When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he was about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history? Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that comes with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one...

In an eerie replay of the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1842, coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of military campaigning. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan government and its army shocked the world, as a resurgent Taliban gathered its forces and swept across the country. Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the allies were left to the meagre mercy of the Taliban. As the Taliban went door to door to execute...

This title provides a major history of the Himalaya. The book is an epic story of peoples, cultures, and adventures among the world's highest mountains. Spanning millennia, from its earliest inhabitants to the present conflicts over Tibet and Everest, Himalaya is a soaring account of resilience and conquest, discovery and plunder, oppression and enlightenment at the 'roof of the world'.

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: a worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to crocodiles. But quickly it became clear that Hindu 'idolatry' was far more complex than white men's stereotypes allowed, and that Hindus had little desire to convert....

Fifty-thousand years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, who occupied Europe, the Near East and parts of Eurasia; the enigmatic Homo floresiensis, or 'Hobbits', from the island of Flores in Indonesia; and Homo luzonesis, found in the Philippines, and less than four feet high. And then there are the elusive Denisovans, discovered thanks to cutting-edge science in a cave...

One of Asia's most extraordinary cities, Bangkok is also one of the most baffling. It is filled with remarkable people and glittering golden palaces and temples, but is also a maze of concrete and twisting overhead utility wires. Alex Kerr has spent over thirty years of his life living in Bangkok and is uniquely qualified to write about it. He revels in the secret, tucked away corners, the great contemporary artists and the sheer wonder of so many...

In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. It was a journey of sharp, often brutal contrasts. At one moment he would be exploring the old streets of Baghdad or the ancient ruins of Babylon. At the next he would be visiting the war-torn...

The definitive account of the Tokyo war crimes trials of 1946-8, WWII and the beginning of the end of the European empires in Asia and the impact the settlement has had on post-war China and Japan, the wider history of East and South Asia - and of the world - to this day.

Former Tornado navigator John Nichol tells the incredible story of the RAF Tornado force during the First Gulf War in 1991; the excitement and the danger, the fear and the losses. It is an extraordinary account of courage and fortitude.