The Rest Is History

How and why did the terrible violence of the Ku Klux Klan escalate? What was the political context in America for their rising popularity? And, how was this first iteration of the Klan finally brought...

What adventures occurred during Samuel Johnson and James Boswell’s journey into the heart of Scotland? How was their trip a gateway to the history of Scotland’s union with England in 1707? And, was Dr...

What happened when the Spanish conquistadors lead by Francisco Pizarro came face to face with the ruthless emperor of the Incan Empire, Atahualpa? How did the Incas treat their strange, pale, alien vi...

How does Henry Raeburn’s Skating Minister represent both the Scottish Enlightenment and the Romantic movement? In what ways does subject Reverend Robert Walker’s personal history connect to the famous...

What happened at the Battle of Ibera, a totemic though overlooked battle of the Punic Wars? With the forces of Carthage closing in on a depleted Rome, would a young Roman, Publius Cornelius Scipio res...

Why and how was the American Embassy stormed in 1979, at the height of the Iranian Revolution? Did America respond when large numbers of American civil servants were taken hostage? And, would a scienc...

How was Charles VII, with the help of Joan of Arc, able to fight his way to Reims to be crowned in the ancient seat of French kings? Why was she able to continually defeat the formidable soldiers of E...

How did Jack the Ripper manage to strike twice in the same night without getting caught? Did he have an accomplice? And, what chilling clues did the police discover in the wake of the murder…? Join...

What happened to the infant Elizabeth I following the bloody execution of her mother Anne Boleyn? How did her father Henry VIII and his next four wives treat her? And, what became of Elizabeth followi...

With Britain at war for more than eight long years, and her people depleted and hungry, how did her government react to the news that Napoleon Bonaparte was planning a full-scale invasion in 1801? Wha...

Did the Trojan War - the ten year, cosmic clash between the Greeks and the Trojans, featuring the Olympian gods, kings and heroes - actually happen? Is there any evidence for the existence of the Troj...

Who was Emma Hamilton, Horatio Nelson’s strikingly beautiful, and famously fashionable mistress? How did she raise herself up from dire poverty, to become a model, actress, dancer, and even an interna...

Who was Enoch Powell, the deeply controversial British conservative politician? Why is he the father of Brexit, and possibly even Reform? And, how did he come to make his inflammatory ‘Rivers of Blood...

What is the story behind the writing of Oedipus, the notorious king of Thebes who murdered his father and unwittingly married his mother? Was it based on a real historical event? What are Oedipus’ cur...

Who was Grover Cleveland, and why is he one of the most controversial American Presidents of all time? Why was the run up to his first term, in 1884 at the height of the Gilded Age, so pivotal to Amer...

While the Western front was raging following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, what was unfolding on the Eastern Front? Why was it an even bloodier and more brutal arena than the West? As A...

Following the declaration of war in 1914, how did the outbreak of the First World War unfold? What were the earliest military engagements of this terrible, totemic event? Who were its key political pl...

How and why was Mary Queen of Scots’ traitorous husband, Lord Darnley, murdered, and by whom…? Was Mary complicit? Why was his death one of the greatest mysteries in all British history? And, with Mar...

Why was a boy grotesquely and mysteriously murdered in a wood in Norwich in the 12th century? Who was his killer? Was it a ritual child sacrifice? Why was the murder blamed on Norwich's Jewish communi...

What are the origins of the Irish War of Independence? What impact did the First World War have on Irish efforts for Home Rule? What was the mood in Ireland following the bloody Easter Rising of 1916?...

Why was the greatest and most climactic battle of the Great Northern War, the Battle of Poltova, one of the most important in all European history? What drove Charles XII of Sweden to invade Russia in...

What are the origins of Britain’s original bad boys, The Rolling Stones? Where did they all come from and how did they meet? What was it about the 1960s, with its air of sexual liberation, newly elect...

Why is 1066 the most important year in English history? Who were the three main candidates vying for the English throne on the eve of Edward the Confessor’s death? And how did the coronation of one of...

Harald Hardrada; exiled prince of Norway and mercenary, has landed in the greatest city on Earth: Constantinople. There he joins one of the most prestigious military organisations in the world, the Va...

