In 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite; a military hero whose dying wish was to ...

In February 1944, a rag-tag collection of clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen managed to hold out against some of the finest infantry in the Japanese Army, and then defeat them. It became know as The Defence of the Admin Box. This book deals with this battle.

____________________THE Sunday Times BESTSELLERA New York Times Summer readWashington Post Top Twenty books to read this summerA Sunday Times summer read'An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth.

In 2016 Professor Stephen Hawking delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on a subject that has fascinated him for decades - black holes. In these flagship lectures the legendary physicist argues that if we could only understand black holes and how they challenge the very nature of space and time, we could unlock the secrets of the universe.

*THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER*As seen on Apple TV - 1971: The Year That Music Changed EverythingThe Sixties ended a year late - on New Year's Eve 1970, when Paul McCartney initiated proceedings to wind up The Beatles.

THE FIRST BODY IS A MYSTERY. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Kat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a matchbook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. And Kat's chief suspect is one of the town's most prominent citizens.THE FINAL BODY . . .

In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world's economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible.