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Random House presents the audiobook edition of Normandy '44 by James Holland, read by John Sackville. ________________ Renowned World War Two historian James Holland presents an entirely new perspective on one of the most important moments in recent history. Unflinchingly examining the brutality...

Brought to you by Penguin. Antony Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy is the closest you will ever get to war - the taste, the smell, the noise and the fear. The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was...

Was the Battle of Hastings a French victory? Non! William the Conqueror was Norman and hated the French. Were the Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc? Non! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers. Was the guillotine a French invention? Non! It was invented in Yorkshire. Ten centuries' worth of French historical 'facts' bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066....

Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still 'la reine mechante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.

Within days of the D-Day landings, the 'Das Reich' 2nd SS Panzer Division marched north through France to reinforce the front-line defenders of Hitler's Fortress Europe. Veterans of the bloodiest fighting of the Russian Front, 15,000 men with their tanks and artillery, they were hounded for every mile of their march by saboteurs of the Resistance and agents of the Allied Special Forces. Along their route they took reprisals so savage they will live forever in the chronicles of the most appalling atrocities of war.

Bloomsbury presents Hunting the Falcon by John Guy and Julia Fox, read by Stephanie Racine. A TLS, TIMES, PROSPECT AND WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR A groundbreaking examination of how the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn sent shockwaves across a continent and changed England forever. 'In...

'In this remarkable book, utterly gripping over 400 pages, high-end novelised non-fiction takes a big leap forward' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'This is a stylish, intelligent page-turner, as gripping as a thriller film script' THE TIMES 'It's a hell of a story... The Talented Mr Ripley meets the Nouvelle...

Napoleon Bonaparte lived one of the most extraordinary of all human lives. In the space of just 20 years, from October 1795, when as a young artillery captain he cleared the streets of Paris of insurrectionists, to his final defeat at the (horribly mismanaged) battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon transformed France and Europe. After seizing power in a coup d'état, he ended the corruption and incompetence into which the revolution had descended.

A witty history of 2000 years of French history from legendary popular historian John Julius Norwich I can still feel, as if it were yesterday, the excitement of my first Channel crossing (as a child of nearly 7) in September 1936; the regiment of porters, smelling asphyxiatingly of garlic in...

Brought to you by Penguin. In six weeks in 1940, France was over-run by German troops and surrendered. One junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England. On 18 June he spoke to his compatriots over the BBC, urging them to rally to him in London. At that moment...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The riveting story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality, from the bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm and the host of the Revolutions podcast. "Immensely compelling." —The New York Times Few in...

Bloomsbury presents The Dreyfus Affair: The Story of the Most Infamous Miscarriage of Justice in French History by Piers Paul Read, read by Tom Alexander. Intelligent, ambitious and a rising star in the French artillery, Captain Alfred Dreyfus appeared to have everything: family, money, and the...

Henry II conquered the largest empire of any English medieval king. Yet it is the people around him we remember: his wife Eleanor, whom he seduced from the French king; his son Richard the Lionheart; Thomas Becket, murdered in his cathedral. Who was this great, yet tragic king? For fans of Dan...

Duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon (1675-1755) was a French soldier, diplomat, and noted diarist. A French courtier during the 18th century, today he's best known for his comprehensive multi-volume memoirs, which depict life in France at the time. He was an indefatigable writer, and he began very early to record all the gossip he collected, all his interminable legal disputes over precedence, and a vast mass of unclassified material. He is petty, unjust to private enemies and to those who espoused public views contrary to his, as well as being an incessant gossip.

The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.  

A brand new, unabridged recording of Baroness Orczy's classic tale of adventure, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt. Paris, 1792. The Terror has begun. Every day, scores of the French nobility are delivered to the guillotine. Trapped in the capital, they have no way of escape. But rumours abound of a...

Brought to you by Penguin. FROM THE AUTHOR OF BRIDGE OF SPIES: A dramatic and colourful new account of the most daring British commando raid of World War Two In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the...

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.

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. From the perspective of half a century, it looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one.

Spies, bed-hopping, treachery and executions – this story of espionage in wartime Bordeaux is told for the first time. Game of Spies uncovers a lethal spy triangle at work during the Second World War. The story centres on three men – on British, one French and one German – and the duels...