To those who travel there today, the West Indies are unspoiled paradise islands. Yet that image conceals a turbulent and shocking history. For some two hundred years after 1650, the West Indies were the strategic center of the Western world's greatest power struggles as Europeans made and lost immen[...]
"Completely fascinating, authoritative and intriguing". (William Boyd). Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond. From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye - the house he built on a poi[...]
2014 is the 100-year-anniversary of the panama canal: one of the most extraordinary engineering feats in world history. Hell's Gorge traces a heroic dream that spanned four centuries: to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The human cost was immense: in appalling working condition[...]
For 200 years after 1650 the West Indies were the most fought-over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold. Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors o[...]
The top 10 Sunday Times Bestseller. "Completely fascinating, authoritative and intriguing." (William Boyd). "The big bang of Bond books...Beautiful, brilliant." (Tony Parsons). Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond. From 1946 until the e[...]
The six-month battle for Monte Cassino was Britain's bitterest and bloodiest encounter with the German army on any front in World War Two. At the beginning of 1944 Italy was the western Allies' only active front against Nazi-controlled Europe, and their only route to the capital was through the Liri[...]
The Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in history; its completion in 1914 marked the beginning of the "American Century." Panama Fever draws on contemporary accounts, bringing the experience of those who built the canal vividly to life. Politicians engaged in high-stakes diplomacy in order t[...]