Bald bei Audible

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.

Only a few years after Britain defeated fascism came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million and to portray them as sub-human savages. Detainees in their thousands - possibly a hundred thousand or more - died from exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. For decades these events remained untold.

The strength of the Marcher lords would come to the fore at numerous times in the nation's history in the shape of notorious figures such as Simon de Montfort and Roger Mortimer. The civil war of King Stephen's reign, the baronial resistance to King John, the overthrow of Edward II and Richard II; all of these crises turned upon the involvement of the lords of the Marches. Timothy Venning explores their mentality and reveals the dramatic careers both of those who prospered from their loyalty to the king and those whose power was gained by treachery.

David Stahel's groundbreaking new account of Operation Typhoon captures the perspectives of both the German high command and individual soldiers, revealing that despite success on the battlefield the wider German war effort was in far greater trouble than is often acknowledged.

Nick Hewitt draws on fascinating new material to describe the violent sea battle which mirrored the fighting on land, and the complex campaign at sea which enabled the Allied assault. Aboard ships ranging from frail plywood landing craft to sleek destroyers, sailors were active combatants in the operation of June 1944, and had worked tirelessly to secure the Seine Bay in the months preceding it. They fought battles against German submarines, aircraft, and warships, and maintained careful watch to keep control of the English Channel.

In this strikingly impressive book, he combines academic verve and insight with colourful, dramatic writing to produce a classic, ground-breaking work that has changed forever how we think about the Sixties.

How did Boris Johnson supersede Theresa May to become Britain's Prime Minister? How did he pursue his promise to Get Brexit Done amidst multiple Brexit secretaries, repeated coup attempts and reshuffles, and an extraordinarily terse relationship with Brussels? What really happened in Downing Street – from the political choices to the party place settings – as the pandemic took the world in its grip? Out follows from May's resignation through to the tussles over the final Brexit deal, the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our shortest serving PM ever.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought large-scale warfare to Europe, reshaped relations between key global players, and redefined existing alliances and international organizations, such as NATO and the European Union. It has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, revived the threat of a nuclear war between Russia and the West and might unleash a global famine. Political scientist and historian of genocide Eugene Finkel zooms in on the intersection of one of the most important geopolitical events in recent decades and the most odious type of violence.

In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us.

Gripping and unforgettable, Chernobyl Roulette sounds the alarm about the dangers of nuclear sites in an unprecedented time, when plant workers are left to fight on their own while the world holds its breath. In a book that feels like a thriller, Serhii Plokhy tells a remarkable story about human nature, uncertainty and courage.

In February 2002 Max Hastings retired from his position as a 'Fleet Street' Editor. His is an enormously illustrious career which started in 1985, when he was offered the Editorship of a national institution – the Daily Telegraph – in a surprise move by its owners. This memoir tells the story of what happened to him, and to a great newspaper, over the next decade. It is all here: the rows with prime ministers, the coverage of great events including the end of the Cold War, the fall of Thatcher, the rise of New Labour and Tony Blair, the Gulf War, and the tribulations of the Royal Family.

Join Matthew Lewis and the creators of History Hit on a guided tour spanning more than five centuries of English medieval history and witness spectacular changes in military, political and economic spheres. At home and overseas, England's status and identity was in constant flux, and yet through it all, the nation withstood the turmoil of everything from the 9th century attack of the Great Heathen Army to the year of three kings in 1483 - just.

Exiled from Downing Street, Boris Johnson may now be best known as the latest GB News presenter. His former senior advisor Dominic Cummings has reinvented himself as political pundit. And Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have been ejected from high-level politics since their infamous mini budget of 2022. But the chumocracy is far from over.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Since that day, prize-winning independent journalist Katerina Gordeeva has travelled to refugee centres across Europe to record the human voice and cost of war. Take My Grief Away reveals twenty-four raw, heartbreaking first-person accounts from people united in grief and their first-hand experiences of the brutality and senselessness of war. These twenty-four voices will transform what you think you know about war, grief and human nature.

On 6th June 1944, the Allied invasion began. For hours, wave after wave of soldiers, sailors, and airmen crossed the channel and stormed the Normandy coast, fighting to gain a foothold in Nazi-occupied Northwest Europe. It was the largest combined air and seaborne invasion ever, involving over 150,000 Allied troops on the ground, and its eventual success became a critical turning point in the war, spelling the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.

Straight Acting is a surprising portrait of Shakespeare's queer lives - his own and those in his plays and poems. It is a journey back in time and through Shakespeare's England, revealing a culture that both endorsed and supressed same-sex desire. It is a call to stop making Shakespeare act straight and to recognise how queerness powerfully shaped the life and career of the world's most famous playwright.

The legendary ‘Red Devils’ were among the finest combat troops of the Second World War. Created at Churchill’s instigation in June 1940, they began as a single parachute battalion of 500 men and grew into three 10,000-strong airborne divisions: the 1st, 6th and 44th Indian, each composed of parachutists and glider-borne troops. Wearing their distinctive maroon berets, steel helmets and Dennison smocks, they served with distinction in every major theatre of the conflict and played a starring role in some most iconic airborne operations in history.

In this unconventional and witty history, award-winning writer and broadcaster, Alice Loxton, delves into Britain’s past, exploring the country though eighteen notable figures at this formative age. From a young Empress Matilda, already changing the fate of nations, to Richard Burton, the rugby-obsessed teenager who grew up in a Welsh mining town, each journey unpicks a different era of Britain. Irreverent and full of fascinating tidbits, Loxton shows how the way a society treats its young, reveals much about its values and foibles.

In the great revolutionary year of 1968, Tony Benn was a respectable Labour minister in his forties, and he was restless. While new social movements were shaking up Britain and much of the world, Westminster politics seemed stuck. It was time, he decided, for a different approach. Over the next half century, the radicalized Benn helped forge a new left in Britain. He was joined by four other politicians, who would become comrades, collaborators and rivals: Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn.

Every queen had ladies-in-waiting. Her confidantes and chaperones, they are the forgotten agents of the Tudor court. Ever present and yet hidden behind the scenes, these women held the secrets and the hearts of some of the Tudor period's most powerful men and women. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and their queen, the ladies-in-waiting of Henry VIII's wives were far more than decorative 'extras': they were serious political players who changed the course of history, and four of them became queen themselves.