British category: 24621 books

Sahib is a magnificent history of the British soldier in India from Clive to the end of Empire, making full use of personal accounts from the soldiers who served in the jewel in Britain’s Imperial Crown. This is a stunning account of Indian soldiering in peace and war, from the barrack rooms to...

Groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed, Tommy is the first history of World War I to place the British soldier who fought in the trenches centre-stage. Tommy tells the story of an epic and terrible war through the letters, diaries and memories of those who fought it. Epitomised by the character of...

Mid-1950s Colonial Service in Wankie, Rhodesia Funny, Touching and a Bit of Wacky Wankie History Letters from Wankie is a unique, true story based on the collection of some 500 air letters the author, British-born Patricia Friedberg, wrote home to England in the mid-1950s, during...

Organizing Empire critically examines how concepts of individualism functioned to support and resist British imperialism in India. Through readings of British colonial and Indian nationalist narratives that emerged in parliamentary debates, popular colonial histories, newsletters, memoirs, biographies,...

With a plot to grace any comic opera, the 1859–1872 "Pig War" broke out when an American living on a quietly disputed small island in the Gulf of Georgia (present-day San Juan Island in Washington State) shot a British pig he found rooting up his garden produce. The authorities on nearby...

This “splendidly narrated” chronicle of the British Empire’s ascent during the French and Indian War “will enthrall all lovers of history told well” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). If not for the events of 1759, the history of the modern world would have been drastically different....

Aiming to avoid technical terminology, Richard McKinley provides an introduction to the history of hereditary surnames in Britain from their first appearance to the present day. Devoting a chapter to each of the main categories of name, he enables readers to set the facts they discover about their...

A History of British Working-Class Literature examines the rich contributions of working-class writers in Great Britain from 1700 to the present. Since the early eighteenth century the phenomenon of working-class writing has been recognised, but almost invariably co-opted in some ultimately distorting...

This Companion offers a wide-ranging and innovative guide to one of the most exciting and important periods in British theatrical history. The scope of the volume extends from the age of Garrick to the Romantic transformation of acting inaugurated by Edmund Kean. It brings together cutting-edge scholarship...

Saul David's All The King's Men is a thrilling history of the British Redcoat from the English Civil War to Waterloo. Between 1660 and 1815 British supremacy on foreign soil was near total. Central to this success was the humble redcoat soldier who showed heroism in battle and stoicism in peace,...

If you want to understand Afghanistan, writes Carter Malkasian, you need to understand what has happened on the ground, in the villages and countryside that were on the frontline. These small places are the heart of the war. Modeled on the classic Vietnam War book, War Comes to Long An, Malkasian's...

The impact of the British Empire on the history of the Upper Ottawa Valley is explored through the experiences of early emigration-assisted 19th-century Scottish immigrants. Between 1815 and 1832, Great Britain settled more than 3,500 individuals, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, in the Ottawa...

This volume covers the high noon of the British Empire, beginning with the Zulu War of 1879 and ending with Kitchener's River War of 1898. Between these came the 2nd Afghan War, the first Boer War, and Wolseley's Egyptian and Nile campaigns. Also described in some detail is the Cavalry's part in the campaigns against Osman Digna in the Eastern Sudan.

In 1882 the British invaded Egypt in an audacious war that gave them control of the country, and the Suez Canal, for more than 70 years. William Wright gives the first full account of that hard-fought and hitherto neglected campaign, which was not nearly as "tidy" as the British commander...