The invention of the jet engine had a profound effect on the world. Commercial jet aircraft revolutionised travel, opening up every corner of the planet. Few know that the jet engine was invented by an Englishman in 1929. The invention was a masterstroke of genius by 21-year-old Frank Whittle, replacing the piston engine's thousands of reciprocating parts with one part: a single smoothly revolving turbine. Although the world's first jet airliner was the British de Havilland Comet, Britain then gave away the technology - not only to the United States but to the Soviet Union as well. The Jet Set, the air hostess and the package holiday all followed. The dream of cheap, exotic travel had been realised. Yet, just like the impact of the internet, there were downsides to the world-reaching power of this phenomenon. Jet tells the story of this brilliant new technology, how it shrank the world and how it changed life forever.

The most iconic planes of WWII, the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DeHavilland Mosquito and the Avro Lancaster, were all powered by one engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin. The story of the Merlin is one of British ingenuity at its height, of artistry and problem-solving that resulted in a war-winning design. Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and the 80th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain, Merlin is the extraordinary story of the development of the Rolls-Royce engine that would stop Hitler from invading Britain and carry the war to the very heart of Germany. The story of the Merlin engine encompasses the history of powered flight, from the ingenuity of the Wright Brothers to the horrors of World War I, and from the first crossing of the Atlantic to the heady days of flying in the 1920s. There is also the extraordinary story of the Schneider Trophy - an international contest wherein nations poised on the precipice of war competed for engineering excellence in the name of progress. And at the heart of this story are the glamourous lives of the pilots, many of whom died in their pursuit of speed; the engineers, like Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce, who sketched the engine that would win WWII in the sand of his local beach; and perhaps most importantly the Lady Lucy Houston who after the Wall Street Crash singlehandedly funded the development of the engine and the iconic Spitfire. Never was so much owed by so many to so few - and without the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the few would have been powerless.