William Collins
July - December 2025
Hardback Titles
The New Geography of Innovation
The global contest for breakthrough technologies
Mehran Gul
In this groundbreaking book, Mehran Gul maps the recent waves of technological advancement up until the current moment to show how innovation becomes a far more global game.
This is a story about technology and the places where it finds its way into the world. Silicon Valley has been unrivalled for half a century in spinning out technologies and fast-growing, high value, billion-plus-dollar tech companies – the Apples, Facebooks, Googles of the world – that made it the centre for the most rapid creation of wealth in human history. But now its secrets are spreading to more parts of the world.
It used to be rare for a new company to reach a billion-dollar scale. In 2013 there were only 39 privately held billion-dollar tech companies in the world. Now, it happens a lot. In 2023, there are over 1,200. And it used to be only in the US that these sorts of companies could be found. In 2013, only 12 of the 39 privately held billiondollar companies were based outside the US. Now, they’re everywhere. In 2023, over 500, nearly half of all billiondollar tech companies, are overseas.
The geography of innovation is shifting. The modern world has a lot more high value tech companies than ever before, growing a lot faster than ever before, in a lot more places than ever before. The broad contours of this emerging world are visible dimly in the distance. This book has been an attempt to chart its bold new frontiers.
Mehran Gul has been a Lead for the Digital Transformation of Industries at the World Economic Forum in Geneva and an Expert on Higher Education, Entrepreneurship, and Industrial Policy at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. He graduated from Yale as a Fulbright scholar. The New Geography of Innovation won the Financial Times/McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize for writers under 35.
Business
3 July HB
£22.00 9780008327804
Sanctuary Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling
Marina Warner
A gorgeous exploration of the nature of sanctuary, by acclaimed author and critic Marina Warner.
Born from Marina’s work with the project Stories in Transit – which organises storytelling workshops in the UK and in Palermo, bringing young migrant students together with artists, writers and musicians – this book interrogates the history, philosophy and lived experiences surrounding the concept of sanctuary.
What is sanctuary for those who have been displaced? Why do people flee different situations and conflicts worldwide, and what would a perfect version of sanctuary for those forced out of their homes look like? How can art, which has always recorded and reflected the worst experiences of humanity, also be a salve, an escape or a route to somewhere new?
Interrogating these questions and more, Warner leads us on a literary journey through the ages and across the continents. Untangling the complex mesh of taboos, laws, customs and values in which ‘sanctuary’ sits at the centre, this is a beautiful and essential book in these dark times.
PRAISE FOR MARINA WARNER:
‘Just like the tale-tellers she celebrates... she’s a weaver of enchantments, each sentence is like a silken knot charming you further into her web of meanings’ Independent on Sunday
‘Open the book at almost any page and you will find something to fascinate you’ Guardian
Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, London, a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy and was made DBE in 2015.
History / Politics
3 July
HB
£22.00 9780008347543
The Mission The CIA in the 21st Century
Tim Weiner
The epic successor to Tim Weiner’s National Book Award-winning classic, Legacy of Ashes: a gripping and revelatory history of the CIA in the twenty-first century, reaching from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today’s battles with Russia and China – and with the President of the United States.
At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage
From Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner, The Mission tells the gripping, high-stakes story of the CIA through the first quarter of the twenty-first century, revealing how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror – and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The struggle has life-and-death consequences for America and its allies. The CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.
A masterpiece of reporting, The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top spies who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before.
PRIASE FOR LEGACY OF ASHES:
‘This racy history reveals the CIA as a secret service to make Smiley weep and Bond howl in horror’ Daily Telegraph
‘Combines thrilling storytelling with terrifying revelations’ New Statesman
Tim Weiner has won the Pulit zer Prize for his reporting on American national security and the National Book Award for Legacy of Ashes. At the New York Times, he covered the CIA in Washington and conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and many other nations His five other books include the bestseller Enemies: A History of the FBI.
Politics 17 July
Moscow Underground
Catherine Merridale
Moscow, 1934.
Construction is well under way for a glittering new subway system in the Russian capital. When completed, it will be the envy of the world. However, to build the future, the authorities must dig up the past. Untold treasures – and dark secrets – lie deep underground.
A prominent archaeologist, working alongside the subway dig, has been killed in a deserted mansion. Accused is a young boy, a nobody.
Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment. And he does not want to get involved in any way. But his former love interest and current member of the secret police, Vika, browbeats him into paying a visit to the site.
All reason tells him that he should just leave the boy to rot in gaol. The revolution has already claimed plenty of other innocents. As he digs deeper though, something about the mystery compels Anton to find the truth.
Something bigger is at work here. Something that links a thousand-year-old treasure and a vicious internecine fight for power in the young Soviet state. Anton must navigate his way through and ultimately keep himself and his family safe.
Merridale’s book is a sweeping novel of life, death and politics set in a society on the brink of the first of Stalin’s great purges.
PRAISE FOR LENIN ON THE TRAIN
:
‘Twice I missed my stop on the Tube reading this book… this is a jewel among histories’ The Times
‘The suberb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin’s trans-European rail journey to power and how it shook the world’ Evening Standard
Catherine Merridale is an award-winning writer and broadcaster with an internationally acknowledged expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
A pioneer of oral history in the region, her books have won the Royal Society of Literature’s Heinemann Prize, the Wolfson History Prize and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize.
