The History Press imprint: 4918 books

Here are Essex Girls in a most unexpected light. Murderers, mayhem-makers, swindlers, witches, smugglers, and lustful adulteresses have all played a part in the darker side of Essex's history. From the 13th century onwards, Essex has produced more than its fair share of infamous women. Some got their...

Fools have been a feature of virtually every recorded culture in the history of civilization, making significant contributions to the development of early theatre and literary drama. This book offers a reign by reign chronicle of English court fools.

Born in 1916 into an Irish Catholic family, Jennie Hawthorne spent her formative years in the heart of the East End, in a truly multicultural community. This vivid account of growing up is told with passion and humour - even though her drunken father struggles from crisis to crisis, and illness and crime are part of everyday life.

This volume gives an account of the women both behind the scenes and at the forefront of 16th-century English history, including Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and Henry VIII's six wives. The women of the royal family are the central characters; what they ate, how they dressed, the...

Former soldier Ken Wharton witnessed the troubles in Northern Ireland first hand. Bloody Belfast is a fascinating oral history given a chilling insight into the killing grounds of Belfast’s streets. Wharton’s work is based on first hand accounts from the soldiers who experienced the violence in...

A modern guide to vampires, where every page is truly written in bloodVampires, those chilling supernatural creatures of the night—do they really exist? The British Isles has a remarkable association with the realms of the undead, from the 19th-century world of Croglin Grange, Varney the Vampire,...

Middlesex Murders brings together numerous murderous tales, some of which were little known outside the county, and others which made national headlines. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Middlesex. They include the murder...

This study puts cannibalism into its social and historical perspective. Even in an age when almost nothing is sacred, numerous prohibitions surround the subject, and yet a dark fascination with the subject remains. Characters include Sweeny Todd, Jeffrey Dahmer, Armin Meiwes, and much to the pleasure...

Jostling for position in this cornucopia of the criminal and the curious are diverse tales of baby farmers, garrotters, murderers, poisoners, prostitutes, pimps, rioters and rebels. Other tales tell of those who walked the poverty-stricken streets of 'the abyss', trying to earn a few honest coppers...

The first book to explore the fascinating and dark history of England's pubs and hotelsIn which pub did the Krays murder George Cornell and so achieve notoriety as Britain's most feared gangsters? Where is the hostelry in which Jack the Ripper's victims drank? How did Burke and Hare befriend their...

Inspired by the gory and sensational publications of the Victorian era, these tales collected by Charles Dickens and his staff between 1850 and 1855 features a beautifully engraved heading for every month In among the pages of Dickens' monthly supplement to Household Words lurks a very strange history....

Joan of Arc, born in Domremy in France in 1412, began to hear voices when she was 13, and, believing they were directives from God, followed them—to the French court, to battle to wrest France from the English in the Hundred Years War, and to defeat and capture. She was put on trial for heresy,...

London’s Underground is associated with a multitude of ghostly stories and sightings. Particular stations and abandoned lines, many of which are in close proximity to burial sites from centuries ago, have given rise to unexplained events. This chilling book reveals well-known and hitherto unpublished...

The Divided Union is an account of five of the most dramatic and tragic years in the history of the U.S. The families and neighbors of a fledgling superpower were pitted against each other in a war concerned with the most fundamental of human motivations: freedom, identity, and nation. While great...