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On Saturday 9th September, 1922, the victorious Turkish cavalry
rode into Smyrna, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the
Ottoman Empire. What happened over the next two weeks must rank as
one of the most compelling human dramas of the twentieth century.
Almost two million people were caught up in a disaster of truly
epic proportions. PARADISE LOST is told with the narrative verve
that has made Giles Milton a bestselling historian. It unfolds
through the memories of the survivors, many of them interviewed for
the first time, and the eyewitness accounts of those who found
themselves caught up in one of the greatest catastrophes of the
modern age.
'A magnificent story, brilliantly told. Read it!' ANTHONY HOROWITZ
SIX GENTLEMEN, ONE GOAL - THE DESTRUCTION OF HITLER'S WAR MACHINE.
In the spring of 1939, a top secret organisation was founded in
London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war
machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla
campaign that followed was to prove every bit as extraordinary as
the six gentlemen who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a
maverick engineer who invented a lethal bomb. Another, William
Fairbairn, was the world's leading expert in silent killing. Led by
dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, and aided by a group of formidable
women, these six men and their sabotage attacks single-handedly
changed the course of the war. 'Terrific . . . a great read' IAN
HISLOP 'Could not be faster-moving or more exciting' LITERARY
REVIEW Previously published in hardback as The Ministry of
Ungentlemanly Warfare.
'Brilliantly recapturing the febrile atmosphere of Berlin in the
first four years after the Second World War, Giles Milton reminds
us what an excellent story-teller he is' - Andrew Roberts, author
of Churchill: Walking with Destiny Berlin was in ruins when Soviet
forces fought their way towards the Reichstag in the spring of
1945. Streets were choked with rubble, power supplies severed and
the population close to starvation. The arrival of the Soviet army
heralded yet greater terrors: the city's civilians were to suffer
rape, looting and horrific violence. Worse still, they faced a
future with neither certainty nor hope. Berlin's fate had been
sealed four months earlier at the Yalta Conference. The city, along
with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the
victorious powers - British, American, French and Soviet. On paper,
it seemed a pragmatic solution; in reality, it fired the starting
gun for the Cold War. As soon as the four powers were no longer
united by the common purpose of defeating Germany, they reverted to
their pre-war hostility and suspicion. Rival systems, rival
ideologies and rival personalities ensured that Berlin became an
explosive battleground. The ruins of this once-great city were soon
awash with spies, gangsters and black-marketeers, all of whom
sought to profit from the disarray. For the next four years, a
handful of charismatic but flawed individuals - British, American
and Soviet - fought an intensely personal battle over the future of
Germany, Europe and the entire free world. CHECKMATE IN BERLIN
tells this exhilarating, high-stakes tale of grit, skullduggery,
and raw power. From the high politics of Yalta to the desperate
scramble to break the Soviet stranglehold of Berlin with the
greatest aerial operation in history, this is the epic story of the
first battle of the Cold War and how it shaped the modern world.
Call Me Gorgeous is a fun, stylish book about a very, very strange
creature. It has a porcupine's spines and a crocodile's teeth, a
chameleon's tail, and a cockerel's feet. What on earth could it be?
Uncover this mysterious and fabulous beast through Alexandra
Milton's stunning collage art. AGES: 3 to 6 AUTHOR: Giles Milton
has contributed articles for many newspapers and specialises in the
history of travel and exploration. Giles is the author of several
history books for adults, including the best-selling Nathaniel's
Nutmeg. Alexandra Milton studied art and English in Paris and then
moved to England, where she worked as a primary school teacher
before becoming a full-time illustrator. Alexandra draws
inspiration from her father and grandfather, both distinguished
artists from Germany. SELLING POINTS: . Reissue (2009) in a smaller
format and with a new cover design . Stunning collage art .
