Leighton Pugh

In The Hitler Conspiracies renowned historian Richard Evans takes five widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis and subjects them to forensic scrutiny: that the Jews were conspiring to undermine civilization, as outlined in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; that the German army was 'stabbed in the back' by socialists and Jews in 1918; that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to seize power; that Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK in 1941 was sanctioned by Hitler and conveyed peace terms suppressed by Churchill; and that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945 and fled to South America. In doing so, it teases out some surprising features that these, and other conspiracy theories, have in common. This is a history book, but it is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts': a book for our own troubled times.

We are all bombarded with advice about what we should and shouldn't eat, and new scientific discoveries are announced every day. Yet the more we are told about nutrition, the less we seem to understand. Through his pioneering scientific research, Tim Spector has been shocked to discover how little good evidence there is for many of our most deep-rooted ideas about food. In a series of short, myth-busting chapters, Spoon-Fed reveals why almost everything we've been told about food is wrong.

Spector explores the scandalous lack of good science behind many medical and government food recommendations, and how the food industry holds sway over these policies and our choices. Spoon-Fed is a groundbreaking book that forces us to question every diet plan, official recommendation, miracle cure or food label we encounter, and encourages us to rethink our whole relationship with food. Diet may be the most important medicine we all possess. We urgently need to learn how best to use it, not just for our health as individuals but for the future of the planet.

As Europe teeters on the brink of war, Alfred Kendall is tasked with carrying out a minor mission for the British Intelligence Service. Travelling to Prague, he takes his troubled young son, Hugh, as cover. A terrible choice… When Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Alfred is given an ultimatum by the Czech Resistance. They will arrange for him to return to England, but only if he leaves his son Hugh behind as collateral. A young boy stranded in Nazi terrain… Hugh is soon taken under the wing of a Nazi colonel – Helmut Scholl. But even though Scholl treats Hugh well, his son, Heinz, is suspicious of this foreigner. And as the war across the continent intensifies, they are set on a path that will ultimately lead towards destruction…

The Great Fire has ravaged London; James Marwood, son of a traitor, is thrust into a treacherous environment when his ailing father claims to have stumbled upon a murdered woman – in the very place where the Fire Court sits. Then his father is killed ... and determined to uncover the truth, Marwood is forced to confront a vicious killer whose actions threaten the future of the city itself. Sequel to 'The Ashes of London' (11355).

London 1667. In the Court of Charles II, it’s a dangerous time to be alive – a wrong move could lead to disgrace, exile or death. The discovery of a murder at Clarendon House, the palatial home of one of the highest courtiers in the land, could have catastrophic consequences. James Marwood, a traitor’s son, is ordered to cover up the murder. But if he makes a mistake, it could threaten not only the government but the King himself…

No one in England wants a return to the bloody days of the Civil War. But Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, has abandoned his exile and slipped back into England. James Marwood, a traitor’s son turned government agent, is tasked with uncovering Cromwell’s motives. But his assignment is complicated by his friend Cat Lovett – who knew the Cromwells as a child, and who now seems to be hiding a secret of her own about the family. When Marwood and Cat find themselves on a top secret mission in the Palace of Whitehall, they realise they are risking their lives…and could even be sent to the block for treason.

It has never been more important for business leaders to look to the future. Yet, when we are living through some of the most uncertain times we have ever faced, it can feel daunting to know where to start. In Future-Proof Your Business, applied futurist Tom Cheesewright will reveal industry techniques and tools to help you: Scan the near horizon for incoming shocks, Look to the far future to define long-term strategy, Accelerate decision-making in your business, Delegate power to the front line, speeding your response and Streamline your organisation so it's agile and can adapt to change. In our uncertain times, leaders who keep their focus on the future will be the ones who prevail.

Sultan Gadaffi has escaped from Libya with a fistful of dangerous secrets. The British Government wants ex-Special Forces operative Steve Range to lead an ultra-covert mercenary group to seize him from his near-impregnable desert stronghold.

In the twists and turns of the Gallipoli campaign, there were three lives torn apart by the strangest campaign of WWI. Three people finding a way through this war of devastating proportions; and three people testing the strength of relationships forged in wartime.

When an aircraft piloted by Nick Chapman crashed off the Cayman Islands killing everyone on board, the official line was that Chapman committed suicide. But things don't add up, and soon unfolding events point to something far more sinister going on. Nick's former army comrade, SAS soldier Ben Hope, quickly discovers that some kinds of knowledge will get you killed - fast.

