For the first time, Spying and the Crown uncovers the remarkable relationship between the Royal Family and the intelligence community, from the reign of Queen Victoria to the death of Princess Diana.

In an enthralling narrative, Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac show how the British secret services grew out of persistent attempts to assassinate Victoria and then operated on a private and informal basis, drawing on close personal relationships between senior spies, the aristocracy, and the monarchy.

Based on original research and new evidence, Spying and the Crown presents the British monarchy in an entirely new light and reveals how far their majesties still call the shots in a hidden world.

Previously published as The Secret Royals.

Are the courts against the people of South Africa?

Since populist factions claim to be the people, judges confronting them do not just decide against the people; they are against the people.

The judiciary faces a barrage of attacks not just from the ruling ANC but from other political parties clamouring for power. There comes a predictable phase in the cycle of politics where this is most likely to occur. Why does it benefit political parties to deflect from their failure to deliver with calls for parliamentary sovereignty? Why do so many myths circulate about the nature of our courts and constitution?

Dan Mafora answers these questions and more in an inspired analysis. He takes us through the historical ideological clashes within the ANC that make judicial independence up for debate, how administrations since '94 have responded to judicial decisions and why this phenomenon is important to watch globally. He also examines how disinformation campaigns play a big role.

An instant Number One New York Times bestseller, Humans of New York began in the summer of 2010, when photographer Brandon Stanton set out on an ambitious project: to single-handedly create a photographic census of New York City. Armed with his camera, he began crisscrossing the city, covering thousands of miles on foot, all in his attempt to capture ordinary New Yorkers in the most extraordinary of moments. The result of these efforts was "Humans of New York," a vibrant blog in which he featured his photos alongside quotes and anecdotes.

The blog has steadily grown, now boasting nearly a million devoted followers. Humans of New York is the book inspired by the blog. With four hundred colour photos, including exclusive portraits and all-new stories, and a distinctive vellum jacket, Humans of New York is a stunning collection of images that will appeal not just to those who have been drawn in by the outsized personalities of New York, but to anyone interested in the breathtaking scope of humanity it displays.

Heartfelt and moving, Humans of New York is a celebration of individuality and a tribute to the spirit of a city.

"That summer afternoon, I had no way of knowing the book would radically alter my existence. Yet that proved to be the case."

So writes folklorist José Manuel de Prada-Samper about a chance discovery more than thirty years ago of an obscure book called Specimens of Bushman Folklore in a second-hand bookshop in England.

Part historical detective story, part memoir, Fading Footprints traces the author’s journey into the magical folklore of the /xam hunter-gatherers of the Upper Karoo. Through archival research and on field trips in South Africa, De Prada-Samper is able to humanise the /xam as he delves into the work and lives of researchers William Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, who recorded the stories of San prisoners in Cape Town in the late 1800.

The author learns that many are still told to this day by farm workers in forgotten corners of the Northern Cape and that, contrary to common belief, the culture and traditions of South Africa’s first people are still alive.

The story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens.

For the last 100,000 years, humans have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive?

NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.

Journalist Lesley Mofokeng investigates the life of his remarkable grandfather, Mongangane Wilfred Mofokeng, a prominent Dutch Reformed Church evangelist, who built a thriving community out of the dust of the far Northwest.

The journey takes him from Joburg’s Marabi-soaked townships of the 1930s to his childhood home of Gelukspan near Lichtenburg and then to the rural Free State and the remote mountain kingdom of Lesotho. In what becomes a spiritual quest, he traces the inspirational footsteps of his ancestors and the legendary King Moshoeshoe.

In the process, Mofokeng proudly claims his heritage and also uncovers a long-lost chapter of South African history and the church of the apartheid regime.

Poskaarte van 'n reis is 'n keur van Jacqueline Leuvennink se rubrieke en artikels wat deur die jare in menige tydskrifte verskyn het. Jacqueline se fyn waarneming en vermoë om verwikkelde emosies en situasies in eenvoud te verwoord laat die leser opnuut verwonderd oor die skoonheid van ons wêreld.

Die skrywer nooi die leser om haar te vergesel op ver reise na interessante bestemmings en inspirerende ervarings.

Poskaarte van 'n reis is 'n unieke versameling artikels wat maklik en individueel gelees kan word vir lesers wat nie baie tyd het vir lees nie, maar steeds iets moois en voedsaam vir die siel op een slag wil lees.

