Born in 1915 in Cambridge, England, Rupert John Cornford was a committed communist who fought in defence of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War and was killed in uncertain circumstances at Lopera, near Cordoba in 1936. Though his life was tragically...

Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St Petersburg is one of the world's most alluring cities – a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city's pre-1...

Marina Frolova-Walker's fascinating history takes a new look at musical life in Stalin's Soviet Union. The author focuses on the musicians and composers who received Stalin Prizes, awarded annually to artists whose work was thought to represent the b...

For centuries before the arrival in Australia of Captain Cook and the so-called First Fleet in 1788, intrepid seafaring explorers had been searching, with varied results, for the fabled "Great Southland". In this enthralling history of early discover...

According to mainstream discourse of the Cold War, post-1945 Western Europe was essentially a homogeneous historical space fully integrated into modern industrial society. But as "Southern Europe?" makes clear, Western European societies were in fact...

From the Charge of the Light Brigade to Scott of the Antarctic and beyond, it seems as if glorious disaster and valiant defeat have been essential aspects of the British national character for the past two centuries. In this fascinating book, histori...