Historical Fiction 14 August HB £16.99 9780008761530
Asa Briggs A Biography
Adam Sisman
Asa Briggs was one of the best-known historians of his generation. Here, acclaimed biographer Adam Sisman reveals Asa’s life-story for the first time.
As a historian Asa Briggs was a pioneer, who ventured into previously unexplored areas of study: labour history, urban history, local history, northern history, the history of cities, the history of the book, the history of communications, and so on. He seemed interested in everything; no detail was too trivial, no subject tedious; they were all “fascinating”.
His main field of study was Victorian history, a field which he helped to establish and cultivate. Asa was one of the first historians to take an interest in the Victorian period; when he began his career, “modern” history ended in 1832 – or at least it did in the older universities. Asa’s Victorian trilogy (Victorian People, Victorian Cities, and Victorian Things) perhaps his most significant academic achievement, was part of a wider movement to reclaim the Victorian past from the condescension of critics like Lytton Strachey. In the process Asa helped to change the way the public thought and felt about the legacy of Victorian times, especially the buildings that remain.
Asa Briggs transformed how we view history, leaving a lasting legacy through his pioneering. This is his life-story, told for the first time.
PRAISE FOR ADAM SISMAN:
‘The thoroughness, fairness and frankness of this biography are exemplary… consistently engrossing’ Guardian
‘Sisman delves deep into the life and mind of his subject in this remarkably well-written biography’ Sunday Telegraph
Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John Le Carré, A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the University of St Andrews.
Biography 14 August
HB
£30.00
9780008556419
Progress A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea
Samuel Miller McDonald
Progress is power. But the modern story of progress is a very dangerous fiction.
In the pursuit of progress, of growth and expansion, we have levelled cities, flattened mountains, charted the globe and ushered in a new geological epoch unique in our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. The idea of progress has compelled societies toward exploration, invention, and grandiosity on one hand, and on the other, genocide, slavery, ecocide, and conquest: it is the root of our civilization’s success, as well as its looming demise.
Geographer Samuel Miller McDonald offers a radical new perspective on the myth upon which the modern world is built, illuminating its blood-strewn lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative. He traces the history of how human societies broke from their pasts, broke from their environments, and broke from longstanding egalitarian values that sustained them, supplanting these with one imperative to rule all others: progress.
If humanity is to have any chance of a future, then we must fundamentally change the way we think about one of our most basic political ideas. This landmark work shows us where to begin.
‘This is a wise book, and hopefully its wisdom will rub off’ Bill McKibben
‘From debunking creation myths to arguing for a deeper happiness, Progress upturns shibboleths ... Without new understandings of our past, such as that given here, chaos may be inevitable’ Danny Dorling
Samuel Miller McDonald is a geographer focusing on human ecology, theory, and history. He holds a doctorate from Brasenose College, University of Oxford and degrees from Yale University and College of the Atlantic. He has written essays and analysis for The Guardian, The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Progress is his first book.
History / Environment 14 August
9780008462475
Six Weeks by the Sea
Paula Byrne
Summer 1801. Sidmouth, England.
The Austen family descends upon a fashionable Georgian seaside resort in Devonshire for a six-week holiday. Jane’s brother, Frank, is on leave from the Royal Navy, and dearly wishes to unite his sister with his friend Captain Peter Parker. But another holidaymaker, a handsome stranger, catches sight of Jane and is determined to make her acquaintance. This rival to Captain Parker is Samuel Rose: a lawyer, literary man and abolitionist. As the weeks pass, Jane’s relationship with both men brings about unexpected surprises. By the end of the summer, the course of her life will have changed forever.
Set against the backdrop of Austen’s family, the tensions of the war against France, and naval and colonial politics, Six Weeks by the Sea is the fascinating story of how the most famous romance writer of all time fell in love for the first time.
PRAISE FOR THE REAL JANE AUSTEN
:
‘The portrait of Austen that emerges is sparklingly multi-faceted, catching the light in intriguing ways … her Jane is far less likely to go for a quiet walk in the garden than she is to be whisked into town in search of a velvet cushion, a necklace or a smart new dress’ Mail on Sunday
‘Engaging, compelling, a delightful and engrossing book. Of course, we all know that the “real” Jane Austen will forever be a mystery, but most 21st century Janeites will adore this one. Byrne’s passion is nothing if not persuasive’ Sunday Times
Paula Byrne is the author the bestselling biographies Perdita, Mad World, The Real Jane Austen, Belle, Kick and The Genius of Jane Austen. She is founder and chief executive of ReLit, the Bibliotherapy Foundation, a charity devoted to the mental health benefits of reading. She is married to Sir Jonathan Bate.
Historical Fiction 28 August
HB
£16.99
9780008753221
Searching for My Slave Roots
Malik Al Nasir
An exploration of an untold chapter in both Black and British history, seen through Malik’s own investigation into his mixed Guyanese heritage.
With ancestors that had been both enslaved people and prominent slaveholders, Malik Al Nasir presents a completely new narrative on historical transatlantic slavery and the role of Scottish, Dutch and English merchants, whose holdings were financed through the proceeds of the Demerara sugar and slave trade.
