History - European

From the city sundials of ancient Rome to the era of the smartwatch, clocks have been used throughout history to wield power, make money, govern citizens and keep control. Sometimes, also with clocks, we have fought back. In About Time, time expert David Rooney tells the story of timekeeping, and how it continues to shape our modern world. In twelve chapters, demarcated like the hours of time, we meet the greatest inventions in horological history, from medieval water clocks to monumental sundials, and from coastal time signals to satellites in earth's orbit.

We discover how clocks have helped us navigate the world, build empires and even taken us to the brink of destruction. Over the course of this global journey Rooney demonstrates how each of these clocks has shone a spotlight onto human civilisation, and shows us the very real effects clocks continue to have on everything from capitalism, to politics, to our very identity.

Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos? In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city. The Americans send Hans Habe, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and US army soldier, to the frontline of psychological warfare - tasked with establishing a newspaper empire capable of remoulding the minds of the Germans.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust. Aftermath is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany's future - and one starkly different to how most of us imagine it today. Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany - some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking - Aftermath evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralised and freed - all at the same time.

The Battle of Agincourt in October 1415, was a turning-point not only in the Hundred Years War between England and France but also in the history of weaponry. This landmark study looks behind the action on the field to paint a portrait of the age, moving from the ambition of kings to the dynamics of daily life in peace and war.

In post-war Europe, protest was everywhere. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, ordinary people took to the streets, fighting for a better world. Their efforts came to a head most dramatically in 1968 and 1989, when mass movements swept Europe and rewrote its history. In the decades between, Joachim C. Häberlen argues, new movements emerged that transformed the nature of protesting. Activism moved beyond traditional demonstrations, and people protested in the way they dressed, the music they listened to, the lovers they slept with, the clubs where they danced all night.

New movements were born, notably anti-racism, women's liberation, gay liberation, and environmentalism. The stories in Häberlen's book invite us to imagine different futures; to struggle, to fail, and to try again. In a time when we are told that there are no alternatives, they show us that there could be another way.

Throughout the twentieth century, Berlin stood at the centre of a convulsing world. This history is often viewed as separate acts: the suffering of the First World War, the cosmopolitan city of science, culture and sexual freedom Berlin became, steep economic plunges, the rise of the Nazis, the destruction of the Second World War, the psychosis of genocide, and a city rent in two by competing ideologies. But people do not live their lives in fixed eras. An epoch ends, yet the people continue - or try to continue - much as they did before. Berlin tells the story of the city as seen through the eyes not of its rulers, but of those who walked its streets.

In this magisterial biography of a city and its inhabitants, bestselling historian Sinclair McKay sheds new light on well-known characters - from idealistic scientist Albert Einstein to Nazi architect Albert Speer - and draws on never-before-seen first-person accounts to introduce us to people of all walks of Berlin life. For example, we meet office worker Mechtild Evers, who in her efforts to escape an oncoming army runs into even more appalling jeopardy, and Reinhart Cruger, a 12-year-old boy in 1941 who witnesses with horror the Gestapo coming for each of his Jewish neighbours in turn.

How did those ideologies - fascism and communism - come to flower so fully here? And how did their repercussions continue to be felt throughout Europe and the West right up until that extraordinary night in the autumn of 1989 when the Wall - that final expression of totalitarian oppression - was at last breached? You cannot understand the twentieth century without understanding Berlin; and you cannot understand Berlin without understanding the experiences of its people. McKay's latest masterpiece shows us this hypnotic city as never before.

For sixteen days in the summer of 1936, the world’s attention turned to Berlin as it hosted the Olympic Games. During the sporting events the dictatorship was partially put on hold. Here, seen through the eyes of a cast of characters – Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, athletes and journalists, nightclub owners and jazz musicians - is a last glimpse of the vibrant and diverse life in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s that the Nazis aimed to destroy.

The definitive new history of East Germany by an acclaimed historian In 1990, a country disappeared. For the previous forty-one years, East Germany had existed in Western minds as more of a metaphor than a place, more of a grey communist blur than a land of real people with friends and families, workplaces and homes. As Germany once again became a single state, the history of the GDR was simplified and politicised. It was nothing but Stasi spies and central planning, nothing but a wall in Berlin. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer looks past these outdated conceptions and toward a more comprehensive history, one that acknowledges border guards, secret police and brutal repression, as well as comprehensive welfare, unprecedented gender equality, and the deconstruction of class privilege.

There were those who were silenced, she argues, and also those who felt they had been given a voice for the first time. Both deserve to be heard today. Based on first-hand accounts and extensive new research, Hoyer presents the history of the GDR as never before -- as a kaleidoscope of perspectives, experiences and stories. From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the USSR, this is the definitive story of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall.