City stockbroker Alex Rocq leads a comfortable life - with a luxury flat in London, a very expensive car and a lucrative job. But soon his luck comes to an abrupt end. He is offered the chance to write off his debts - in exchange for special services and silence. But how far will a desperate man go to harness the power players around him?

In this collection of short stories Peter James exposes the Achilles heel of each of his characters, and makes us question how well we can trust ourselves, and one another. Each tale carries a twist that will haunt readers for days after they turn the final page . . . Contains some explicit sexual scenes.

The inside story of Leicester City’s triumph on winning the Premier League in May 2016, to ecstatic celebrations in the city and around the world. The team, under Claudio Ranieri’s inspired leadership, became the most unlikely champions in football history.

In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costliest nuclear disasters ever. But Fukushima was not the first, and it was not the worst. . .

In Atoms and Ashes, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy tells the tale of the six nuclear disasters that shook the world: Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Based on wide-ranging research and witness testimony, Plokhy traces the arc of each crisis, exploring in depth the confused decision-making on the ground and the panicked responses of governments to contain the crises and often cover up the scale of the catastrophe.

As the world increasingly looks to renewable and alternative sources of energy, Plokhy lucidly argues that the atomic risk must be understood in explicit terms, but also that these calamities reveal a fundamental truth about our relationship with nuclear technology: that the thirst for power and energy has always trumped safety and the cost for future generations.

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.

Few places are as familiar as the shore - and few as full of mystery and surprise.

How do sandhoppers inherit an inbuilt compass from their parents? How do crabs understand the tides? How can the death of one winkle guarantee the lives of its companions? What does a prawn know?

In The Sea is Not Made of Water, Adam Nicolson explores the natural wonders of the intertidal and our long human relationship with it. The physics of the seas, the biology of anemone and limpet, the long history of the earth, and the stories we tell of those who have lived here: all interconnect in this zone where the philosopher, scientist and poet can meet and find meaning.

In this blend of fascinating, surprising ecology and luminous human history, Adam Nicolson gives an invitation to the shoreline. Anyone who chooses can look beyond their own reflection and find the marvellous there, waiting an inch beneath their nose.

How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction? From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marriages, and love affair with socialism, the first forty years of H. G. Wells' extraordinary life would set him on a path to become one of the world's most influential writers. The sudden success of The Time Machine and The War of The Worlds transformed his life and catapulted him to international fame; he became the writer who most inspired Orwell and countless others, and predicted men walking on the moon seventy years before it happened. In this remarkable, empathetic biography, Claire Tomalin paints a fascinating portrait of a man like no other, driven by curiosity and desiring reform, a socialist and a futurist whose new and imaginative worlds continue to inspire today.

In 1942 the SAS donned Nazi uniforms to perpetrate the most audacious and daring mission of the war. Beyond top secret, deniable in the extreme (and of course enjoying Churchill's enthusiastic blessing), this is one of the most remarkable stories of wartime lawlessness, eccentricity and raw courage in the face of impossible odds - a thoroughly British undertaking.

Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a godlike genius, a romantic avatar, a megalomaniac monster, a compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator? Adam Zamoyski strips away the lacquer of prejudice and places Napoleon the man within the context of his times. He does not justify or condemn but seeks instead to understand Napoleon's extraordinary trajectory.

The Kalashnikov AK47. A symbol of freedom fighters and terrorists across the globe. Undercover officer Andy Knight has infiltrated an extremist group intent on bringing the rifle to Britain - something MI5 have been struggling for years to prevent. He befriends Zeinab, a young Muslim student, who is at the centre of the plot - and though Andy knows that the golden rule of undercover work is not to get emotionally attached to the target, sometimes rules are impossible to follow...

Steve Range thinks his friend Randy is a corpse in the desert - until he reappears in an Al Qaeda video, spitting extremist hate and challenging Range to a desert battle. A stray word slipped in to Randy's tirade makes Range begin to wonder whether his old comrade-in-arms really has been turned. All he knows for sure is that he owes a debt to the man he left for dead.

On the 26 April 1986 Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine, which put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation. In the end, less than five percent of the reactor's fuel escaped, but that was enough to contaminate over half of Europe with radioactive fallout. This poignant, fast paced account of the drama of heroes, perpetrators, and victims is the definitive history of the world's worst nuclear disaster.

