Titles in this preview are published in May
more. The second volume covers 1960 to 1967.
Serhii Plokhy The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival
Penguin, 28th, £12.99, 9781802060607
How nuclear power and nuclear weaponry have shaped world history, from the work of HG Wells to our current precarious geopolitical moment.
Madeline Potter The Roma: A Travelling History
Vintage, 28th, £12.99, 9781529967241
Personal portrait of Romani history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today.
Frederic Raphael The World’s Game: Reflections on Western Culture
Apollo, 7th, £12.99, 9781837933396
From leaders to philosophers, inventions to conflicts, a history of significant moments, ideas and figures that have shaped the world as we know it.
Nick Rennison Riots and Rebels: A Pocket Essential History of Popular Protest in Britain
Oldcastle Books, 1st, £9.99, 9780857306197
Narrative history of popular protests, demonstrations and riots in England, Scotland and Wales from the Peasants’ Revolt of the Middle Ages to the 21st century, focusing on movements of ordinary people over conflicts between elites.
NAM Rodger The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain 1815-1945
Penguin, 28th, £20, 9780140288971
From the French and Napoleonic wars to decline and reinvigoration, a history of the Royal Navy and British sea-power until the end of the Second World War.
Augustine Sedgewick Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power
Picador, 14th, £10.99, 9781035035786
A history of masculinity and family, from the Bronze Age to Henry VIII, Charles Darwin to Bob Dylan, to the contemporary “crisis of men”.
Harry Shukman Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right
Vintage, 7th, £12.99, 9781529953213
From canvassing with Britain First to befriending Holocaust deniers, journalist Shukman’s insights from infiltrating the British far right.
Daniel Smith
100 Things They Don’t Want You to Know: Conspiracies, Mysteries and Unsolved Crimes
Quercus, 7th, £12.99, 9781529440072
The truth behind the world’s most mysterious cover-ups and unexplained events.
Thomas W Smith Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages
Boydell Press, 5th, £24.99, 9781837653874
Exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, seen as historical writing, literary invention, news and theological interpretation.
Laura Spinney Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
William Collins, 7th, £10.99, 9780008626563
Drawing on conversations with linguists, archaeologists and geneticists, a pursuit of our linguistic ancestry and the time of a common language.
Christopher Stephens, Louise Radnofsky The Light of Day
Headline Press, 21st, £14.99, 9781035421541
Set in motion by a letter to British newspaper editors in June 1960, an account of the first man to come out voluntarily, using his own name, to the entire British public, “A lightness, a candour untethered to any agenda or argument,” said the TLS.
Harry Tanner The Queer Thing About Sin
Bloomsbury Continuum, 21st, £12.99, 9781399422314
A history of queer love and the origins of homophobia in the ancient world, with consequences for today’s world.
Alan Taylor (ed) Edinburgh: The Autobiography
Birlinn, 7th, £12.99, 9781780279718
The rich history of Edinburgh through those who witnessed it, from the sixth century to the Covid lockdowns of the 21st.
Seth Alexander Thévoz London Clubland: A Companion for the Curious
Aurum, 7th, £10.99, 9781836002260
Twelve personal stories from writer and conservationist Bingham on the joy and power of noticing the birds that surround us every day.
Hannah Bourne-Taylor Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts
Elliott & Thompson, 7th, £10.99, 9781783968701
11
Robinson, 14th, £12.99, 9781472149992
From Boodle’s and Brooks’s to the Groucho Club, a history of London’s private members’ clubs, their cultures and traditions.
Mark Urban Tank: The 10 War Machines That Changed the World and the Remarkable Men Behind Them
Penguin, 7th, £11.99, 9781405975544
Historian and former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment Urban tells the evolution of the machinery of war, through the 10 most important vehicles ever made.
Yanis Varoufakis ( 11) Raise Your Soul: A Personal History of Resistance
Vintage, 21st, £12.99, 9781529970210
Varoufakis’ political awakening, told through the lives of five women, and Greece’s 20th-century history.
Alice Vincent Hark: How Women Listen Canongate Books, 7th, £10.99, 9781837261246
How Vincent’s life changed with the birth of her son, developing a new relationship with sound and the increasingly noisy world around us.
Lizzie Wade Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures
William Collins, 7th, £10.99, 9780008761455
A history of humanity told through well and lesser-known catastrophes, and how we survived them.
Adele Zeynep Walton Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World
Trapeze, 28th, £10.99, 9781398722941
How 30 years of living in a digital world has negatively impacted our daily lives and what we
can do to reclaim a more humane future.
Caroline West Wrong Women: Selling Sex in Monto, Dublin’s Forgotten Red Light District Eriu, 21st, £10.99, 9781804187173 A feminist history of Dublin’s Red Light District and the women who worked there in the late 19th and early 20th century, drawing on family histories, historical records and oral history. Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2025.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey The Spy and the Devil: The Untold Story of the MI6 Agent Who Penetrated Hitler’s Inner Circle
Blink Publishing, 7th, £10.99, 9781789468717
The untold story of MI6’s top secret agent in Nazi Germany from 1931 to 1939, with insider access to Hitler and the Nazi regime.
John L Williams Heatwave: The Summer of 1976 – Britain at Boiling Point
Monoray, 21st, £10.99, 9781800961739
A collage of news stories, social commentary and first-person interviews recreate the national unease amid the nostalgia for a summer frequently remembered as the hottest Britain has seen.
Kate Wilson Disclosure: Unravelling the Spycops Files
W&N, 28th, £12.99, 9781399614313
The woman who took on Britain’s secret police in court, and won, exposing state sanctioned spying on its citizens. “Formally inventive and bracing to read,” said the Observer.
Natural history & pets
Charlie Bingham The Life-Affirming Magic of Birds
A rallying cry to protect swifts from population decline and habitat loss, updated for paperback publication with an epilogue on taking the protest to Westminster and successfully raising one baby swift to fly last summer. Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation 2025.
Jim Crumley Swan Saraband, 7th, £7.99, 9781916812666
One of four small books in the Encounters in the Wild series, where Scottish nature writer Crumley shares up close insights in wildlife watching. Also in the series are Barn Owl, Badger and Hare.
Mandy Haggith The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees – and the Fight to Save Them
Wildfire, 7th, £14.99, 9781035412341
An appreciation of the elm, from Dutch elm disease’s devastating global impact to recent research efforts to preserve the species.
Jonathan Mullard Forgotten Forests: Twelve Thousand Years of British and Irish Woodlands
William Collins, 21st, £10.99, 9780008561086
How woodland ecosystems have functioned over time and how they have shaped British history.
Sadiah Qureshi Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction
Penguin, 26th, £14.99, 9780141988566
Given that more than 90% of species that ever existed are now extinct, Qureshi examines the idea of extinction, how it has been framed as natural and its ultimately political history. Shortlisted for the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.
James Scott In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life it Brings
Yale, 5th, £12.99, 9780300292305
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