As the West struggles against attempts to destroy it from within and without, key lessons in resilience from its Jewish parent can enable both Christianity and civilization to survive.

Western civilization is facing a critical moment. Foreign enemies sensing its weakness are circling. Internally, the West is being consumed by division, decadence, and demoralization. The October 7 attack on Israel presented it with a choice between civilization and barbarism—a challenge the West has failed. But this damaged society is far from lost if it takes advice from an unexpected source.

Western culture is based upon Christianity, whose own foundations in turn lie in Judaism. The unique survival of the Jewish people offers both the West and its struggling Christian church, as well as secular people who shun religion, priceless lessons in resilience that they must learn if their culture is to survive.

In The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule, veteran political analyst Ebrahim Harvey delivers a stinging critique of the ANC. This must-read analysis reveals the complete failure of the ANC to roll back the race and class divide.

Harvey argues that a series of events – including HIV/AIDS denialism, the Marikana shootings, the Nkandla funding scandal, mass student protests, the Esidemeni tragedy, systemic corruption and state capture – are rooted in policy choices made by the ANC during negotiations and in power. This book is not just an evisceration of the ANC, however, as Harvey is able, through many interviews and patient delving into the past and present, to provide an indispensable guide to the future.

The Great Pretenders is fierce, passionate and provocative. It is certain to provoke those in power, stirring debate on not only the pernicious issue of race relations in South Africa, but on how to create the shared society promised us.

100 jaar van genade. 100 jaar se getroue lesers. Uit die Beek gee daaglikse geestelike leiding en inspirasie. Hierdie feesuitgawe is geskik vir persoonlike stiltetyd, huisgodsdiens én Bybelstudiegroepe. Vanjaar kom dit weer uit die pen van bekroonde skrywer en predikant Barend Vos. In 2025 vertoef ons by elke Bybelboek, terwyl ons steeds groot momente in die kerkkalender, soos Lydenstyd en die Pase, Pinkster, Koninkrykstyd en Advent in ag neem.

Wat maak iemand ’n held? Of wat maak hom ’n skurk? Wanneer ons hulle stories lees, sien ons dikwels party mense is soms ’n held en soms ’n skurk.

Die opwindende insigte en lewendige illustrasies in Die Aksie-Bybel: Helde en skurke help kinders tussen 8 en 12 jaar om meer as 75 Bybelkarakters ’n bietjie beter ken – die helde, maar ook die skurke. So sal hulle ook leer ons het elkeen so iets van albei in ons!

Lesers, oud en jonk, kan uitsien na die volgende:

• Kleurvolle, moderne illustrasies.
• Die grootste uitdagings (en foute!) van meer as 75 Bybelkarakters.
• Historiese konteks, plekke van oorsprong, aanduidings oor waar historiese plekke vandag is, en waar die verhale in die Bybel is by elke karakter.
• Ander fassinerende inligting, wonderbaarlike gebeure en prettige feite ook kos, klere en tradisies.

Die verrassende verhale en ongelooflike waarhede in hierdie uitstekende boek gee lewe aan die Bybel en sy karakters.

Budapest, autumn 1943. Four years into the war, Hungary is allied with Nazi Germany and the Hungarian capital is the Casablanca of central Europe. The city swirls with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But Budapest remains at peace, an oasis in the midst of war where Allied POWs, and Polish and Jewish refugees find sanctuary. The riverside cafes are crowded and the city's famed cultural life still thrives.

All that comes to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invade. By the summer, Allied bombers are pounding its grand boulevards and historic squares. Budapest's surviving Jewish population has been forcibly relocated to cramped, overcrowded Yellow Star houses. By late December, the city is surrounded and under siege from the Red Army. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians die in the savage siege as Budapest collapses into anarchy. Hungarian death squads roam the streets as the city's Jews are forced into ghettos. Russian artillery pounds the city into smoking rubble as starving residents hack chunks of meat from dead, frozen horses.

Using newly uncovered diaries, documents, archival material and interviews with the last survivors, Adam LeBor brilliantly recreates life and death in the wartime city, the catastrophic fate of half of its Jewish population and the destruction of the siege.

Told through the lives of a cast of vivid, gripping characters, including glamorous aristocrats, spies, smugglers and SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish schoolboy, Hungary's most popular actress and her spy chief lover, a Jewish businesswoman who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a Christian doctor hiding her Jewish neighbours and a teenage Hungarian soldier, the story of how Budapest slowly dies as the war destroys the city is utterly compelling.

