Books published by Vintage

Rudyard Kipling was a unique figure in British history, a great writer and a great imperial icon. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he added more phrases to the language than any man since Shakespeare, yet he was also the Apostle of the British Empire, a man who incarnated an era for millions of people who did not normally read poetry.

' 'Peter Raby's book follows a disparate crew of botanists, scientists and collectors, who tried to order the earthly paradise which unfolded around them. Entrepreneurs they may have been - many were dependent on selling their specimens to finance their trips-but they were also scrupulous and sensitive observers.

Between 1890 and 1914 the City of London was all dominant as Britain's legendary gold standard reigned supreme across the globe. Combining brilliant scholarship with high entertainment, and drawing on an unparalleled range of original sources, David Kynaston brings the city triumphant into the mainstream of British and world history.

In this history of World War II, the author explores both the technical and the human impact of the conflict. The text concentrates on five crucial battles with the aim of illuminating the war as a whole: Crete, Midway, Falaise, Berlin and Okinawa.

In this final volume of her trilogy she tells the story of her adult life in Africa, in which the vigorously evoked personalities - from the pioneer Lord Delamere and Baroness Blixen to Jomo Kenyatta - blend with her supurb description of the social, cultural and political upheavals of the time.

Linda Colley uses these tales of ordinary individuals trapped in extraordinary encounters to re-evaluate the character and diversity of the British Empire. She shows how British attitudes to Islam, slavery, race, and American Revolutionaries look different once the captive's perspective is admitted.

In White Eagle, Red Star, Norman Davies gives a full account of the War, with its dramatic climax in August 1920 when the Red Army - sure of victory and pledged to carry the Revolution across Europe to 'water our horses on the Rhine' - was crushed by a devastating Polish attack.

They were built for poor but respectable Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, and the community which put down roots there was to be characteristic of the East End Jewish working class in its formative years.

Following the collapse of Medici rule in fifteenth-century Florence, the centre of Renaissance activity moved first to Rome and finally to Venice.

From 1949 to 1991 the world was overshadowed by the Cold War. indeed, much has remained hidden until now.In The Cold War, David Miller discloses not only the vast scope of the military resources involved, but also how nearly threat came to terrible reality.

From the 1880s to the Second World War, Campbell Road, Finsbury Park (known as Campbell Bunk), had a notorious reputation for violence, for breeding thieves and prostitutes, and for an enthusiastic disregard for law and order.

Three hundred years ago the Parliament of Scotland, in one of its last acts before the nation lost its political identity, defied the King and the persistent hostility of the English to establish a noble trading company, to settle a colony, and to recover its people from a century of despair, privation, famine and decay.

Pantomime season opens in London, where Lloyd George holds elections and reorganizes his War Cabinet; This book weaves politics, ideas, social life, fears, aspirations and harsh realities into a seamless reconstruction of life experienced at a great turning-point of history.

Illusions of Gold, the third volume of David Kynaston's magnificent quartet, The City of London, sweeps us from 1914 to 1945, through years of fluctuating fortunes that began with the City at an all-time high, and ended with the 'Square Mile' ravaged by bombs, at its lowest ebb ever.

This concluding volume of Janet Browne's biography covers the transformation in Darwin's life after the first unexpected announcement of the theory of evolution by natural selection and the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.

I cannot imagine what has got into the central nervous system of the men.'A War of Nerves is a history of military psychiatry in the twentieth century - an authoritative, accessible account drawing on a vast range of diaries, interviews, medical papers and official records.

Vanessa Bell, artist, sister of Virginia Woolf, wife of Clive Bell and lover of Duncan Grant, is one of the most fascinating and modern figures of the Bloomsbury set, but unlike most of them she rarely put pen to writing paper.

These essays focus on the social and political role - past, present and future - of ideas and of their progenitors. Contents include "My Intellectual Path", an autobiographical survey of Berlin's main preoccupations, and "Jewish Slavery and Emancipation", the classic statement of his Zionist views.

`In one of tje funniest biographies I have ever read, Lewis assembles all the excellently entertaining anecdotes about this deeply loved, much mocked, sometimes reviled figure whose departure has robbed the litarary world of its social smartness and any worthwhile eccentricity .

In December 1968 two girls who lived next door to each other - Mary, aged eleven, and Norma, thirteen - stood before a criminal court in Newcastle, accused of strangling two little boys;

A fascinating and original look at the complex political life of one of the world's most renowned poets.

We discover what civil war, revolution and counter-revolution actually felt like from inside both camps. The contours of the war take shape through the words of the eyewitnesses. And though the lived experience of the participants is revealed the uniquely tragic essence of all civil war. ' Hugh Thomas, author of THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO.

The Middle Ages inherited from Antiquity a tradition of prophesy and gave it fresh and exuberant life. Drawing on a huge variety of contemporary sources, this unique and compelling book tells the story of those Millenarian fanaticisms of the Middle Ages and points to their persistence in the modern world.

The Myth of the Blitz was nurtured at every level of society. Britain was not bombed into classless democracy. Angus Calder provides a compelling examination of the events of 1940 and 1941 - when Britain 'stood alone' against the Luftwaffe - and of the Myth which sustained her 'finest hour'.

The Road to 1945 is a rigorously researched study of the crucial moment when political parties put aside their differences to unite under Churchill and focus on the task of war.

This anthology of English poetry was first published in 1944. The editor, Field Marshal Lord Wavell, who was Viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, wrote "Generals and Generalship".

The Second World War was, for Britain, a 'total war'. In this title, the author presents not only the great events and leading figures but also the oddities and banalities of daily life on the Home Front, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists.

The landmark expose of incompetent leadership on the Western Front - why the British troops were lions led by donkeys On 26 September 1915, twelve British battalions - a strength of almost 10,000 men - were ordered to attack German positions in France.