In Searching for My Slave Roots, Malik uncovers a lineage linking slaveholdings to high sheriffs, mayors, a late prime minister and bankers, whose companies formed major modern-day financial institutions. Travelling around the Atlantic world, he unravels the legacies of slavery, plantation economics and the wealth of a slaveholding dynasty that he himself descended from. Threading through this is a nuanced investigation into the ways that historic trauma plays down through generations of the enslaved, and how wealth and privilege plays out across generations of slaveholders and their descendants.
PRAISE FOR LETTERS TO GIL:
‘A searing, triumphant story. A testament to the tenacity of the human spirit as well as a beautiful ode to an iconic figure’ Irenosen Okojie
‘Part of a growing corpus of Black British memoir that confronts difficult subjects … It is also a tribute to artists who blend creative expression with fearless political commentary’ TLS
Malik Al Nasir is an author, performance poet and filmmaker from Liverpool. He has produced and appeared in several documentaries with Gil ScottHeron, The Last Poets, Benjamin Zephaniah, Public Enemy, and many other luminaries. Malik’s pioneering research has been recognised by the University of Cambridge, where he is completing a PhD with a full scholarship.
History
28 August
HB
£22.00
9780008464486
After Nations A History of the Future
Rana Dasgupta
A radical and landmark polemic, revealing the global crisis of the nation-state system.
Rana Dasgupta, one of today’s most original thinkers, reveals the nation-state system as a very recent innovation, and one that departs from the normal history of the world – which is a story of empires.
After Nations offers a startling account of this exhilarating and terrible system. Dasgupta argues that we must quickly come to terms with the failure of this system if we are to address the very grave challenges that now face us: at their core, the political, economic, military and even environmental problems we face today are not the fault of inadequate policies or poor leadership. They are the consequence, rather, of our outdated political infrastructure – the nation-state system – which is not capable, even in theory, of protecting populations from twenty-first-century conditions. Five crises (“God”, “Money”, “Law”, “War” and “Nature”) will combine inexorably to diminish the ability of this system to deliver minimally acceptable outcomes.
Through a portrait of this time of crisis, Dasgupta lays out what a radically re-imagined nation-state system can and should provide. His interrogation of what we might now ask of our neighbourhoods and cities, will here be writ large.
PRAISE FOR CAPITAL:
‘An astonishing tour de force by a major writer at the peak of his powers’ William Dalrymple
‘Dasgupta peels back the layers of denial with insight, humanity and beautiful writing’ The Times
Rana Dasgupta is the awardwinning author of two novels and a non-fiction portrait of twentyfirst-century Delhi. His essays and articles have appeared in Granta, New Statesman, Prospect, The Paris Review, The Guardian and the New York Times, and his books have been translated into twentyone languages.
Politics 11 September HB £30.00 9780008639747
Tunisgrad Victory in Africa
Saul David
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of SkyWarriors and SBS, comes an epic history about the North African campaign during the Second World War.
In early 1943, three Axis defeats changed the course of World War II: at Guadalcanal in the Pacific, Stalingrad in Russia and Tunisia in North Africa. Historians have recognized the great significance of the first two campaigns, but never the latter. Until now.
Bringing his trademark narrative pace and thrilling 360-degree storytelling, Saul David tells the history of the North African campaign from the perspective of all combatants – from the senior politicians to the ordinary servicemen fighting in and over the mountains of Tunisia, and across the Mediterranean. In riveting detail, he reveals the significance of this campaign: showing that it determined how and where the Allies would fight for the rest of the war, and that it was where the Allies learned, after early setbacks, how to defeat the Germans with a combination of air, land and sea power.
Gripping and skilfully researched, Tunisgrad casts the North African campaign in the spotlight it deserves in showing that by destroying the Axis, it marked, for Hitler, the beginning of the end.
‘David has a claim to be our finest military historian’ Daily Telegraph
‘David recounts battles with enthralling detail, never from a detached distance. He specialises in a worm’seye view of the war’ The Times
Saul David is a historian, broadcaster and the author of several critically acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction. His history books have been shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature and variously named a Waterstones Military History Book of the Year and an Amazon History Book of the Year. He is Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham.
Military History 11 September
HB
£25.00
9780008653811
Fly, Wild Swans My Mother, Myself and China
Jung Chang
The long-awaited sequel to Wild Swans, the multimillion copy international bestselling sensation
Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation – the story of ‘three daughters of China’: Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution. Fly, Wild Swans is, quite simply, what happened next.
Jung Chang arrived in the UK in 1978 aged 26, part of a Chinese scholarship programme for study abroad. Finding herself in the London of punk, political protests and Ziggy Stardust, she felt as if she’d landed on the moon. As Jung began to adjust to life in the West, she warmed to the fashion scene, rebelled and thrived. Her studies took off and she became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to be awarded a doctorate from a British university.
Fly, Wild Swans is, in many ways, Jung’s love letter to her mother set against China’s development from the relative freedoms of the late-1970s and untrammelled capitalism of the 1990s to the current authoritarian repressive rule of Xi-Jinping. Through the arc of their respective lives, she gives an immersive, deeply moving and unforgettable account of what it is like to live in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order. It is family history at its best.
