Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two 'dirty centuries'? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did people fear fruit? All th[...]

Presents the story of Lady Worsley, her vengeful husband and her lover, George Maurice Bisset. This book offers a picture of aristocratic life in the Georgian era.[...]

You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of the Endurance, stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps." It did not, however, get the ship's twenty-five [...]

Antibacterial agents act against bacterial infection either by killing the bacterium or by arresting its growth. They do this by targeting bacterial DNA and its associated processes, attacking bacterial metabolic processes including protein synthesis, or interfering with bacterial cell wall synthes[...]

Ambitious and talented people flocked to court in search of power and prestige, but Kensington Palace was also a gilded cage. While its inhabitants were cocooned in comfort and splendour, successful courtiers had level heads and cold hearts; their secrets were never safe. Among them, a Vice Chamberl[...]

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries"? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did people fear fruit? All th[...]

Louise Fletcher, a young dairy maid on an eighteenth-century Essex farm, has long been warned of the lure of the sea - after all, it stole away her father and brother. But when she is offered work as a maid in the naval port of Harwich, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world. Fifteen-year-[...]

On August 1, 1914, on the eve of World War I, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his hand-picked crew embarked in HMS Endurance from London's West India Dock, for an expedition to the Antarctic. It was to turn into one of the most breathtaking survival stories of all time. Even as they coasted down the chann[...]

With the media highlighting the growing obesity epidemic in western society, dieticians, nutritionists, and other health professionals increasingly have to promote healthy eating to the general public. Although nutrition education has been established for decades, health promotion and media communic[...]

This is the story of a national obsession. Ever since the Ratcliffe Highway Murders caused a nation-wide panic in Regency England, the British have taken an almost ghoulish pleasure in 'a good murder'. This fascination helped create a whole new world of entertainment, inspiring novels, plays and fil[...]

100 Ideas that Changed Fashion chronicles the most influential fashion ideas through which womenswear has evolved. Charting the movements, developments and ideas that transformed the way women dress, the book gives a unique perspective on the history of twentieth-century fashion. But rather than jus[...]