From a New York Times bestselling author, this book encourages readers to ask God for what they need, and to not be afraid of the miracles He has in store for us.

Joel Osteen wants you to know that God is listening and waiting for you to and ask Him for your dreams, for the big things in your heart, for your deepest hopes, for what looks impossible. How many miracles are we missing out on because we're not praying bold?

Pray Bold will challenge you to think bigger, to stretch your faith, to receive what you're believing for when you pray, and to pray prayers that move the hands of God. This book includes reflective questions for group or individual study and 30 days of bold prayers to take you to the next level. You'll learn to pray with confidence, you'll dare to pray bold–and that's when you'll see the all-powerful Creator of the universe go to work.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Southern Africa was a jumble of British colonies, Boer republics and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. Into this frontier world came the Reitz family, Afrikaner gentry from the Cape, who settled in Bloemfontein and played a key role in the building of the Orange Free State.

Frank Reitz, successively chief justice and modernising president of the young republic, went on to serve as State Secretary of the Transvaal Republic. In 1899, he stood shoulder to shoulder with President Paul Kruger to resist Britain’s war of conquest in Southern Africa. At the heart of this tale is the extraordinary life of Deneys Reitz, third son of Frank Reitz and Bianca Thesen. The young Reitz’s account of his adventures in the field during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), published as Commando, became a classic of irregular warfare. After a period of exile in Madagascar, he went on become one of South Africa’s most distinguished lawyers, statesmen and soldiers. Martin Meredith interweaves Reitz’s experiences, taken from his unpublished notebooks, with the wider story of Britain’s brutal suppression of Boer resistance.

Concise and readable, Afrikaner Odyssey is a wide-ranging portrait of an aristocratic Afrikaner family whose achievements run like fine thread through these turbulent times, and whose presence is still marked on the South African landscape.

This rich and absorbing biography of Can Themba, iconic Drum-era journalist and writer, is the definitive history of a larger-than-life man who died too young. Siphiwo Mahala’s intensive and often fresh research features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba’s surviving colleagues and family.

Mahala’s biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba’s life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland. The better-known elements of his life – his political views, passion for teaching and mentoring, and family life – are woven together with an examination of his literary influences and the impact of his own writing (especially his famous short story ‘The Suit’) on modern African writers in turn. Mahala, a master storyteller, deftly follows the threads of Themba’s dynamic life, showcasing his intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and wit, along with his flaws, contradictions and heartbreaks, against a backdrop of the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s.

Can Themba’s successes and failures as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography. The result is an authoritative and entertaining account of an often misunderstood figure in South Africa’s literary canon.

At a watershed meeting in 2000 the ANC committed itself to "the new cadre" project. A project with the aim to recruit and develop ANC members who are dedicated, selfless people with integrity. Yet twenty years later the ANC is consumed by corrupt cadres with the party clearly losing the battle against corruption and state capture.

How did this happen, and what exactly went wrong?

Political analyst Mpumelelo Mkhabela tells a fascinating story starting with Mandela, the Scorpions and Tony Yengeni all the way to Zuma and the Guptas to explain how we got here.

In the early planning stages of Freedom Park, Robin Binckes participated as a member of the history sub-committee. The amount of debate and argument, much of it heated, astounded him. Practically every event discussed was interpreted from diametrically differing viewpoints. One of the most controversial topics was the Great Trek, the 1836 Boer exodus from the Cape Colony.

Traditionally writers on the subject have covered the event from a perspective not only of 'white history' but predominantly of 'Afrikaner history'. It has always been seen as 'an Afrikaner event'. It was anything but. As the Great Trek and the events leading up to it involved every section of the population - Zulu, Sotho, Ndebele, Xhosa, Khoisan, Khoikhoi, Coloured, British, English-speaking South African and Boer - it is time to portray the trek in that light, in the context of a unbiased, modern South Africa.

Like most history the dots are all connected; it is impossible to separate the Great Trek from events which took place as far back as the Portuguese explorers because those early events shaped the backdrop to the causes of the Great Trek. Most writers have specialized in the trek itself whereas Binckes has adopted a broader approach that studies the impact of the earlier white incursions and migrations - Portuguese, Dutch, French and British - on southern Africa, to create a better understanding of the trek and its causes. Drawing heavily on eyewitness accounts wherever possible, he has consolidated these with the perspectives of leading historians, the final product being an objective and comprehensive record of one of the seminal events in South African history.

