured heart and soul into her book'. Val Hennessy, Daily Mail 
 
The East End of London - cockneys, criminals, street markets, pub singalongs, dog racing, jellied eels ... it is a place at once appealing and unruly, comforting and incomprehensible. Gilda O'Neill, an East Ender herself shows there is more to this fascinating area than a collection of cliched images. Using oral history and more traditional sources she builds up a powerful image of this community - bringing to us, with wit and honesty, the real story of London's East End

My East End

Memories of Life in Cockney London

Jan Morris

Jan Morris's magnificent book celebrates Wales and all things Welsh. Written as a deeply personal study, it reflects the rich bilingual literature and folklore of Wales, the buildings and wonderfully varied landscapes, the national character and humour, the historical predicaments and the political condition of this small but extraordinary country. Jan Morris is a distinguished historian as well as being one of the world's leading travel-writers. Her passionate love of Wales makes this a unique evocation.

Wales

Epic Views of a Small Country

Edward de Bono

The last millennium has not been a great success. We have advanced in science and technology, but not much in human behaviour. Is it possible that this has been due to poor thinking? Edward de Bono maintains that the thinking of the last millennium has been concerned with WHAT IS. This is the thinking of analysis, criticism and argument. What we have not sufficiently developed is the thinking concerned with WHAT CAN BE. This is thinking that is creative and constructive, and which seeks to solve conflicts and problems by designing a way forward. The emphasis of his proposed new thinking is on design and not judgement.

New Thinking for the New Millennium

John Kenneth Galbraith

&quot;A compelling challenge to conventional thought&quot; New York Times In this newly updated edition of his classic text on the &quot;economics of abundance&quot;, Galbraith lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality. It is as relevant now, with the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, as when it was first published 40 years ago. Galbraith challenges why we worship work and productivity when so many of the goods we produce are superfluous, and why we grudge spending on public works while ignoring extravagance in the private sector. THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY exemplifies Galbraith's wit, clarity and eloquence of prose.

The Affluent Society

Updated with a New Introduction by the Author

Christine Pizan

Christine de Pizan (c.1364-1430) was France's first professional woman of letters. Her pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine has a dreamlike vision where three virtues - Reason, Rectitude and Justice - appear to correct this view. They instruct her to build an allegorical city in which womankind can be defended against slander, its walls and towers constructed from examples of female achievement both from her own day and the past: ranging from warriors, inventors and scholars to prophetesses, artists and saints. Christine de Pizan's spirited defence of her sex was unique for its direct confrontation of the misogyny of her day, and offers a telling insight into the position of women in medieval culture. 
THE CITY OF LADIES provides positive images of women, ranging from warriors and inventors, scholars to prophetesses, and artists to saints. The book also offers a fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture.

The Book of the City of Ladies

E J Hobsbawm

This outstanding history describes and accounts for Britain's rise as the world's first industrial world power, its decline from the temporary dominance of the pioneer, its rather special relationship with the rest of the world (notably the underdeveloped countries) and the effects of all these on the life of the British people.

Industry and Empire

From 1750 to the Present Day

Matt Ridley

Why are people nice to each other? What are the reasons for altrusim? Matt Ridley explains how the human mind has evolved a special instinct for social exchange, offering a lucid and persuasive argument about the paradox of human benevolence.

The Origins of Virtue

Barry Cunliffe

Nora Chadwick

The Celtic period was one of tremendous expansion, the last phase of European material and intellectual development before the Mediterranean world spread northwards over the Continent and linked it to modern times. Nora Chadwick's classic survey traces the rise and spread of the Celts, from their arrival in the British Isles in about the eighth century BC to the gradual transformation of their culture, initially under the Romans and later the Saxons.

The Celts

Peter Kolchin

Beginning with the Colonial period, progressing through the Revolution and the Antebellum period, the book chronologically documents the historical evolution of slavery in the USA

American Slavery

1619-1877

Sex is as fascinating to scientists as it is to the rest of us. A vast pool of knowledge, therefore, has been gleaned from research into the nature of sex, from the contentious problem of why the wasteful reproductive process exists at all, to how individuals choose their mates and what traits they find attractive. This fascinating book explores those findings, and their implications for the sexual behaviour of our own species. It uses the Red Queen from &lsquo;Alice in Wonderland&rsquo; &ndash; who has to run at full speed to stay where she is &ndash; as a metaphor for a whole range of sexual behaviours. The book was shortlisted for the 1994 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books. 
 
