The study of prime ministers and the reforms of British central government in any era are fascinating. The interaction between the temporary, often inexperienced, but largely elected ministers and the experienced, but theoretically subservient, senior civil servants provides enormous interest. It is a matter that relates directly to many of the battles going on in British politics today. This book concentrates on the Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath years when the battle between the Civil Service and the Government was at its most intense.

What...

The public execution at Tyburn is one of the most evocative and familiar of all eighteenth-century images. Whether it elicits horror or prurient fascination - or both - the Tyburn hanging day has become synonymous with the brutality of a bygone age and a legal system which valued property over human life. But, as this fascinating cultural and social history of the gallows reveals, the early modern execution was far more than just a debased spectator sport. The period between the Restoration and the American Revolution witnessed the rise and fall of a vast body of execution literature -...

William Wykeham was an extraordinary figure whose rapid ascent from peasant to chancellor bucked contemporary trends. Wykeham's administrative talents ensured that he became bishop of Winchester, holder of one of the richest sees in Christendom and Chancellor of England under Edward III and Richard II. "Everything was done by him and nothing was done without him" wrote the contemporary chronicler, Jean Froissart.



His lasting contributions to society arose from two passions, architecture and education. He made effective use of the rich revenues of his...

This book traces the origins and evolution of the enmity between England and France over the four hundred years in which England was a continental European land power. The medieval claim to the throne of France was not formally abandoned by the British monarchy until 1802 and the so-called Hundred Years War between the two nations was never concluded by a peace treaty. The book argues that medieval and early modern England, like Britain today, was a two-faced polity: one face looked westward and northward towards its Celtic neighbours; the other faced eastward and southward towards...

'In war, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or peril...' (Sun Tzu The Art of War). We speak of Caesar who conquered Gaul, not the legions; MacArthur who landed at Inchon, not the Marines - and we speak of Napoleon, one of history's most successful generals. Major General Jonathon Riley is supremely well qualified to write on Napoleon's generalship and has written an informed and insightful account. He opens with a short...

When people speak of the special relationship between the two English-speaking peoples on either side of the Atlantic, they are talking of a phenomenon not much older than Britain's 1904 entente cordial with France. The very term 'English-speaking peoples' most probably has no earlier pedigree than William Gladstone. For much of the nineteenth-century, Britain and the United States were imperial rivals in the scramble for North America, and their often difficult relationship directly reflected that reality.

That these two nations became friends and allies was never a foregone...

The press gang, and its forcible recruitment of sailors to man the Royal Navy in times of war, acquired notoriety for depriving men of their liberty and carrying them away to a harsh life at sea, sometimes for years at a time. Nicholas Rogers explains exactly how the press gang worked, whom it was aimed at and how successful it was in achieving its ends. He also shows the limits to its operations and the press gang's need for cooperation from local authorities, who were by no means prepared to support it.
Written by an expert in the social history of eighteenth-century Britain, it is...