England, 1930. Grieving widows are a familiar sight on London's Necropolis Railway. So when an elegant young woman in a black veil boards the funeral train, nobody guesses that Rachel Savernake is not one of the mourners. She hopes to save a life – the life of a man who is supposed to be cold in the grave. But then a suspicious death on the railway track spurs her on to investigate a sequence of baffling mysteries. She believes that the cases are connected – but what possible link can there be? To find the answers to her questions she joins a house party on the eerie and remote North Yorkshire coast at Mortmain Hall.

In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the 'Florence of the Elbe'. Explosive bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the bombing a last act of atavistic mass murder in a war already won? From the history of the city to the attack itself, conveyed in a minute-by-minute account from the first of the flares to the flames reaching almost a mile high - the wind so searingly hot that the lungs of those in its path were instantly scorched - through the eerie period of reconstruction, best-selling author Sinclair McKay creates a vast canvas and brings it alive with touching human detail. Along the way we encounter, for example, a Jewish woman who thought the English bombs had been sent from heaven, novelist Kurt Vonnegut who wrote that the smouldering landscape was like walking on the surface of the moon, and 15-year-old Winfried Bielss, who, having spent the evening ushering refugees, wanted to get home to his stamp collection. He was not to know that there was not enough time. Impeccably researched and deeply moving, McKay uses never-before-seen sources to relate the untold stories of civilians and vividly conveys the texture of life in a decimated city.

He had been to the limit. Then they sent him further. Gary - 'Gaz' - Baldwin is a watcher, not a killer. Operating with a special forces unit deep in Syria, he is to sit in a hide, observe a village, report back and leave. But the appalling atrocity he witnesses will change his life forever. Before long, he is living as a handyman on the Orkney islands, far from Syria, far from the army, not far enough from the memories that have all but destroyed him. 'Knacker' is one of the last old-school operators at the modern MI6 fortress on the Thames. He presides over the Round Table, a little group who meet in a pub and yearn for simpler, less bureaucratic times. When news reaches Knacker that the Russian officer responsible for the Syrian incident may be in Murmansk, northern Russia, he sets in motion a plan to kill him. It will involve a sleeper cell, a marksman and other resources - all unlikely to be sanctioned by the MI6 top brass, so it must be done off the books. But first, he will need a sure identification. And for that, he needs a watcher..

Food is our greatest ally for good health, but the question of what to eat has never seemed so complicated. In his new book, Tim Spector creates a unique, thorough, evidence-based guide to the real science of eating. Moving away from misleading notions of calories or nutritional breakdowns, Food for Life empowers us to make our own food choices based on a deeper understanding of the true benefits and harms that come from our daily transactions with the foods around us. Combining cutting-edge research with a personal insights, and taking a wide angle lens on everything from environmental impact and food fraud to allergies and deceptive labelling, Spector takes a deep dive into each food type. Food for Life also includes easy-to-implement action points and useful tables as practical tools in our everyday food decisions, presented in a novel and comprehensive format. Ultimately, this book encourages us to fall in love again with food and celebrate its many wondrous properties, which science is still only just beginning to understand.

"How to describe the ecstatic song of larks? How the writers and poets have tried..."

Skylarks are the heralds of our countryside. Their music is the quintessential sound of spring. The spirit of English pastoralism, they inspire poets, composers and farmers alike. In the trenches of World War I they were a reminder of the chattering meadows of home.

Perhaps you were up with the lark, or as happy as one. History has seen us poeticise and musicise the bird, but also capture and eat them. We watch as they climb the sky, delight in their joyful singing, and yet we harm them too.

The Soaring life of the Lark explores the music and poetry; the breath-taking heights and struggle to survive of one of Britain's most iconic songbirds.

Jungle tells the remarkable story of the world's tropical forests, from the arrival of the first plants millions of years ago to the role of tropical forests in the evolution of the world's atmosphere, the dinosaurs, the first mammals and even our own species and ancestors. 

Highlighting provocative new evidence garnered from cutting-edge research, Dr Roberts shows, for example, that our view of humans as 'savannah specialists' is wildly wrong, and that the 'Anthropocene' began not with the Industrial Revolution, but potentially as early as 6,000 years ago in the tropics.

We see that the relationship between humankind and 'jungles' is deep-rooted, that we are all connected to their destruction, and that we must all act to save them. Urgent, clear-sighted and original, Jungle challenges the way we think about the world - and ourselves.

In the beginning was the earth... From the Paleozoic volcanoes that stained its soil, to the Saxons who occupied it, to the Tudors who traded its wool, to the Land Girls of wartime, John Lewis-Stempel charts a sweeping, lyrical history of Woodston: the quintessential English farm. With his combined skills of farmer and historian, Lewis-Stempel digs deep into written records, the memories of relatives, and the landscape itself to celebrate the farmland his family have been bound to for millennia.

