Peter Owen Publishers imprint: 107 books

The first biography in many years of Henry III The son and successor of Bad King John, Henry III reigned for 56 years from 1216, the first child king in England for 200 years. England went on to prosper during his reign and his greatest monument is Westminster Abbey, which he made the seat...

Eminent psychiatrist Dennis Friedman turns his acute gaze on our present Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, King George V (1885–1936), to reveal the man behind the monarch. Taking as his starting point the widely held belief that the personality and behavior of parents and grandparents have a powerful...

Earning its author a third nomination for the Nobel Prize, this tale centers on a crane colony arriving at its breeding ground to play out a delicate drama, ending with the rarely observed ceremony of the ritual dance. All is observed by a transfixed child who has frozen into his background and...

Published ahead of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet and long before Midnight’s Children, Abdullah Hussein’s ambitious saga of social struggle The Weary Generations was a bestseller in Urdu. Published in 1963 and now beyond its 40th edition, it has never been out of print. A vivid depiction of the widespread...

The first in a series of books that have taken Europe by storm and are soon to be filmed, featuring a chemist-turned-sleuth who battles ignorance and superstition—as well as killers—in a beautiful setting and in a gripping and mysterious era of historyThe Apothecary Melchior series plunges the...

A history of the circus from its origins in the Roman times, through its establishment in Western Europe, and to the modern day circus-absolutely diverse and captivating   Circuses have existed since Roman times, but centuries later, the circus world has never been more diverse and...

An unlikely lothario, one of the most successful writers of his time, a figure at the heart of the age's political and artistic debates-H. G. Wells' life is a great story in its own right   When H. G. Wells left school in 1880 at 13 he seemed destined for obscurity-yet he defied...

From the first biography of George IV in 1831 to the last in 2001, Mad King George’s son has commonly been held up to ridicule as a weak, selfish, and incompetent spendthrift, barely tolerated by his ministers, loathed by most of his family, and dependent on the emotional support of grasping mistresses....

A collection of stories by one of France’s greatest short-story writers-the long title piece never having been available in English before.

Fenella Fielding's memoir about her remarkable career spanning seven decades in film, theatre, TV and radio.

A new edition draws on fresh evidence from archive sources—including decoded secret correspondence—to peel back the layers of misinformation obscuring the Queen's great love affair and to reveal its impact on the destiny of the French Royal Family The tragic life of Marie-Antoinette, last...

Delve deeper into the world of the BBC hit drama series Versailles, and discover the real Marie-Antoinette in this ground-breaking study of her secret love affair with the Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen. For the first time an historian has compiled all the known letters between Swedish...

The absorbing, comprehensive story of an absolutely unique experiment in classical music, involving many key figures of the Dada and Surrealist movements Les Six were a group of talented composers who came together in a unique collaboration that has never been matched in classical music, and here...

The first biography to be aimed at the general reader as much as at students and historians, No Ordinary Man is a fascinating study of the life and work of Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the writer known as the "Spanish Shakespeare" and author of the timeless classic Don Quixote. A renaissance...