Controversial and revisionist history of America's first civil war. Published with hugely successful accompanying four-part BBC TV series - written and presented by star military historian, Richard Holmes. Most people view the American Revolutionary War of the 1775-83 (also known as the War of Independence) as a popular struggle for liberty against an oppressive colonial power. REBELS & REDCOATS by historian Hugh Bicheno, written to accompany a four-part BBC television series presented by Richard Holmes, demonstrates that it was in fact America's first civil war. Employing the latest scholarship and vivid eyewitness accounts, Bicheno argues t that the war was the product of a broad French imperial design, and greed of many prominent colonials. As many Americans remained loyal to the Crown as rebelled against it, and the reasons for adopting or changing sides were as varied as the men and women who had to make the unenviable decision. Native and African Americans overwhelmingly favoured the British cause.We hear not only the voices of Rebels and Redcoats, but also of German mercenaries and aristocratic French adventurers, as well as Indian warriors and Black slaves fighting for their independence, which together shed new light on events that forged a nation. The main loser was the French monarchy, which ruined itself to gain no lasting influence over the United States, while unable to exploit the distraction the war created either to invade Britain or gain control of the West Indies, which at the time were considered a far bigger prize than all of North America.

THE REAL GAME OF THRONES CONTINUES... Blood Royal is the second volume of a magisterial new interpretation of the savage struggle for supreme power between and within the Plantagenet houses of Lancaster and York from 1450 until 1485. It is a story of closely interwoven families riven by ambition, hatred and treachery, told in chapters narrating the points of view of the key players in England's longest and bloodiest civil war. Battle Royal ended with the Lancastrian cause crushed and the Yorkist usurper Edward IV firmly established on the throne. Blood Royal details the renewed and chronic instability sparked by Edward's humiliation of Duchess Cecily, his imperious mother, and her nephew the Neville double earl known to history as 'Warwick the Kingmaker', by secretly marrying the beautiful commoner Elizabeth Woodville.

In her fury Duchess Cecily tells her sons George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester that Edward, who is totally unlike them, is the product of her adultery and not their father's heir. Edward's brief overthrow in 1470-71, the execution of Clarence in 1478 and the usurpation and murder of Edward's young sons by Richard of Gloucester in 1483 all followed from that poisonous revelation.

Readers may judge that the 331-year-old Plantagenet dynasty came to a fitting end with the death of Richard on Bosworth Field in 1485, to be replaced by the Tudors and a vigorous new era in English history.

THE REAL GAME OF THRONES...

The Wars of the Roses were a prolonged brawl over an inheritance by a deeply dysfunctional extended family. The inheritance in question was the throne of England; the story is one of unbridled ambition and murderous treachery.

From the 1450s, when the mentally unstable Henry VI struggled to control the violent feuding of his magnates, through the rise and fall of Richard of York, to the chaos and bloodshed of the 1470s which followed Edward IV's accession and his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, this is a saga of ambition, intrigue and bloodshed.

Charting a clear course through the dynastic and factional minefield of the era, and offering an authoritative analysis of the battles that ensued, Hugh Bicheno's The Wars of the Roses is a compelling one-volume account of England longest and bloodiest civil war.

The controversial memoir of a top British spy which finally reveals what really went on behind the scenes of the Falklands War For five years before the Falklands War, Hugh Bicheno was one of the top British spies in Argentina. As such, he gathered hard, corroborated intelligence on Argentine intentions over the Falklands - which the British establishment then chose to ignore. The reasons behind this British decision, and its disastrous and inevitable consequences in the South Atlantic, are the main story of this book. There were three main players in the war, each of them trying to overcome their own cultural baggage. The Argentines were riddled with guilt: after years of fighting a morally repugnant campaign against its own people, the Argentine military saw a war for the Malvinas islands as a perfect opportunity to win back their self-respect. The hands of the Americans were also bloody from the likewise dirty wars they had sponsored and abetted in Central America. For Britain it was simply the last straw after decades of humiliation.

In Italy, the Renaissance was more than a time of sweeping cultural advancement; it was also an age of nearly continuous military conflict and vicious personal feuds between powerful public figures. A lifelong vendetta pitted two of Italy's most prominent "condottieri," or mercenary warlords, against each other in a struggle that moved from the battlefield to the political halls of power to the papacy itself. Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and Sigismondo Malatesta, "the Wolf of Rimini," were more than ruthless generals; they were cultured patrons of the arts who nonetheless took their rivalry to bloody excess. Here their story is set against the rich backdrop of 15th-century Italy, a sweeping epic of nobility and war, betrayals and vengeance.