&lsquo;Animals and plants evolved sex to fend off parasitic infection. Now look where it has got us. Men want BMWs, power and money in order to pair-bond with women who are blonde, youthful and narrow-waisted &hellip; a brilliant examination of the scientific debates on the hows and whys of sex and evolution&rsquo; Independent.

The Red Queen

Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

Jose Harris

The late nineteenth century and Edwardian era, suggests Jose Harris in this book, represent a sharp break with the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Indeed, despite the intense upheavals of two world wars, it was the beliefs, social structures and oppositional forces established between 1870 and 1914 which dominated British life right up until the 1960s.

Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870-1914

Lyn Macdonald

The third battle of Ypres, culminating in a desperate struggle for the ridge and little village of Passchendaele, was one of the most appalling campaigns in the First World War. In this masterly piece of oral history, Lyn Macdonald lets over 600 participants speak for themselves. A million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs assembled at the Ypres Salient in the summer of 1917, mostly raw young troops keen to do their bit for King and Country. This book tells their tale of mounting disillusion amid mud, terror and desperate privation, yet it is also a story of immense courage, comradeship, songs, high spirits and bawdy humour. They Called It Passchendaele portrays the human realities behind one of the most disastrous events in the history of warfare.

They Called it Passchendaele

The Story of the Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought in it

Anne Baring

Jules Cashford

A comprehensive, scholarly accessible study, in which the authors draw upon poetry and mythology, art and literature, archaeology and psychology to show how the myth of the goddess has been lost from our formal Judeo-Christian images of the divine. They explain what happened to the goddess, when, and how she was excluded from western culture, and the implications of this loss.

The Myth of the Goddess

Evolution of an Image

David Goldberg

John Rayner

The first part of this illustrated volume offers a survey of Jewish history and literature. The second part presents what the preface describes as &quot;a thematic analysis of the teachings and practice of Judaism&quot;.

The Jewish People

Their History and Their Religion

Keith Thomas

Why do we eat what we do? Why do we keep some animals as pets and eat others? Keith Thomas takes us on a engrossing journey to discover our strange relationship with animals and plants.

Man and the Natural World

Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800

Jerome Carcopino

In this portrait of life in Ancient Rome, the author begins by painting a backcloth on which the social, political, cultural and religious aspects of the community are drawn. He enlarges on the details of everyday life, following the typical routine of a normal day from dawn to dinner and the talk that continued long into the night. This study, which includes a bibliography and notes by Professor Rowell, describes the houses and multi-storeyed apartments of the city of over a million inhabitants, the social classes from senators to slaves and the Roman family and the position of women.

Daily Life in Ancient Rome

The People and the City at the Height of the Empire

Cecil Woodham-Smith

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s, perhaps the most appalling event of the Victorian era, killed over a million people and drove as many more to emigrate to America. It may not have been the result of deliberate government policy, yet British &lsquo;obtuseness, short-sightedness and ignorance&rsquo; &ndash; and stubborn commitment to laissez-faire &lsquo;solutions&rsquo; &ndash; largely caused the disaster and prevented any serious efforts to relieve suffering. The continuing impact on Anglo-Irish relations was incalculable, the immediate human cost almost inconceivable. In this vivid and disturbing book Cecil Woodham-Smith provides the definitive account. 
 
&lsquo;A moving and terrible book. It combines great literary power with great learning. It explains much in modern Ireland &ndash; and in modern America&rsquo; D.W. Brogan.

The Great Hunger

Ireland 1845-1849

Simon Serrailler

Simple Makes

Sinners

Sisters of the Occult

Skullabones Island

Skylanders

Sleep Series

Slinky Malinki

Snowglobe

Soccer Squad

Soldiers of Bedlam

Sora & Haena!

Sparrow Xia

He marches to freedom - or to bloody war. The epic story of Spartacus, the gladiator slave who took on the might of Rome.

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