This book shows that the Afrikaner was, is, and always will be, an important player in South African society, but it shows him as part of a bigger picture. The author distances himself from the noble characters stereotyped for the past two centuries and portrays them in their true light: wonderful, courageous people with human feelings, strengths and failings.

If you’re tired of chasing the latest diet fad only to find that you’ve gained weight, it’s time to try an entirely different approach. The Daniel Fast for Weight Loss succeeds where other programs fail because it focuses on your relationship with God as well as on your relationship with food. Once you discover the pleasures of eating the food God has provided for optimum health, you will not want to turn back. The Daniel Fast for Weight Loss offers a strategic, biblically based plan backed by solid research that will eliminate your cravings and help you to drop those unwanted pounds once and for all.

Susan Gregory, “The Daniel Fast Blogger” and bestselling author of The Daniel Fast, is back with a spiritual and practical roadmap to this wildly popular 21-day fast for anyone who wants to lose weight and develop a lifestyle of health in a way that honors God. Way beyond a diet plan, The Daniel Fast for Weight Loss includes more than 90 new recipes, multiple tips for successful fasting, a 21-day devotional, and practical guidance for maintaining weight loss and good eating habits even after you complete your Christ-centered fasting experience.

Embark on a life-changing journey toward happiness and confidence about the body God designed for you.

The definitive biography of Her Majesty The Queen by one of Britain’s leading royal authorities.

With original insights from those who know her best, new interviews with world leaders and access to unseen papers, bestselling author Robert Hardman explores the full, astonishing life of our longest reigning monarch in this compellingly authoritative yet intimate biography.

Elizabeth II was not born to be queen. Yet from her accession as a young mother of two in 1952 to the age of Covid-19, she has proved an astute and quietly determined figure, leading her family and her people through more than seventy years of unprecedented social change. She has faced constitutional crises, confronted threats against her life, rescued the Commonwealth, seen her prime ministers come and go, charmed world leaders, been criticised as well as feted by the media, and steered her family through a lifetime in the public eye.

Queen of Our Times is a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal, spanning abdication, war, romance, danger and tragedy. It is a compelling portrait of a leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne aged twenty-five.

This book explores South Africa’s tumultuous history from the aftermath of the Second Anglo-Boer War to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on never-before-published documentary evidence – including diaries, letters, eyewitness testimony and diplomatic reports – the book follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, massacres, economic crashes and health crises that have shaped the nation’s character.

Tracking South Africa’s path from colony to Union and from apartheid to democracy, History of South Africa documents the influence of key figures including Pixley Seme, Jan Smuts, Lilian Ngoyi, H.F. Verwoerd, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, P.W. Botha and Jacob Zuma. The book also gives detailed accounts of definitive events such as the 1922 Rand Revolt, the Defiance Campaign, Sharpeville, the Soweto uprising and the Marikana massacre. Looking beyond the country’s borders, it unpacks military conflicts such as the World Wars, the armed struggle and the Border War. The book explores the transition to democracy and traces the phases of ANC rule, from the Rainbow Nation to transformation to state capture. It examines the divisive and unifying role of sport, the ups and downs of the economy, and the impact of pandemics from the Spanish flu to AIDS and COVID-19.

As South Africa faces a crisis as severe as any in its history, the book shows that these challenges are neither unprecedented nor insurmountable, and that there are principles to be found in history that may lead us safely into the future.

A true-life scientific adventure story, this thrilling book takes the reader deep into South African caves to discover fossil remains that compel a monumental reframing of the human family tree.

In the summer of 2022, Lee Berger lost 50 pounds in order to wriggle though impossibly small openings in the Rising Star cave complex in South Africa—spaces where his team has been unearthing the remains of Homo naledi, a proto-human likely to have coexisted with Homo sapiens some 250,000 years ago. The lead researcher on the site, still Berger had never made his way into the dark, cramped, dangerous underground spaces where many of the naledi fossils had been found. Now he was ready to do so.

Once inside the cave, Berger made shocking new discoveries that expand our understanding of this early hominid—discoveries that stand to alter our fundamental understanding of what makes us human. So what does it all mean?