PRAISE FOR WILD SWANS:
‘It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book’ Mary Wesley
‘Everything about Wild Swans is extraordinary. It arouses all the emotions, such as pity and terror, that great tragedy is supposed to evoke, and also a complex mixture of admiration, despair and delight at seeing a luminous intelligence directed at the heart of darkness’ Sunday Telegraph
Jung Chang is the author of Wild Swans, which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She wrote a ground-breaking trilogy of the history and personalities of modern China: Mao, Empress Dowager Cixi and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
History / Memoir 16 September
HB
£25.00
9780008775803
The Boundless Deep Young Tennyson and the Crisis in
Victorian Science
Richard Holmes
What happens when a poet lives too long – and becomes respectable?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson might provide one kind of answer; his reputation cast into deep shadow by the beard he sported in later life and his elevation to Poet Laureate during the high Victorian era, aged but 40. Before this, his cheek was clean-shaven and his poetry brimmed with radical ideas of science, challenges to belief and an imaginative response to the horrors of a godless universe.
From the prize-winning and bestselling biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, and author of the landmark, critically acclaimed The Age of Wonder, this is a book about the new science and scepticism of the 19th century; about ideas of geology and deep time, the vast beauty and the terror looming before all those who saw deeper into the stars and studied the new cosmology. Tennyson grew up amidst this turmoil, his imagination and intellect driven by the eruption of three new fundamentally transformative scientific ideas – biological evolution, the notion of a godless, unpitying universe and planetary extinction. These were as terrifying to Tennyson as climate catastrophe is to us today. They inspired him to grapple with ideas of his own destiny, the threat of suicide and depression, the struggle between love and loneliness, intellectual hope and spiritual despair.
PRAISE FOR RICHARD HOLMES:
‘No biographer is better than Holmes at evoking the thrill of the chase... entrancing’ Sunday Telegraph
‘I am a Richard Holmes addict. He is an incomparable biographer’ Oliver Sacks
was born in London in 1945 and educated at Downside School and Churchill College, Cambridge. His book Shelley: The Pursuit won the Somerset Maugham Award and was described by Stephen Spender as ‘surely the best biography of Shelley ever written’. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was awarded an OBE in 1992 and the Biographers’ Club Lifetime Services to Biography Prize in 2014.
Biography
25 September
HB
£25.00
9780007386932
Richard Holmes
Truly Lionel Richie
The long-awaited memoir of legendary artist Lionel Richie
As a storyteller second to none, Lionel Richie is ready to tell it all. In this intimate, deeply candid memoir, Lionel revisits hilarious and harrowing events that seek to inspire all who doubt themselves or feel their dreams don’t matter.
Funny, warm, insightful and candid, Lionel takes us from his childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he grew up on its university campus during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, to raucous adventures as a member of The Commodores, to coming-of-age in Harlem where that band took off, to the culture shock of playing gigs on the French Riviera, to the big break of being signed to Motown, to his meteoric solo career including an Olympics performance witnessed by 2 billion around the globe and his current multi-generational stature as a legendary musical artist. With an unparalleled number of awards and hits, the Grammy-, Oscar-, and Golden Globe-winning superstar who has sold over 125 million records has delivered a memoir for the ages, reminding us of the power of love to elevate our own lives and our world.
International superstar Lionel Richie boasts a discography that is second to none, with more than 125 million albums sold worldwide. In 2022 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Richie served as producer on the documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim.
Autobiography / Music 30 September
HB
£25.00
9780008752323
On My Watch
Jens Stoltenberg
From the former secretary general of NATO, a frank and riveting account of running the world’s most powerful military alliance, taking us inside the significant flashpoints of the last decade.
With the reelection of Donald Trump, there is no reason to believe that the debate about the Americans’ relationship with NATO will subside. As Jens Stoltenberg demonstrates in On My Watch, his account of leading the military alliance across an explosive decade, NATO remains a powerful and essential agent of stability. From the Russian annexation of Crimea, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Finland and Sweden joining the Alliance, and the brutal war launched by Russia against Ukraine in 2022, to the close cooperation with Donald Trump and the other US presidents, Stoltenberg had a front row seat to the signal events of our era. And he has shaped the responses to those events, navigating among competing interests to galvanize Western support for Ukraine while avoiding a world war. He showed that the alliance has an enduring role to play not just in Europe, but across the globe. On My Watch is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand our fractured world.
Jens Stoltenberg served as the secretary general of NATO from 2014 to 2024. He was the prime minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 until 2013.
Autobiography
9 October
HB
£25.00
9780008708740
Wolfpack
Hitler’s U-Boat War 1939-45
Roger Moorhouse
A story of technological brilliance, dramatic sinkings, life and death, and the sinister, unseen threat of U-Boats.
Winston Churchill famously remarked that the threat of the German U-Boats was the only thing that had “really frightened” him during World War Two. For Allied seamen during the war, the U-Boat was a hidden menace, a faceless killer lurking beneath the waves.
Germany’s U-Boat crews posted the highest per-capita losses of any combat arm during World War Two. Some 30,000 German submariners were killed – over 75% of the total number deployed – the vast majority of whom have no grave except the seabed. Using archival sources, unpublished diaries and existing memoir literature, this book will give the U-Boatmen back their voice, allowing their side of the narrative to be aired in a comprehensive manner for the first time.
With that testimony, Wolfpack takes the reader from the heady early days of the war, when U-Boat crews were buoyed with optimism about their cause, through to the challenges of meeting the Allied counterthreat, to the final horror of defeat, when their submarines were captured by the enemy or scuttled in ignominy. Using the U-Boatmen’s own voices to punctuate an engaging narrative, it tells their story; of courage, certainly, but also of fear, privation and – ultimately – failure.
