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Your ticket from the twenty-first century to the era of Jesus and the first Christians. A listenable, two-volume introduction placing the entire New Testament and early Christianity in its original context, written by distinguished scholar and author N. T. Wright.

Between 1485 and 1688, England became a Protestant country under Henry VIII. His daughter, Elizabeth I, battled for succession and supremacy at home, and the discovery of 'the round world' enabled a vast continent across the Atlantic to be explored. While this new era was spawning the beginnings of modern America, England was engaged in a bloody civil war and sustained a Republican experiment under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell.

Richard Freiherr von Rosen was a highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier and outstanding panzer commander. After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, he led a company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank). Only 489 of these King Tiger tanks were ever built.

What is fascism? By focusing on the concrete, what the fascists did rather than what they said, the esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question for the first time. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up "enemies of the state", through Mussolini's rise to power, to Germany's fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton shows clearly why fascists came to power in some countries and not others.

On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out onto his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power.

Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history.

The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness—the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall.

At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness.

On the night of March 24, 1944, Bram Vanderstok was number 18 of 76 men who crawled beyond the barbed wire fence of Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland. His memoir sets down his wartime adventures before being incarcerated in Stalag Luft III and then, in extraordinary detail, describes various escape attempts which culminated with the famous March breakout.

A major figure behind his nephew Philip's marriage to Queen Elizabeth II and instrumental in the royal family taking the Mountbatten name, Dickie Mountbatten's career included being Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia during World War Two and the last Viceroy of India. Once the richest woman in Britain and a playgirl who enjoyed numerous affairs, Edwina Mountbatten emerged from World War Two as a magnetic and talented charity worker loved around the world.

A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white. Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain.

In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain, uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of nine kingdoms that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with saints and gods and miracles, with giants and battles and the ruin of cities. Why did some realms—like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd—prosper while these nine fell? Williams brings together new archaeological revelations with the few precious fragments of written sources to have survived to rebuild a lost world.

When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea in the west all the way to modern-day India in the east. In an unusual compromise, his two heirs - a mentally damaged half brother, Philip III, and an infant son, Alexander IV, born after his death - were jointly granted the kingship. But six of Alexander's Macedonian generals, spurred by their own thirst for power and the legend that Alexander bequeathed his rule "to the strongest," fought to gain supremacy.

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat? Ian Mortimer shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. He sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you to the Middle Ages. The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: evolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail.

There are no such thing as an easy victory in war but after triumph in Tunisia, the sweeping success of the Sicilian invasion, and with the Italian surrender, the Allies were confident that they would be in Rome before Christmas 1943. And yet it didn't happen. Hitler ordered his forces to dig in and fight for every yard, thus setting the stage for one of the grimmest and most attritional campaigns of the Second World War. By the start of 1944, the Allies found themselves coming up against the Gustav Line.

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Mark Kurzem was living at Oxford when his father, Alex, showed up with a secret to tell. During World War II, young Alex was made to promise never to reveal his true identity. The Jewish boy became part of the Nazi machine that killed his own people. Alex kept this secret from even his wife and children. But his torment increased and he became determined to uncover his Jewish roots. Shunned by a Holocaust organization, he went to his son Mark for help in regaining his identity.

In the early 1930s, Nancy Wake was a young woman enjoying a bohemian life in Paris. By the end of the Second World War, she was the Gestapo's most wanted person. As a naive, young journalist, Nancy Wake witnessed a horrific scene of Nazi violence in a Viennese street. From that moment, she declared that she would do everything in her power to rid Europe of the Nazis. What began as a courier job here and there became a highly successful escape network for Allied soldiers.

There are few women in English history more famous or controversial than Queen Anne Boleyn. In this vivid and engaging account of the triumphant and harrowing final year of Queen Anne Boleyn's life, the author reveals a very human portrait of a brilliant, passionate, and complex woman.

In his best-selling autobiography, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and chief architect of Nazi Germany, repeatedly insisted he knew nothing of the genocidal crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. In this revealing new biography, author Martin Kitchen disputes Speer's lifelong assertions of ignorance and innocence, portraying a far darker figure who was deeply implicated in the appalling crimes committed by the regime he served so well. Kitchen reconstructs Speer's life with what we now know, including information from valuable new sources that have come to light only in recent years.