Signal Books imprint: 42 books

So many books about the American West leave out the more intriguing details:When, in 1803, the young USA doubled its size with the purchase from France of an unexplored vastness called La Louisiane, it was a British bank which lent the Americans most of the 15 million that they didn’t have. So the...

Cambodia is a long way from Germany - thousands of miles, as it turns out. And in between are some of the world’s highest mountains, most inhospitable deserts and least welcoming countries. Trying to make the journey overland was always going to be difficult. But one group of twenty-somethings, bored...

Celebrated by writers from Petrarch to Peter Mayle, Provence's rugged mountains, wild maquis and lavender-filled meadows are world-famous. Historic cities like Arles, Avignon and Aix contain Roman amphitheatres, papal palaces and royal residences, while market towns and picturesque villages maintain...

Situated on Lake Malaren on one of the world's most beautiful harbours, Stockholm has set the benchmark for civilized city-living since the time of the Vikings. Its medieval regal period saw the Vasa dynasty turn a small town in the shadow of Uppsala into the capital city of a dominant power in Europe...

Squeezed between more powerful France and Spain, Catalonia has endured a violent history. Its medieval empire that conquered Naples, Sicily and Athens was crushed by Spain. Its geography, with the Pyrenees falling sharply to the rugged Costa Brava, is tormented, too.Michael Eaude traces this history...

Portugal is an established member of the European Union, one of the founders of the euro currency and a founder member of NATO. Yet it is an inconspicuous and largely overlooked country on the continent’s south-west rim.In the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Age of Discovery the Portuguese led...

The English West Country is a land of exceptional landscapes: many miles of wild, unspoilt coastline and vast expanses of wild moorland; great cities such as Exeter, Plymouth, Bath and Bristol; and market towns, villages and hamlets. Farming, mining, quarrying, fishing and trade are the traditional industries...

The career of Louise Bennett ('Miss Lou') is an essential component in any reckoning of Jamaican culture. This book offers a brief account of her life (1919-2006): a story of challenges and blessings, of a journey towards national and international acclaim. It draws on a variety of sources, including...

When Bindra contracts leprosy, she is driven from her home in the Himalayan foothills with her two small sons and embarks upon a seemingly impossible course in search of salvation. David's first journey to India is driven by devastating loss, and yet he finds unexepected solace in the discovery of an...

In July 1936 insurgent Spanish troops organized a military coup to oust the elected Republican government in Madrid. The rebel generals expected to force a quick, clean regime change but they failed. The botched uprising turned into a bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands died in a bitter conflict...

Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their ‘colony’ in North Asia, they heard rumours about bountiful fur, of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra, endless...

Most historical accounts examine the Viking Age in one part rather than the whole region of the British Isles and Ireland. Very few pay attention to the continued contact between England and Scandinavia in the post-Norman Conquest period. This book aims to offer an alternative approach by presenting...

No railway journey on Earth can equal the Trans-Siberian between Moscow and Vladivostock. It is not just its vast length and the great variety of the lands and climes through which it passes. It is not just its history as the line that linked the huge territories which are Russia together. It is a dream...

In 1895/6 the sixty-year-old Mark Twain set off on a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts from a publishing company bankruptcy, notes from which a year later became his final travel book Following the Equator. Two years later he wrote, 'How I did loathe that journey around the world! except...