Charles Armstrong

2024 marks the centenary of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. What legacy of the past have they left behind?

Professor Richard Toye explores Labour's exercise of power as a continuum, setting Attlee's administration in long-term historical context between the first Labour Government of 1924 and the current party under Keir Starmer.

Within this context he shows why the Attlee administration matters so much and how successive Labour governments have fashioned it in their own image. Into this story are woven the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900, the First World War, the General Strike of 1926, the Spanish Civil War and the coalition war-time government under Churchill.

Age of Hope is an incisive, informative look at a political party that has been fundamental in shaping modern Britain and will be equally instrumental in its future.

For a hundred years, GCHQ - Government Communications Headquarters - has been at the forefront of innovation in national security and British secret statecraft. Famed for its codebreaking achievements during the Second World War, and essential to the Allied victory, GCHQ also held a critical role in both the Falklands Conflict and Cold War.

Today, amidst the growing threats of terrorism and online crime, GCHQ continues to be the UK's leading intelligence, security and cyber agency, and a powerful tool of the British state.

Based on unprecedented access to classified archives, Behind the Enigma is the first book to authoritatively tell the entire history of this most unique and enigmatic of organisations - and peer into its future at the heart of the nation's security. 

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is an 1848 political document by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.

No one has a better perspective on life on both sides of the channel than Julian Barnes. In these exquisitely crafted stories spanning several centuries, he takes as his universal theme the British in France; from the last days of a reclusive English composer, the beef consuming 'navvies' labouring on the Paris-Rouen railway to a lonely woman mourning the death of her brother on the battlefields of the Somme.

Economic theories and models shape our everyday lives. They are relied on by politicians when tax rises or cuts are being considered. They inform debates about everything from bonuses for CEOs to minimum wage rates to the level of job protection enshrined in law. They determine what levels of tobacco or petrol duty are charged, and influence government approaches to issues as diverse as obesity and climate change.

The question is: are policy makers right to be so slavishly reliant on them? Tom Bergin is sceptical, and in Free Lunch Thinking he subjects eight of the most prevalent economic mantras to close scrutiny, assessing how they play out in practice. Again and again, he shows how individuals, companies and markets fail to respond to policy changes as theory predicts. He exposes the missed opportunities and wasted resources that result.

Paddy Clarke is ten in 1968 and loves George Best, Geronimo and the smell of his hot water bottle. He hates zoos, kissing and boys from the Corporation houses and his brother. He knows that his mother is crying, that Da leaves the house in silence, but he doesn't know why... Man Booker Prize Winner.

Celebrated composer Harry Fox-Talbot wants to be left in peace. His beloved wife has died, and he’s unable to write a note of music. Then one day he discovers that his four-year-old grandson is a piano prodigy. The music returns and Fox is compelled to re-engage with life – and to confront an old family rift...