Wonderful way to learn about animals
In 1611 an astonishing letter arrived at the East India Trading
Company in London after a tortuous seven-year journey. Englishman
William Adams was one of only twenty-four survivors of a fleet of
ships bound for Asia, and he had washed up in the forbidden land of
Japan. The traders were even more amazed to learn that, rather than
be horrified by this strange country, Adams had fallen in love with
the barbaric splendour of Japan - and decided to settle. He had
forged a close friendship with the ruthless Shogun, taken a
Japanese wife and sired a new, mixed-race family. Adams' letter
fired up the London merchants to plan a new expedition to the Far
East, with designs to trade with the Japanese and use Adams'
contacts there to forge new commercial links. SAMURAI WILLIAM
brilliantly illuminates a world whose horizons were rapidly
expanding eastwards.
Our Number One name in popular history is back with an explosive
new paperback, a sensational new cover look and a 'fiction' style
marketing campaign that will strike gold in summer 2005 This is the
forgotten story of the million white Europeans, snatched from their
homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of North
Africa to be sold to the highest bidder. Ignored by their own
governments, and forced to endure the harshest of conditions, very
few lived to tell the tale. Using the firsthand testimony of a
Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow, Giles Milton vividly
reconstructs a disturbing, little known chapter of history. Pellow
was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco who was constructing
an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built
entirely by Christian slave labour. As his personal slave, he would
witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of he imperial court, as
well as experience the daily terror of a cruel regime. Gripping,
immaculately researched, and brilliantly realised, WHITE GOLD
reveals an explosive chapter of popular history, told with all the
pace and verve of one of our finest historians.
Obscure and addictive true tales from history told by one of our most entertaining historians, Giles Milton
The first installment in Giles Milton's outrageously entertaining series, History's Unknown Chapters: colorful and accessible, intelligent and illuminating, Milton shows his customary historical flair as he delves into the little-known stories from the past. There's the cook aboard the Titanic, who pickled himself with whiskey and survived in the icy seas where most everyone else died. There's the man who survived the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there's many, many more.
Covering everything from adventure, war, murder and slavery to espionage, including the stories of the female Robinson Crusoe, Hitler's final hours, Japan's deadly balloon bomb and the emperor of the United States, these tales deserve to be told.
'Brilliantly written and completely absorbing, this is Milton's
masterpiece' ANTHONY HOROWITZ BERLIN'S FATE WAS SEALED AT THE 1945
YALTA CONFERENCE. The city was to be carved up between the
victorious powers - British, American, French and Soviet - with
four all-powerful commandants ruling over their sectors. On paper,
it seemed a pragmatic solution; in reality, it marked the start of
a ferocious battle of wits. As relations between east and west
broke down, these rival commandants fought a desperate battle for
control. In doing so, they fired the starting gun for the Cold War.
From America's explosive Frank 'Howlin' Mad' Howley, a
sharp-tongued colonel with a loathing for Russians, to his nemesis,
Russia's charmingly deceptive General Alexander Kotikov, CHECKMATE
IN BERLIN tells the exhilarating, high-stakes story of kidnap,
skullduggery, sabotage, murder and the greatest aerial operation in
history. This is the epic story of the first battle of the Cold War
and how it shaped the modern world. 'An excellent storyteller'
ANDREW ROBERTS 'A book full of heroes' THE TIMES
'Vivid, graphic and moving' Mail on Sunday Book of the Year 'It has
a wonderful immediacy and vitality - living history in every sense'
Anthony Horowitz 'Fantastic' Dan Snow 'Compellingly authentic,
revelatory and beautifully written. A gripping tour de force'
Damien Lewis 'Stirring and unsettling in equal measure, this is
history writing at its most powerful' Evening Standard Almost
seventy-five years have passed since D-Day, the day of the greatest
seaborne invasion in history. The outcome of the Second World War
hung in the balance on that chill June morning. If Allied forces
succeeded in gaining a foothold in northern France, the road to
victory would be open. But if the Allies could be driven back into
the sea, the invasion would be stalled for years, perhaps forever.