Through Woodston's life, we feel the joyful arrival of oxen ploughing; we see pigs rootling in the medieval apple orchard; and take in the sharp, drowsy fragrance of hops on Edwardian air. He draws upon his wealth of historical knowledge and his innate sense of place to create a passionate, fascinating biography of farming in England. Woodston not only reminds us of the rural riches buried beneath our feet but of our shared roots that tie us to the land.

The Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. The baker does his rounds in his battered little white van with a hundred warm baguettes in the back, while a cat picks its way past a Romanesque church, the sound of bells skipping across miles of rolling, glorious countryside. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood. He wanted to be self-sufficient, to make his own wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming.

And so, buying an old honey-coloured limestone house with bright blue shutters, the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers. Over that first year, Lewis-Stempel fell in love with the French countryside, from the wild boar that trot past the kitchen window to the glow-worms and citronella candles that flicker in the evening garden. Although it began as a practical enterprise, it quickly became an affair of the heart: of learning to bite the end off the morning baguette; taking two hours for lunch; in short, living the good life - or as the French say, La Vie.

'The world's foremost historian of Ukraine. . . the chronicler of a country on the front lines of a seismic European war' Financial Times On 24 February 2022, Russia stunned the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on the family and friends who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the outbreak of the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy inevitably found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the wider outcomes. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the comprehensive history of a conflict that has burned since 2014, and that, with Russia's attempt to seize Kyiv, exploded a geo-political order that had been cemented since the end of the Cold War.

With an eye for the gripping detail on the ground, both in the halls of power and down in the trenches, as well as a keen sense of the grander sweep of history, Plokhy traces the origins and the evolution of the conflict, from the collapse of the Russian empire to the rise and fall of the USSR and on to the development in Ukraine of a democratic politics. Based on decades of research and his unique insight into the region, he argues that Ukraine's defiance of Russia, and the West's demonstration of unity and strength, has presented a profound challenge to Putin's Great Power ambition, and further polarized the world along a new axis. A riveting, enlightening account, this is present-minded history at its best.

VIENNA, 1946. A brilliant German scientist spirited out of the ruins Nazi Europe in search of a new life. MOSCOW, 1964. A rising star of the British diplomatic service whose job is not what it seems.

LONDON, THE PRESENT DAY. A once promising academic offered an opportunity to seal his place in history. Their stories, their lives, and the fate of the world, are bound by a single document: THE SCARLET PAPERS. The devastating secrets contained within teased by a brief invitation: Tomorrow 11AM. Take a cab and pay in cash. Tell no one.

The quickest way to get rich is to marry someone rich, but how do you do this if you aren't yet rich? TV chat-show host Ronnie Appleyard is preoccupied with this question as he pursues wealthy heiress Simona Quick over two continents in the company of braying aristocrats, Greek shipping magnates, American dandies and the dreaded mother-in-law to be. But as he comes closer to his prize other questions present themselves.

Is the androgenous Simona really worth it? Why doesn't she like sex? Is it possible to drink all day?

With his unerring eye for absurdity and class satire Kingsley Amis shows us what happens when money meets naked ambition.

Brimming with gluttony, booze and lust, Roger Micheldene is loose in America. Supposedly visiting Budweiser University to make deals for his publishing firm in England, Roger instead sets out to offend all he meets and to seduce every woman he encounters.

But his American hosts seem made of sterner stuff. Who will be Roger's undoing? Irving Macher, the young author of an annoyingly brilliant first novel? Father Colgate, the priest who suggests that Roger's soul is in torment? Or will it be his married ex-lover Helene? One thing is certain - Roger is heading for a terrible fall.

The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule.

In this wonderfully readable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins - the war between King and Parliament, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's rule and the Restoration - while aiming to reveal something more elusive: the motivations of contemporaries on both sides and the concerns of later generations.

At some point in our careers we will need to speak in front of an audience; whether to present our ideas to a group of five in a meeting, pitch for investment in front of a panel or deliver a keynote speech to one thousand delegates.

Yet glossophobia, or the fear of public speaking, is incredibly common and can inhibit our chances of career progression by up to 15%. 

In Speaking with Confidence, Expert and managing director of Speakers' Corner Nick Gold, shows how anyone can learn to be a confident public speaker and use their surroundings to give them the support and structure they need to achieve maximum impact and success from their speech.