Less than a month after it marched into France in summer 1870, the Prussian army had devastated its opponents, captured Napoleon III and wrecked all assumptions about Europe's pecking order. Other countries looked on in helpless amazement. Pushing aside further French resistance, a new German Empire was proclaimed (as a deliberate humiliation) in the Palace of Versailles, leaving the French to face civil war in Paris, reparations and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. Bismarck's War tells the story of one of the most shocking reversals of fortune in modern European history.

The culmination of a globally violent decade, the Franco-Prussian War was deliberately engineered by Bismarck, both to destroy French power and to unite Germany. It could not have worked better, but it also had lurking inside it the poisonous seeds of all the disasters that would ravage the twentieth century. Drawing on a remarkable variety of sources, Chrastil's book explores the military, technological, political and social events of the war, its human cost and the way that the sheer ferocity of war, however successful, has profound consequences for both victors and victims.

Before 1871, Germany was not a nation but an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser, convincing proud Prussians, Bavarians and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France – all without destroying itself in the process? In a unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, the story of the German Empire is told from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War.

In the aftermath of the First World War, the seeds of fascism were sown in Italy. While the country reeled in shock, a new movement emerged from the chaos: one that preached hatred for politicians and love for the fatherland; one that promised to build a 'New Roman Empire', and make Italy a great power once again.

Wearing black shirts and wielding guns, knives and truncheons, the proponents of fascism embraced a climate of violence and rampant masculinity. Led by Benito Mussolini, they would systematically destroy the organisations of the left, murdering and torturing anyone who got in their way.

In Blood and Power, historian John Foot draws on decades of research to chart the turbulent years between 1915 and 1945, and beyond. Drawing widely from accounts of people across the political spectrum - fascists, anti-fascists, communists, anarchists, victims, perpetrators and bystanders - he tells the story of fascism and its legacy, which still, disturbingly, reverberates to this day.

One a Virgin Queen who ruled her kingdom alone, and the other a clandestine leader who used her children to shape the dynasties of Europe, much has been written about these iconic women. But nothing has been said of their complicated relationship: thirty years of friendship, competition and conflict that changed the face of Europe.

This is a story of two remarkable visionaries: a story of blood, fire and gold. It is also a tale of ceaseless calculation, of love and rivalry, of war and wisdom - and of female power in a male world. Shining new light on their legendary kingdoms Blood, Fire and Gold provides a new way of looking at two of history's most powerful women, and how they shaped each other as profoundly as they shaped the course of history. Drawing on their letters and brand new research, Estelle Paranque writes an entirely new chapter in the well-worn story of the sixteenth century.

The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, nepotism and greed that were rife in Renaissance Italy. Hibbert removes the layers of myth around the Borgia family and creates a portrait alive with his superb sense of character and place.

In A Brief History of Germany, Jeremy Black questions how the Germany we know today came to be, chronicling the events that shaped its past, present and future in a fascinating new way.

From the fall of Rome in the 1500s to the enlightenment in the 1700s, from World War I and World War II to Germany post-unification, Black's writing will unlock the places and people that formed Germany and enrich your visit with stories of its society and culture.

Concise yet explorative, A Brief History of Germany is an astonishing work from a renowned UK historian. Whether you are a long-term reader of Black's expansive history work or are interested in learning more ahead of a short city break or longer trip, this intriguing look at the history of Germany is an essential read.

Throughout history the centre of gravity in Budapest and among Hungarians has shifted between this division of East and West - culturally, politically, emotionally. Invaders have come and gone, empires have conquered, occupied for centuries or decades, and left a few footprints behind: the remains of a Roman bath house complete with wonderfully preserved mosaics stand next to a Soviet-style 'five-year-plan' apartment block. The city bears the scars of the rise and fall of multiple empires, two world wars, fascism, Nazi German occupation, Soviet Communism. It has been home to some of the world's greatest writers, artists and musicians. Hungary is a place of extremes, a small country that has often in history punched well above its weight. At many moments, events that began in Budapest have proved to be of world significance. This is the story of that tumultuous, often divided, but always fascinating city.

In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come.

While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.

Across the world, Second World War-era cases are winding their way through the courts. Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of a century, and still judges ask for proof. Where do these stories end? What responsibilities attend their transmission, so many generations on? How many ghosts need to be put on trial for us to consider the crime scene of history closed?