An epic battle that involved 156,000 men, 7,000 ships and 20,000
armoured vehicles, the desperate struggle that unfolded on 6 June
1944 was, above all, a story of individual heroics - of men who
were driven to keep fighting until the German defences were smashed
and the precarious beachheads secured. Their authentic human story
- Allied, German, French - has never fully been told. Giles
Milton's bold new history narrates the day's events through the
tales of survivors from all sides: the teenage Allied conscript,
the crack German defender, the French resistance fighter. From the
military architects at Supreme Headquarters to the young schoolboy
in the Wehrmacht's bunkers, D-Day: The Soldiers' Story lays bare
the absolute terror of those trapped in the frontline of Operation
Overlord. It also gives voice to those hitherto unheard - the
French butcher's daughter, the Panzer Commander's wife, the
chauffeur to the General Staff. This vast canvas of human bravado
reveals 'the longest day' as never before - less as a masterpiece
of strategic planning than a day on which thousands of scared young
men found themselves staring death in the face. It is drawn in its
entirety from the raw, unvarnished experiences of those who were
there.
In 1616, an English adventurer, Nathaniel Courthope, stepped ashore
on a remote island in the East Indies on a secret mission - to
persuade the islanders of Run to grant a monopoly to England over
their nutmeg, a fabulously valuable spice in Europe. This
infuriated the Dutch, who were determined to control the world's
nutmeg supply. For five years Courthope and his band of thirty men
were besieged by a force one hundred times greater - and his
heroism set in motion the events that led to the founding of the
greatest city on earth. A beautifully told adventure story and a
fascinating depiction of exploration in the seventeenth century,
NATHANIEL'S NUTMEG sheds a remarkable light on history.
In 1322 Sir John Mandeville left England on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. Thirty-four years later, he returned, claiming to have
visited not only Jerusalem, but India, China, Java, Sumatra and
Borneo as well. His book about that voyage, THE TRAVELS, was
heralded as the most important book of the Middle Ages as
Mandeville claimed his voyage proved it was possible to
circumnavigate the globe. In the nineteenth century sceptics
questioned his voyage, and even doubted he had left England. THE
RIDDLE AND THE KNIGHT sets out to discover whether Mandeville
really could have made his voyage or whether, as is claimed, THE
TRAVELS was a work of imaginative fiction. Bestselling historian
Giles Milton unearths clues about the journey and reveals that THE
TRAVELS is built upon a series of riddles which have, until now,
remained unsolved.
The Aichele family were decent, cultured, peace-loving Germans
trying their hardest not to get swept up in the madness of Hitler's
Third Reich. But by the time war came, for civilians on all sides,
there was nowhere left to hide. The conflict took Wolfram, the
family's gentle, 18-year-old son, to the Russian Front and the
Normandy beaches. It also engulfed the town of his childhood,
obliterating its inhabitants in a devastating firestorm. Wolfram is
a powerful story of human survival. It is testimony to the fact
that even in the darkest times there remains a spark of humanity
that can never be totally extinguished.
Giles Milton's first book, The Riddle and the Knight, is a fascinating account of the legend of Sir John Mandeville, a long-forgotten knight who was once the most famous writer in medieval Europe. Mandeville wrote a book about his voyage around the world that became a beacon that lit the way for the great expeditions of the Renaissance, and his exploits and adventures provided inspiration for writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats. By the nineteenth century however, his claims were largely discredited by academics. Giles Milton set off in the footsteps of Mandeville, in order to test his amazing claims, and to restore Mandeville to his rightful place in the literature of exploration.