Join Berger on the adventure of a lifetime as he explores the Rising Star cave system and begins the complicated process of explaining these extraordinary finds—finds that force a rethinking of human evolution, and discoveries that Berger calls “the Rosetta stone of the human mind.”

South Africa’s democracy is often seen as a story of bright beginnings gone astray, a pattern said to be common to Africa. The negotiated settlement of 1994, it is claimed, ended racial domination and created the foundation for a prosperous democracy – but greedy politicians betrayed the promise of a new society.

In Prisoners Of The Past, Steven Friedman astutely argues that this misreads the nature of contemporary South Africa. Building on the work of the economic historian Douglass North and the political thinker Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman shows that South African democracy’s difficulties are legacies of the pre-1994 past. The settlement which ushered in majority rule left intact core features of the apartheid economy and society. The economy continues to exclude millions from its benefits, while racial hierarchies have proved stubborn: apartheid is discredited, but the values of the pre-1948 colonial era, the period of British colonisation, still dominate. Thus South Africa’s democracy supports free elections, civil liberties and the rule of law, but also continues past patterns of exclusion and domination.

Friedman reasons that this ‘path dependence’ is not, as is often claimed, the result of constitutional compromises in 1994 that left domination untouched. This bargain was flawed because it brought not too much compromise, but too little. Compromises extended political citizenship to all but there were no similar bargains on economic and cultural change. Using the work of the radical sociologist Harold Wolpe, Friedman shows that only negotiations on a new economy and society can free South Africans from the prison of the past.

Nir Tavor is an Israeli secret service operative turned talented Mossad agent.

Nicole le Roux is a model with a hidden skill.

A terrorist attack brings them together, and then work forces them apart—until they’re unexpectedly called back into each other’s lives.

But there’s no time for romance. As violent radicals threaten chaos across the Middle East, the two must work together to stop these extremists, pooling Nicole’s knack for technology and Nir’s adeptness with on-the-ground missions. Each heart-racing step of their operation gets them closer to the truth—and closer to danger.

In this thrilling first book in a new series, authors Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn draw on true events as well as tactical insights Amir learned from his time in the Israeli Defense Forces. For believers in God’s life-changing promises, Operation Joktan is a suspense-filled page-turner that illuminates the blessing Israel is to the world.

What was it like to fly a MiG or Mirage in combat over Angola? Most books on the Angolan Bush War, especially those in English, present the South African perspective of events. Now a former MiG-23 Squadron Commander of the Cuban Air Force has collaborated with an ex-SAAF pilot to paint a remarkable new picture of the aerial conflict over Angola in the 1980s.

In The MiG Diaries the recollections of Lt-Col Eduardo González Sarría are blended by Lionel Reid with those of air combatants from the Angolan, Cuban and South African air forces. Many are being published for the first time.

Using their own aviation knowledge and experience of the conflict, Sarría and Reid combine the accounts of these diverse combatants – former comrades and foe – to provide original insights into, and a more holistic description of, what happened in the skies over Angola. The results, often quite different to what the opposing sides had believed, reveal a surprising, and more complete, picture of events.

The wonderful sketching pencil of Sean Thackwray, himself a former fighter pilot, helps to bring this unique story to life, along with select images, including many not seen in print in South Africa.

The incredible true story about a Galilean stonemason who changed the course of the world forever.

Beautifully told through the eyewitness accounts of those who knew him best.

This real-life story will never leave you.

This is the incredible true story of a Galilean stonemason who changed the course of the world forever.

He lived and died over 2,000 years ago, fulfilling expectations that existed long before his birth.

His birth had been mystically foretold by astrologers for hundreds of years, yet the rulers of his day dreaded his coming.

This humble builder-teacher became a magnet for the poor and down trodden, a symbol of love and mercy, who transformed the lives and restored the health and purpose in all who encountered him.

The local elite and governing rulers eventually tortured him and put him to death in the most violent and public of ways. Yet that was only the beginning...

In the years since, billions of people have dedicated their lives to this man and have testified to his divinity and truth.

To others, he is little more than another rebel who was killed by one of the most brutal empires in human history.

How we each respond to this story dictates the course of our lives. And it all rests on the great mystery that occurred at the end of his life - a supernatural event that he had predicted with utter clarity.

Did this humble man tell the truth?

Could one man really be the focal point of the universe?

Read on to find out, and get ready to make up your own mind.

Wherever this journey takes you, this is arguably:

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.