In this major non-fiction debut, Linda Kinstler investigates both her family story and the archives of ten nations to examine what it takes to prove history in our uncertain century. Probing and profound, Come to this Court and Cry is about the nature of memory and justice when revisionism, ultra-nationalism and denialism make it feel like history is slipping out from under our feet.

Little Lien was given away from her Jewish parents in the Hague in the hope that she might be saved. Raised by a foster family in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. When she fell out with her foster family, Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why. This is a moving story of a young girl's struggle for survival during war, and the powerful love and challenges of foster families.

John Dickie demonstrates that Italian cuisine is forged in the heart of the Italian city and in so doing takes us on a journey from medieval Milan to fascist Rome, from Renaissance Ferrara to 19th century Naples.

1 May 1945. The world did not know it yet, but the final week of the Third Reich's existence had begun. Hitler was dead, but the war had still not ended. Everything had both ground to a halt and yet remained agonizingly uncertain.

The first global history of the Normans, who - beyond the conquest of England - came to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce freebooters, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. The Normans made their influence felt across all of western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land. In Empires of the Normans we discover how they combined military might and political savvy with deeply held religious beliefs and a profound sense of their own destiny. For a century and a half, they remade Europe in their own image, and yet their heritage was quickly forgotten - until now.

From the distant past to the present day, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. The aesthetic trademark of figures ranging from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools; ancient royals and Gen Z beauty influencers alike would attest to its uniquely transformative power.

Seen through Zahra Hankir's (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history. Through intimate reporting and conversations - with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more - Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of colour.

What emerges is a delightful, surprising, and unexpectedly moving journey through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history.

East Prussia is no longer on any map, though it was once a thriving land, famously military, deeply forested, artistically fertile, and the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. As the scene of Stalin's 'terrible revenge' it came to embody the turbulence of the twentieth century, was carved up between Poland and the USSR after World War II - and passed abruptly into history.

Embarking on a remarkable journey through landscape and memory, Max Egremont has woven the stories of ghosts and survivors into an evocative and deeply moving meditation on identity and the passing of time.

As religion divided sixteenth-century Europe, an extraordinary group of women rose to power. From mother to daughter and mentor to protégée, Sarah Gristwood follows the passage of power from Isabella of Castile and Anne de Beaujeu through Anne Boleyn and on to Elizabeth I. Sarah Gristwood reveals the stories of the queens who had, until now, been overshadowed by kings.

The story of a lethal spy triangle with three men at its centre – a ruthless British secret agent, a Gestapo counter-espionage officer and a French Resistance leader. From 1942 until 1944 these three enemies were drawn into a cat and mouse 'game' of espionage and counter espionage in occupied France.

For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Thirty years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves?

Guardian journalist, Giles Tremlett travels through contemporary Spain examining the darker sides of it's history. As well as a moving exploration of Spanish politics, Tremlett's journey was also an attempt to make sense of his personal experience of the Spanish.

Berlin 1941. Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a nineteen-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision, takes off her yellow star and vanishes into the city. Never certain who could be trusted, it was her quick-witted determination and the most hair-raising strokes of luck that ensured her survival.

The extraordinary story of the Grimaldis family and their principality of Monaco, from their 12th-century origins as Genoese pirates to the current ruler, Prince Rainier III. The book looks at 800 years of Grimaldis rule over "the rock", including surviving the French Revolution and two World Wars.

In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built - and then lost - over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs grew in power to gain control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in just a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe stretching from Hungary to Spain, and from the Far East to the New World. The family continued to dominate Central Europe until the catastrophe of the First World War.

With its seemingly disorganized mass of large and small territories, its tangle of laws and privileges and its medley of languages, the Habsburg Empire has always appeared haphazard and incomplete. But here Martyn Rady shows the reasons for the family's incredible endurance.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators, Rudolf Höss his most elusive target.

In the summer of 1849, Garibaldi, legendary hero of guerrilla wars in South America and future architect of a united Italy, was finally forced to concede defeat in his defence of a revolutionary Roman republic. After holding the besieged city for four long months, it was clear that only surrender could prevent slaughter and destruction at the hands of a huge French army. But Garibaldi was determined to turn defeat into moral victory.

On the evening of 2 July, riding alongside his heavily pregnant wife Anita, he led 4,000 men out of the city to continue the struggle for national independence elsewhere. Hounded by both French and Austrian armies, they crossed the mountainous Appenines and after endless skirmishes and adventures arrived in Ravenna on 2 August with just 250 survivours. The group commandeered fishing boats on the Adriatic coast in an attempt to reach the revolutionary republic of Venice, but were intercepted by the Austrian navy. Anita was seriously ill. Garibaldi's companions split up. Most were rounded up and executed, but the hero himself escaped, travelling back across Italy in disguise until he could finally embark from Genova, first for Africa, then the USA. Ten years later, his revolutionary campaign in Sicily would be the catalyst that brought about the unification of Italy.