'Brilliantly recapturing the febrile atmosphere of Berlin in the
first four years after the Second World War, Giles Milton reminds
us what an excellent story-teller he is' - Andrew Roberts, author
of Churchill: Walking with Destiny Berlin was in ruins when Soviet
forces fought their way towards the Reichstag in the spring of
1945. Streets were choked with rubble, power supplies severed and
the population close to starvation. The arrival of the Soviet army
heralded yet greater terrors: the city's civilians were to suffer
rape, looting and horrific violence. Worse still, they faced a
future with neither certainty nor hope. Berlin's fate had been
sealed four months earlier at the Yalta Conference. The city, along
with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the
victorious powers - British, American, French and Soviet. On paper,
it seemed a pragmatic solution; in reality, it fired the starting
gun for the Cold War. As soon as the four powers were no longer
united by the common purpose of defeating Germany, they reverted to
their pre-war hostility and suspicion. Rival systems, rival
ideologies and rival personalities ensured that Berlin became an
explosive battleground. The ruins of this once-great city were soon
awash with spies, gangsters and black-marketeers, all of whom
sought to profit from the disarray. For the next four years, a
handful of charismatic but flawed individuals - British, American
and Soviet - fought an intensely personal battle over the future of
Germany, Europe and the entire free world. CHECKMATE IN BERLIN
tells this exhilarating, high-stakes tale of grit, skullduggery,
and raw power. From the high politics of Yalta to the desperate
scramble to break the Soviet stranglehold of Berlin with the
greatest aerial operation in history, this is the epic story of the
first battle of the Cold War and how it shaped the modern world.
'Giles Milton is a man who can take an event from history and make
it come alive . . . an inspiration for those of us who believe that
history can be exciting and entertaining' Matthew Redhead, The
Times Did you know that Hitler took cocaine? That Stalin robbed a
bank? That Charlie Chaplin's corpse was filched and held to ransom?
Giles Milton is a master of historical narrative: in his
characteristically engaging prose, Fascinating Footnotes From
History details one hundred of the quirkiest historical nuggets;
eye-stretching stories that read like fiction but are one hundred
per cent fact. There is Hiroo Onoda, the lone Japanese soldier
still fighting the Second World War in 1974; Agatha Christie, who
mysteriously disappeared for eleven days in 1926; and Werner Franz,
a cabin boy on the Hindenburg who lived to tell the tale when it
was engulfed in flames in 1937. Fascinating Footnotes From History
also answers who ate the last dodo, who really killed Rasputin and
why Sergeant Stubby had four legs. Peopled with a gallery of spies,
rogues, cannibals, adventurers and slaves, and spanning twenty
centuries and six continents, Giles Milton's impeccably researched
footnotes shed light on some of the most infamous stories and most
flamboyant and colourful characters (and animals) from history.
'It reads like fiction, but it is, astonishingly, history' THE
TIMES IN 1917, AN ECCENTRIC BAND OF BRITISH SPIES IS SMUGGLED INTO
NEWLY SOVIET RUSSIA. Their goal is to defeat Lenin's plan to
destroy British India and bring down the democracies of the West.
These extraordinary spies, led by Mansfield Cumming, proved
brilliantly successful. They found a wholly new way to deal with
enemies, one that relied on espionage and dirty tricks rather than
warfare. They were the unsung founders of today's modern, highly
professional secret services. They were also the inspiration for
fictional heroes to follow, from James Bond to James Bond. 'Readers
will find themselves as gripped as they would be by the very best
of Fleming or le Carré' SUNDAY TIMES 'Marvellous, meticulously
researched and truly groundbreaking' SIMON WINCHESTER
In April 1586, Queen Elizabeth I acquired a new and exotic title. A
tribe of North American Indians had made her their weroanza - 'big
chief'. The news was received with great joy, both by the Queen and
her favourite, Sir Walter Ralegh. His first American expedition had
brought back a captive, Manteo, whose tattooed face had enthralled
Elizabethan London. Now Manteo was returned to his homeland as Lord
and Governor. Ralegh's gamble would result in the first English
settlement in the New World, but it would also lead to a riddle
whose solution lay hidden in the forests of Virginia. A tale of
heroism and mystery, BIG CHIEF ELIZABETH is illuminated by
first-hand accounts to reveal a remarkable and long-forgotten
story.
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