'Absorbing . . . an intelligent and clear-eyed account of much that goes on in our country' Sunday Times Getting to grips with Great Britain is harder than ever. We are a nation that chose Brexit, rejects immigration but is dependent on it, is getting older but less healthy, is more demanding of public services but less willing to pay for them, is tired of intervention abroad but wants to remain a global authority. We have an over-stretched, free health service (an idea from the 1940s that may not survive the 2020s), overcrowded prisons, a military without an evident purpose, an education system the envy of none of the Western world. How did we get here and where are we going? How Britain Really Works is a guide to Britain and its institutions (the economy, the military, schools, hospitals, the media, and more), which explains just how we got to wherever it is we are. It will not tell you what opinions to have, but will give you the information to help you reach your own. By the end, you will know how Britain works - or doesn't. 'Stig Abell is an urbane, and often jaunty guide to modern Britain, in the mould of Bill Bryson' Irish Times

'Absorbing . . . an intelligent and clear-eyed account of much that goes on in our country' Sunday Times 'Wry and readable' Guardian Getting to grips with Great Britain is harder than ever. We are a nation that chose Brexit, rejects immigration but is dependent on it, is getting older but less healthy, is more demanding of public services but less willing to pay for them, is tired of intervention abroad but wants to remain a global authority. We have an over-stretched, free health service (an idea from the 1940s that may not survive the 2020s), overcrowded prisons, a military without an evident purpose, an education system the envy of none of the Western world. How did we get here and where are we going? How Britain Really Works is a guide to Britain and its institutions (the economy, the military, schools, hospitals, the media, and more), which explains just how we got to wherever it is we are. It will not tell you what opinions to have, but will give you the information to help you reach your own. By the end, you will know how Britain works - or doesn't. 'Stig Abell is an urbane, and often jaunty guide to modern Britain, in the mould of Bill Bryson' Irish Times

It is a largely forgotten fact that Britain was the first industrialized country in the world, but Guy Martin - the cult motorcycle racer and mechanic - is about to remind us how the industrial revolution helped make Britain great. Guy shows how the discoveries made in the late 18th-19th centuries are to thank for the ease of our every day lives: in order to cook a bacon and egg sandwich in Industrial-era conditions, Guy has to restore a steam locomotive and railway to have the components delivered to the local shop; he has to bring a saw mill back into working order to be able to make a bicycle; he has to revamp a Victorian fishing trawler so he can cook himself some fish and chips, and when he decides to mow the lawn, he restores a Victorian botanical garden. After all that, he's in need of a holiday - so he sets to work restoring a Victorian holiday resort. Illustrated throughout with specially commissioned photography as well as historical images, Guy will take us through each project; his passion, enthusiasm and sheer inventiveness bringing a completely new perspective to the Industrial Revolution. He invites us to live it with him, to enjoy the nostalgia, marvel in the mechanics and learn from its legacy.

Nearly all of us have to work, but how much do we really know about what other people do all day? What is it like to be a fishmonger, a sex worker or an Orthodox rabbi? Or a banker, a research scientist or a carer? How do our jobs affect our lives, beliefs and happiness? And what happens when we don't work? Joanna Biggs has travelled the country to find the answers, talking to interns and bosses, professionals and entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers. She takes us from Westminster to the Outer Hebrides, from a hospital in Wales to the industrial Midlands, introducing us to different worlds of work and the people who inhabit them. Rich with the voices of the wealthy and poor, native and immigrant, women and men of the UK in the twenty-first century, All Day Long shows us who we are through what we do.

A history of the relationship between Great Britain and the United States ranges from the establishment of the first English colony in the New World to the present day, examining both nations in terms of what connected them and what drove them apart.

BESTSELLER An explosive exposé of how British military intelligence really works, from the inside. The stories of two undercover agents -- Brian Nelson, who worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), aiding loyalist terrorists and murderers in their bloody work; and the man known as Stakeknife, deputy head of the IRA's infamous 'Nutting Squad', the internal security force which tortured and killed suspected informers.

John Darwin's After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation. Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.