Homelands is a stunning blend of contemporary history reportage and memoir by our greatest writer about European affairs. Drawing on half a century of interviews and experience Homelands tells the story of Europe in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries - how having emerged from its wartime hell in 1945 it slowly recovered and rebuilt liberated and united to come close to the ideal of a Europe 'whole free and at peace'. And then faltered. Humane expert and deeply felt Homelands is full of encounters conversations and anecdote.

It is also highly personal: Timothy Garton Ash has spent a lifetime studying and thinking about Europe and this book is full of life itself from his father's experience on D-Day to his teenage French exchange to interviewing Polish dockers Albanian guerillas and angry teenagers in the poorest quarters of Paris as well as advising prime ministers chancellors and presidents in the UK Europe and the US. Homelands is both a singular history of a period of unprecedented progress and a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong all the way from the financial crisis of 2008 to the war in Ukraine. It culminates in an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved.

In 1993, Thomas Harding travelled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a house by a lake. It had been a holiday home that her family had been forced to leave as the Nazis swept to power. As he began to piece together the lives of the five families who had lived there, he realised that this house had withstood the trauma of a world war, and the dividing of a nation.

A BBC Radio collection about Ireland and the Irish, hosted by Fergal Keane - plus bonus material

Award-winning BBC foreign correspondent Fergal Keane grew up in Dublin and County Cork, and has always felt a deep attachment to his ancestral homeland. In these six absorbing programmes, he takes a wide-ranging look at Ireland's history, culture and people, in topics ranging from the political to the personal . Also included are two moving autobiographical pieces about fatherhood and his own childhood.

How the Irish Shaped Britain explores the profound influence the Irish have had on the United Kingdom over many centuries. Beginning in the ancient Celtic world, Fergal travels through the time of the Vikings to the 19th and 20th Century and on to the present day, examining how Irish migrants and their descendants have shaped literature, business, sport and the physical landscape.

Troubles Shared sees Fergal and fellow journalist Peter Taylor discussing their experiences of reporting on the Northern Ireland conflict. Over two episodes, they revisit the province to talk about what they saw, and ask what it all means now. Meanwhile, No Man is an Island takes Fergal from the Republic to Northern Ireland, as he charts the seismic changes that have taken place in both regions and reflects on the sectarian feuding which has dominated the history of Ulster.

Keane on Keane... finds him presenting a profile of his uncle, celebrated playwright John B Keane. Visiting Dublin and the dramatist's home town of Listowel, Fergal hears how a country publican became an internationally-acclaimed writer. Another iconic figure is recalled in United Irishman, in which Keane recounts the colourful life of Wolfe Tone, the Protestant founding father of Irish republicanism.

There Will Be Sunlight Later gives Fergal's impressions of life in Northern Ireland, as he talks to the country's citizens and listens to their poetry and music. And in two bonus essays, Letter to Daniel and My Grandmother's House, we receive insights into Fergal's own family life, through his poignant message to his newborn son and his recollections of his early days and his grandparents' home in Cork.

Brought to you by Penguin.

For most of its existence German-speaking Europe has been splintered into innumerable states - some substantial (such as Austria and Prussia) and some consisting of just a few Alpine meadows. Its military experience has also been extraordinarily varied: threatened and threatening; a mere buffer-zone, and a global threat.

Iron and Blood is a startlingly ambitious and absorbing book. It encompasses five centuries of political, military, technological and economic change to tell the story of the German-speaking lands, from the Rhine to the Balkan frontier, from Switzerland to the North Sea. Wilson's narrative considers everything from weapons development to recruitment to battlefield strategy. Germans' military impact on the rest of Europe has been immense. If there is one constant it has been the sense of being beset by seemingly more powerful enemies - France or Russia or Turkey - and the need to strike a rapid knockout blow to ensure a favourable result. Almost inevitably, this has in practice meant protracted, relentless and often unwinnable wars, and - in 1939-1945 - moral catastrophe.

The author of definitive books on the Holy Roman Empire and the Thirty Years War, Peter Wilson has with Iron and Blood written his masterpiece.

© Peter H. Wilson 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, broke out into the Atlantic, to attack Allied shipping. The Royal Navy's pursuit and subsequent destruction of Bismarck was an epic of naval warfare. This new account of those dramatic events is a thrilling story, mainly from the point of view of the British battleships, cruisers and destroyers involved.