‘Roger Moorhouse has a wonderful knack of reminding us about the parts of the Second World War that we are in danger of forgetting’ Dan Snow
‘He has a deep knowledge of Wartime Germany... and has a nice eye for social detail’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times
Roger Moorhouse is a historian and author specialising in modern German history. He is the coauthor, with Norman Davies, of Microcosm, and the author of Killing Hitler, Berlin at War, Devil’s Alliance and First to Fight, which was awarded the Polish Foreign Ministry History Prize in 2020. Roger’s books have appeared in more than 20 languages.
Military History
9 October
Monteverdi and His Constellation
John Eliot Gardiner
An unconventional, brilliant new biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi – from the bestselling biographer and acclaimed conductor John Eliot Gardiner.
This book positions Claudio Monteverdi amidst seven leading lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Bacon, Kepler, Rubens, Shakespeare and Caravaggio.
Using Monteverdi as the sun, centre of those six other greats, John Eliot Gardiner argues that across these tumultuous centuries when science was reconfiguring man’s entire relation with the cosmos, and many were arguing for the ‘science of music’, Monteverdi became a key to understanding and bringing together all of this knowledge. As it became believed that art and music could, like nothing else, reflect the human soul, Monteverdi’s music represented and unlocked the shift in human thought and the attitude toward modernity encapsulated by a sudden prizing of subjectivity and self-reflection.
Monteverdi and His Constellation reintroduces this brilliant composer in a new light, with a new importance, and interrogates the historical signifiance of the speed at which thought and art were changing in these centuries.
PRAISE FOR MUSIC IN THE CASTLE OF HEAVEN:
‘Simply as a biography this is splendid, but the fact that it comes with such a wealth of musical understanding and experience makes it invaluable. I learned an enormous amount, and I know I’ll return to it again and again’ Philip Pullman
‘His book made me want to rush and listen to all the music he writes about, whether familiar or unfamiliar. A wonderful treasure chest’ Sir Simon Rattle
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is one of the world’s leading conductors and a bestselling author. He founded the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. He has conducted most of the world’s great orchestras and in many of the leading opera houses.
History 23 October
HB
£30.00
9780008454586
Motherland A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy
Julia Ioffe
Award-winning journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy.
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-athome moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values?
In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin’s lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate—and documents how that failure paved the way to the revanche of Vladimir Putin.
Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe shows what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak—and reveals how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the history of its women.
Julia Ioffe is a Russian-born American journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Yorker and The Atlantic. Ioffe has appeared on television programs on MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and other news channels as a Russia expert. She is a founding partner and Washington correspondent at Puck.
History 23 October
HB
£25.00 9780008469665
Downfall of the King From Adored People’s King
to Exiled Pariah
Paul Preston
A riveting and deeply researched account of King Juan Carlos’s epic fall from grace.
Paul Preston, the preeminent historian of modern Spain, lays bare the complex web of financial and sexual excess that led to this hero’s vertiginous downfall. For decades, King Carlos was immensely popular in Spain and much beloved – in part because of his courageous defence of Spanish democracy after Franco’s death. However, when the story of him elephant hunting in Botswana –accompanied by a woman who was not his wife – began to unravel, the floodgates opened. From there, it was a short step to journalistic, followed by judicial, investigations into his financial misdemeanours. The consequent accumulation of hostile coverage culminated in his abdication on 2 June 2014 and, from August 2020, a gilded exile in Abu Dhabi.
Paul Preston’s spectacular biography tells the story of the King’s very public implosion and identifies the seeds of self-destruction in Juan Carlos’s unhappy childhood and upbringing. In so doing, Preston also throws a penetrating light on the massive scale of corruption within the Spanish establishment and sets the King’s downfall against Spain’s own identity crisis as it continues to grapple with its fascist past.
‘He’s an enormous intellect and a great storyteller’ The Times
‘For decades, Paul Preston has been one of the English-speaking world’s premier historians of modern Spain’ Financial Times
Paul Preston is Principe de Asturias Professor of Iberian History at the LSE, and was head of the International History Department there for several years. He is regarded as the leading historian of twentiethcentury Spain alive and is the acclaimed author of many books.
Biography
6 November HB
£30.00
9780008741105
The Battle of the Arctic
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
From the #1 bestselling author Hugh SebagMontefiore, a spellbinding and fiercely told history of one of the most extreme episodes of the Second World War.
The Battle of the Arctic is a wonderful, accessible history rooted in the Second World War. As the Soviet Union played its role in the fracas, Ally convoys from the UK, the United States and Iceland fought to deliver essential supplies to Russia. In a clash of extreme elements and fierce Axis opposition, the effort demonstrated like no other the commitment from other nations to supporting the Soviet Union.
Following not just the Royal Navy and its successful efforts to shepherd ships through storms and past floating icebergs, The Battle of the Arctic also tells a part of history which has never been properly understood by the British public. It involves the forgotten heroes of the Arctic convoys, the officers, armed guards and the ordinary civilian seamen, mostly from Britain and America, but also from Holland, Norway, Russia and Poland, condemned to carry on steaming their merchant ships slowly through the icy waters to and from Russia, even though they knew that at any moment they might be sunk.
This is a thrilling and important story that will leave you thankful to be on dry ground.
