50,000 biographies and 60 million words record the lives of the men and women who shaped all aspects of British history. All walks of life are represented, new fields greatly increased alongside more traditional areas. A new focus gives extended coverage to the regions, Britons abroad and former colonies.

The British in this book lived in India from shortly after the reign of Elizabeth I until well into the reign of Elizabeth II. They were soldiers, officials, businessmen, doctors and missionaries of both sexes, planters, engineers and many others, together with children, wives and sisters. This book describes their lives, their work and their extraordinarily varied interactions with the native populations; it also records the very diverse roles they...

This is a biographical history which studies the lives of the Vicereines who, after the Queen, were the most influential women in the British Empire.

In the spring of 1839 British forces invaded Afghanistan for the first time, re-establishing Shah Shuja on the throne and ushering in a period of conflict over the territory still unresolved today. 'The Return of a King' is the definitive analysis of the first Afghan war.

Haunted by his memories of the Great War, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force. When Sam is summoned to investigate a grisly murder, he is stunned at the sight of the body: he's seen this before. Last night, in a drug addled haze, he stumbled across a corpse with the same ritualistic injuries. It seems like there's a deranged killer on the loose. Unfortunately...

Lucy Moore recreates the lives of four princesses - two grandmothers, a mother and a daughter - of the Royal courts of India. Their extraordinary story takes in tiger hunts, exotic palaces and lavish ceremonies in India, as well as the glamorous international scene of the Edwardian and interwar era.

Here, historian William Dalrymple tells the timely and cautionary tale of the rise of the East India Company and one of the most supreme acts of corporate violence in world history.

A one-volume history of Britain, for both the student and general reader, this text pays due attention to the histories of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, rather than as appendages to the history of England.

What really happened to Miss Quested in the Marabar Caves? This tantalising question provides the intense drama of racial tension at the centre of Forster's last and greatest novel.

The awe-inspiring endeavours and achievements of the heroic early British pioneers, including individual projects of enterprise, audacity and adventure.