In the triumvirate of 1066, William of Normandy, Harald Hardrada, and Harold Godwinson, the latter has above all endured as one of the great heroes of English history. But how did he become the short-...

The second revolution that engulfed France over the course of 1792 reached its climax in December, with an astonishing, world-changing spectacle, which held all the eyes of Europe spellbound: Louis Ca...

The story of King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal regime in the Congo Free State, during the late 19th century, is one of the darkest and most important in global history. It is a story of horror - the mu...

The Roman historian Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars, written during the early imperial period of the Roman Empire, is a seminal biography covering the biographies of the early emperors of Rome, du...

By the 11th of April 1939, Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were in the process of drawing up a plan of attack for Poland, the Poles having resisted Germany’s attempts to make them hand over Danzig and turn...

By 711 Europe and the Frankish warlords were facing a graver threat than ever before. Bands of Northern African, nominally Muslim raiders had begun a steady incursion throughout the West, loosely unif...

Following the death of the legendary Frankish King Clovis, his son Clothar I divided the mighty realm his father had hacked out from the warring warlords of Europe between his four sons. But peace was...

The Rise of the Franks - a mighty host of warlords; forefathers of the western world and forgers of medieval civilisation, under the totemic leadership of history’s most glorious King: Charlemagne. It...

“Let us march! Let us march! May impure blood water our fields!” Written after the declaration of war against Austria in 1792, “La Marseillaise” was born in the provinces of France, away from the Pari...

“You have shaken off the yoke of your despots, but surely this was not to bend the knee before a foreign tyrant…” It’s January 1792, and one of the largest factions in revolutionary France, the Girond...

After lying in state in an open casket, Evita’s corpse is taken down to a secret laboratory in the basement. And as the Argentinian Victor Frankenstein, Dr Ara, busily embalms her body, her ghost cont...

What did Marcus Aurelius, Jesus, and Ragnar Lothbrok all have in common? Apart from their notorious and symbolic deaths, all three men boasted luscious beards. Throughout history, beards have posed qu...

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Once more, we'll close the wall up with our English dead […] And upon this charge, cry God for Harry, England and St. George!” Such was Henry V’s call to arms...

The French Revolution is one of the great seismic events of global history. A devouring conflagration of bloodshed, violence and utopianism, it changed France and then latterly the whole of Europe for...

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” In the early days of August 1914, the British press has become increasingly vocal about the prospect of war b...

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one of the most important men in the world. But he was a lonely man, not helped by the fact that, in spite of custom and tradition...

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to one of the world’s greatest empires, in June 1914, set in motion a series of events that would culminate in the First World War, where more than ...

To coincide with the re-release of Dynasty in audiobook, now with Tom Holland himself narrating, we have the book’s introduction for you to enjoy.   Dynasty, the sequel to Rubicon, is a dazzling portr...

"Good God I am shot! I shall die!" The colourful kaleidoscope of British elections from 1265 to their early 20th century incarnation, has seen some of the most critical, shocking, and downright farcic...

"When dragons flew to war… everything burned. I do not wish to rule over a kingdom of ash and bone." Dragons - the most compelling of mythical beasts - are one of the most vivid creations of all human...

Following the tragic death of Crazy Horse and the ruthless cessation of the Sioux way of life, the last of the great Native American leaders were gradually picked off or repressed by the U.S. Governme...

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the Habsburg dynasty's mightiest ruler, was at once King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, Lord of the Netherlands and Duke of Burgundy. With a lineage supposedly stretc...

“I think there is not a devil left in hell, they have all gone into the peasants… smite, stab and slay all”.  Following on from Martin Luther’s dramatic abduction by his powerful protector, Frederick ...

“A story of horror unparalleled in the annals of the Sea.” On the 14th of April 1912, Titanic, a floating palace sailing through the North Atlantic, found itself hurtling towards a formidable iceberg....

In the third century BC, a clash which had been brewing for centuries finally erupted: Rome, the ruthless imperialist upstart dominating Italy, against Carthage, the ancient but sinister apex predator...

“For within the hollow crown that rounds the hollow temple of a king...” Richard II, son of the dashing Black Prince and grandson of Edward III, became King of England at only ten years old. By the ag...