PRAISE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING SOMME:
‘Magisterial, exemplary, heartbreaking’ Daily Telegraph
‘Having read almost everything that is written on this battle, I can vouch that this is the best account yet. Sebag-Montefiore deserves congratulation for restoring humanity to this battle’ The Times
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore was a barrister before becoming a journalist and historian. He has written for the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Observer, Independent on Sunday, and Mail on Sunday. He is the author of three bestselling history books, two about the Second World War (Enigma and Dunkirk), and one about the First World War (Somme).
History 6 November
HB
£25.00
9780008335779
Beyond Beauty
Devon Cox
The first major biography of Florence-born American artist John Singer Sargent written for fifty years, published to mark the hundredth anniversary of his death.
Sargent was thought of as the portrait painter of his generation, famously capturing the glamour and beauty of the Gilded Age although he also lived to see and paint the First World War in harrowing detail. He lived within a fascinating milieu of creatives – Oscar Wilde, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Henry James, Edmund Gosse, Francis Millet.
Though Sargent has often been treated lightly by previous biographies, he was a complex man who had turbulent, unstable early years and progressive, bohemian values in later life. He came to resent the commissions from the upper classes, who wanted more beauty or grandeur than they possessed painted into the canvas, and he turned down the presidency of the Royal Academy when it was offered to him. This insightful and wonderful biography from art historian Devon Cox uncovers new material to illuminate the ultimately elusive figure of Sargent, going into aspects of his life such as hidden sexuality which have never been touched on before.
PRAISE FOR THE STREET OF WONDERFUL
POSSIBILITIES:
‘Fascinating and absorbing’ The Times
‘Engrossing’ Guardian
‘Impeccably researched’ Sunday Times
Dr Devon Cox, Ph.D., is an American writer and historian currently living and working in London. His first book, The Street of Wonderful Possibilities: Whistler,Wilde & Sargent in Tite Street, was nominated for the William MB Berger Prize in British Art History in 2016.
Biography 20 November
HB
£25.00
9780008474010
Good and Evil Twelve Philosophers on
How to Live Well
Introduction by Rory Stewart
Short essays on the great philosophers’ view of good and evil, from Niccolò Machiavelli to Hannah Arendt
What makes a person good? What does it mean to be evil? And what does it tell us about being human?
Philosophers have been grappling with these questions for thousands of years, and they remain as pressing as ever in our present moment. Here we explore twelve thrillingly different approaches to this fundamental human predicament, each written by a different world expert. From Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil to Nietzsche’s embrace of suffering, from John Stuart Mill’s happiness principle to the ruthless realism of Machiavelli and the generous, attentive spirit of Simone Weil, alongside less familiar thinkers, there is an answer for readers of all persuasions. This is the book for anyone trying to understand how humans can sometimes behave so badly, and how we can all be better.
Rory Stewart is the co-host with Alastair Campbell of the UK’s leading podcast The Rest Is Politics. His books include Politics on the Edge, the runaway #1 Sunday Times bestseller, and New York Times bestseller The Places in Between. He previously served in the UK Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development. Earlier in his career he was briefly in the British Army, before serving as a diplomat in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq.
Andrew Irwin is Philosophy editor at the TLS.
Philosophy 20 November
HB
£9.99
9780008747190
Cabin Adventures of a clueless craftsman
Patrick Hutchison
An ode to craftmanship and working with your hands, for anyone who has ever dreamed of escaping to the woods
Working unhappily as a marketing copywriter in the Pacific Northwest, Patrick Hutchison came across an advert for a tiny cabin nestled deep in the woods, in a place appropriately named Wit’s End. Scraping together his last few dollars, he bought the cabin and, despite having barely any practical skills, set about making it his weekend escape.
Cabin is his warm, wry and funny account of restoring a rural property with minimal tools, obliging friends and copious bottles of whisky. A modern-day Walden for those who appreciate simple pleasures, working with their hands and taking the road less travelled.
‘Henry David Thoreau meets Home Improvement in Hutchison’s charming debut’ Publishers Weekly
‘Funny and thoughtful … You feel his desire to be back in the woods, working with his hands. Don’t we all?’ New York Times
Patrick Hutchison is a writer and builder from the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in Outside, Wired and Vice. He now finds himself most often in the woods, working on tiny homes, cabins and treehouses. Cabin is his first book and became a national bestseller in America on publication.
Outdoor Living / Memoir 6 November HB
£20.00 9780008774134
Paperback Titles
A Thousand Miles from Care
Steve Johnson
‘Extraorindary... infuriating and inspring’ Gareth Russell
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOVIE. A gripping and heartbreaking story, A Thousand Miles from Care tells the 30-year quest Steve Johnson undertook to uncover the truth about his brilliant brother’s death. Navigating an openly hostile police force and a maze of dead ends, unreliable informants, skinhead gangs, a faked confession, police-connected drug rings, and setbacks at every turn - this profoundly impactful book traces the steps Steve Johnson, his family and friends took to solve the mystery of Scott’s alleged suicide.
Steve Johnson has been a technologist, entrepreneur, private investor, and philanthropist for thirty years, professionally specializing in building innovative technologies into successful enterprises.
Memoir • 3 July • PB • £10.99 • 9780008592523
Living on Earth
Peter Godfrey-Smith
‘Consistently rewarding, packed with insights and invitations to reflect, and blessed with exquisite writing’ Guardian ‘Clever, compassionate and often deeply moving’ New Scientist
The eagerly anticipated conclusion to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s exploration of the origins of intelligence on Earth, which began with the bestselling Other Minds. Now, in Living on Earth, he takes that line of questioning a step further, asking, how has life shaped and been shaped by our planet? To find answers, he takes a lively tour of the history of life on Earth, from ancient fossils to rainforest and ocean ecosystems and our own human societies.
Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor of history and the philosophy of science at the University of Sydney. He is the author of five books, including the bestselling Other Minds
Evolution / Philosophy • 3 July • PB • £9.99 • 9780008321284
The Half of It
Emma Slade Edmondson and Nicole Ocran
‘An excellent book about nuance, identity and how we can all relate to each other’ Stylist ‘A great read on the beach for something more thought-provoking’ Forbes
The world and its politics are becoming ever more polarised, leaving no room for the light and the shade. In The Half of It, Emma and Nicole explore race and identity through the lens of the mixed-race experience, creating a space for discussion and illuminating the true nuances of the mixed-race identity.
Emma Slade Edmondson is a creative strategist, journalist and recent TEDx speaker, and the founder of ESE Consultancy. Nicole Ocran is writer, journalist and fashion blogger who writes about personal style, culture and identity.
Culture • 3 July • PB • £10.99 • 9780008481711
Counting
Benjamin Wardhaugh
‘An anthropological sweep through mathematical history, from the Stone Age to the cyber age via six continents’ The Times
Counting is an innovative, erudite, world-wrapping journey through humanity’s marvellous ability to impose numbers on things. Acclaimed historian and mathematician Benjamin Wardhaugh draws on stories from the Stone Age to cyberspace in pursuit of the elusive, fascinating, endlessly diverse history of human counting. It is a history as wide, deep and tangled as humanity itself.
Benjamin Wardhaugh is a Fifty-Pound Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of Gunpowder and Geometry and Encounters with Euclid.
History • 17 July • PB • £12.99 • 9780008436506
How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator Theodore Papakostas
‘Irresistibly fascinating’ Marie Claire Greece
‘Essential’ Victoria Hislop
‘Brilliantly conceived’ Paul Cartledge
Archaeologist Theodore Papakostas takes us on a spectacularly iconoclastic and hugely engrossing journey through ancient Greece, from its beginnings in prehistory to its end. Marvelling at the exalted moments in history as well as the more mundane, Papakostas introduces the reader to countless fascinating stories about the cradle of western civilisation –many of which upend received wisdom about the empire as well as about archaeology itself.
Dr Theodore Papakostas is an archaeologist. He has presented two documentary series on Greek television and his podcast (Archaeostoryteller) is one of the top five most popular podcasts in Greece.
History / Archaeology • 31 July • PB • £10.99 • 9780008596101
Africonomics
Bronwen Everill
‘Cheerfully provocative … sparkles with some illuminating moments’ TLS ‘A wry, rollicking, and provocative history’ Michael Taylor
For centuries, Westerners have tried to ‘fix’ African economies, from philanthropists to economists and NGOs. Their experiments always fail, because they start from a false premise: that African economies just need to be more like the West. In fact, the West does not know better than African nations how an economy should be run. By laying bare our tangled economic history, Africonomics moves from Western ignorance to African knowledge. Bronwen Everill is the author of Not Made by Slaves. She was the Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge, and now teaches at Princeton and is a Research Affiliate at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
History / Economics • 14 August • PB • £10.99 • 9780008581183
Teacher Man
George Pointon
‘Tales of primary school life told with wit and humour, and with a real feeling of warmth’ Carol Atherton, author of Reading Lessons
Exhausted by his mum’s pleas for him to ‘get a real job’ and carrying a healthy dose of imposter syndrome for good measure, rookie teacher George Pointon found himself in front of a class of primary school children, charged with trying to get them to learn something.
In Teacher Man, he takes us along on his first year inside the messy, magical world of primary school teaching. In the company of five-year-olds – who are somehow wisdom, innocence and chaos incarnate – there is always something to learn.
George Pointon is a teacher working with primary school children. He is known for his popular posts on X where he asks his pupils a question and ingeniously, with analytic flair, relays their answers to his 150k+ followers. Teacher Man is his first book.
Education / Humour • 14 August • PB • £10.99 • 9780008529413
The Building of England
Simon Thurley
‘This is a truly stupendous achievement. Thurley […] is one of the best architectural historians alive in the world ... An instant classic’ Evening Standard
From awe-inspiring Norman castles, to the homes we live in, Simon Thurley explores how the architecture of this small island influenced the world. In this updated edition of his 2013 classic, this leading historian of English architecture traces the history and contemplates the future of the buildings that have made England.
Simon Thurley is a leading historian of English architecture, the Provost of Gresham College, Chair of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. For 13 years he was Chief Executive of English Heritage, and before that he was Director of the Museum of London and Curator of Historic Royal Palaces.
Architecture / History • 14 August • PB • £10.99 • 9780008743246
Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind Richard Fortey
‘A very enjoyable book that brilliantly blends science, insight and passion’ Tristan Gooley
Richard Fortey has been a devoted field mycologist all his life. Here he takes us along with him on a walk in the woods - a walk into another kingdom, the kingdom of fungi. While introducing us to the world of giant puffballs and fetid stinkhorns, Fortey attempts to asnwer the questions: what are fungi? Why did their means of reproduction escape discovery for so long? What role do they play in the development of life?
Professor Richard Fortey is a celebrated scientist, writer and television presenter with a long career in palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London.
Science / Nature • 11 September • PB • £11.99 • 9780008639723
Tiny Dancer, Big World Janette Manrara
‘Fab-u-lous’ Craig Revel Horwood
‘Uplifting’ Fleur East
‘Brilliant’ Sara Davies
‘Feel-good’ Gemma Atkinson
Whether you’re looking to boost your happiness, advance your career or manifest your big life goals, Janette’s delightful blend of advice, inspiration and life lessons from her time on stage and screen is just what you need.
Full of magic and glitter and joy, this fun and practical guide to self-love and ambition will help you to be your best self in every aspect of your life.
Janette Manrara has danced all her life and in 2013 she joined StrictlyComeDancing, quickly becoming a fan favourite. Today she hosts It Takes Two and Morning Live on BBC One.
Self-Help / Mindfulness • 11 September • PB • £10.99 • 9780008619268
By the Fire We Carry Rebecca Nagle
‘A narrative as propulsive and affecting as it is infuriating’ Vanity Fair
‘Breathtaking… a triumph’ Noreen Masud
Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction • A New Yorker Best Book of 2024 • An Esquire Best Book of Fall 2024 • A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle
A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids together the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a smalltown murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.
Rebecca Nagle is an award-winning reporter, writer, and citizen of Cherokee Nation. She is the creator and host of Crooked Media’s chart-topping podcast This Land Investigative Journalism / American History • 11 September • PB • £10.99 • 9780008725044
Naples 1944
Keith Lowe
‘A rigorous, myth-busting look at the city’s chaotic recovery in the wake of war and fascism’ Financial Times
The first major history of wartime Naples to appear in the English language. Lowe places Naples right at the heart of Italian history, showing what happened in this city was not a mere sideshow but instead central to the story of the country as a whole. The Neapolitan story is the Italian story.
Keith Lowe is the bestselling author of several major works of history. His books include Inferno, Savage Continent and The Fear and the Freedom History • 25 September • PB • £10.99 • 9780008339630
Operation Biting Max Hastings
‘Reads like a thriller… I couldn’t put Max Hastings’s new book down’ Daily Mail ‘Hastings is a master of drama, a writer intimately familiar with the mind of the soldier’ The Times
The Sunday Times Bestseller
Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942, 120 men landed in Normandy in the middle of the night, launching an assault on a German radar. Max Hastings recounts this cliffhanging tale in a wealth of previously unchronicled detail.
Sir Max Hastings is a bestselling author of thirty books. He is also a journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in every British national newspaper.
History • 9 October • PB • £10.99 • 9780008642204
Out Tim Shipman
‘Magnificent… Pacy and packed with delicious details... For those seeking a moment-by-moment insider history it will not be topped’ FT
The hotly anticipated final book of bestselling author Tim Shipman’s Brexit quartet. Out follows from May’s resignation through to the tussles over the final Brexit deal, the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our shortest serving PM ever. It is a riveting, rambunctious account of the most dramatic years in modern British politics.
Tim Shipman is the chief political commentator of the Sunday Times and a bestselling author. He was nominated for the political journalist of the year at the British Press Awards in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Politics • 6 November • PB • £12.99 • 9780008709990
Unfortunately She Was A Nyphomaniac Joan Smith
‘An exhilaratingly revisionist account of the women from the Julio-Claudian dynasty’ Daily Telegraph
‘Pacy, witty and authoritative’ Jonathan Freedland
A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome’s most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Reinterpreting the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors, Smith sheds fresh light on ancient misogny and the persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.
Joan Smith is an author of the feminist classic Misogynies. She is currently a journalist, and was previously Co-chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board from 2013 to 2021.
History • 6 November • PB • £9.99 • 9780008638849
Seven Deadly Sins Guy Leschziner
‘Has the power to change the way you look at the world’ Steven Bartlett
‘The heir to Oliver Sacks’ David Baddiel
Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Pride. Envy. Lust. Anger. These are the seven deadly sins, the vices of humankind that define immorality, the roots of all evil in the world. Or so some believe. This new book by Dr Guy Leschziner explores the underlying nature of the seven deadly sins, their neuroscientific and psychological basis, their origin in our genes and how certain medical disorders give rise to them.
Guy Leschziner is a professor of neurology and sleep medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.
Popular Science / Smart Thinking • 20 November • PB • £10.99 • 9780008615734
A Knock at the Door
Rob Parsons
‘Truly inspirational’ Tim Vine
‘Beautifully written’ Rosemary Conley CBE
‘One of the most incredible stories of hope you will ever read’ Tarn Bright, CEO, Home for Good
An astonishing story of kindness, self-learning, pain, unbelievable hope and the sheer power of love to change a life. This is the true story of a homeless man and the young couple who invited him into their family. Outwardly they were worlds apart and yet, they discovered they had similar struggles. Then the day came, at the lowest moment of the couple’s lives, when they turned to the homeless man for help.
Dr Rob Parsons OBE is a bestselling author of more than 25 books. He is a lawyer by profession but left his legal practice in 1988 to help launch the national charity Care for the Family.
Biography / Christian • 20 November • PB • £10.99 • 9780008708696
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