The Riviera has inspired countless novelists and artists, attracted as much by its visitors as by its location (Somerset Maugham called it 'a sunny place for shady people'). But for the majority of the English, the Riviera was made famous by rumour and report: it was the scene of the romance of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson; and, post-war, became the vacation spot of Hollywood starlets.

But the Cote d'Azur has a long history of attracting foreign celebrities and royalty, since the seventeenth century, when it was a stopping point on the route south for aristocratic Grand Tourists. Later, English and Scottish invalids, among them Robert Louis Stevenson, followed doctors' orders and holidayed on the Riviera for their health. Jim Ring explores these origins and the developments that took place on the coast - the impact of rail travel, of war, of celebrity and of the English.

'An entertaining survey . . . It is the ideal book to hide your smirk behind on the Promenade des Anglais as yet another roller-blading granny glides past in a leopard-sking thong.' "Sunday Telegraph"

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""Jim Ring's "Riviera "corrals an array of vignettes of the Cote d'Azur's most famous habitues from the Romans to the Rolling Stones . . . a stylish and pleasingly gossipy overview of the region's fluctuating fortunes.' "Time Out"

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""'A highly readable history.' "Guardian"

Interregnum offers an alternative history of the country's-and Winston Churchill's-finest hour. 1946. Britain is occupied by Nazi Germany. All seems lost-until the February Rising sees off Hitler. The Fuhrer's death triggers a struggle for power among the Nazis, revolt across the Occupied Continent, and schism in the Oval Office in Washington. Caught in this maelstrom are the teenage princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. For Churchill, what price the lives of the two women, first and second in line to the throne, weighed against the threat of an atom bomb poised to destroy New York? There's a Tolstoyan cast including the princesses themselves, their uncle Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, President Roosevelt, the Kennedy family and sundry Air Chief Marshals, Field Marshals and First Sea Lords. As to the plot, this triple-decked thriller, detective story and literary Ludo keeps its readers guessing until the very last word.

Immortalized as the author of "The Riddle of the Sands," Erskine Childers led a life quite as enigmatic and adventurous as his classic novel.

Childers was orphaned at an early age. Though he was brought up in County Wicklow, he received an English education that culminated in a clerkship to the House of Commons, voluntary service in the Boer War, and the writing of his great novel. Thus far he appeared patriotic, imperialist and largely conformist. But marriage to a strong-willed Bostonian and an increasing interest in the affairs of Ireland led to his questioning the imperial "Zeitgeist." At first this took constitutional forms, but such was Childers' frustration with progress towards any manner of Irish independence from British rule, that on the eve of the First World War he instigated gun-running to supporters of the Home Rule movement.

Nonetheless, he still regarded it as his duty to serve England, and during the war he distinguished himself as an observer in the early seaplanes and torpedo boats. Traumatized, however, by the Easter Rising of 1916, he finished the war profoundly divided in his loyalties. With the Irish question now critical, Childers settled his fate by becoming the official propagandist for the Republican movement. He opposed the treaty that established the Irish Free State, regarding the compromise as anathema, and joined the IRA. Hunted by the Free State authorities, he was eventually captured and executed in November 1922.

Set against the backdrop of Britain's imperial zenith, the great naval arms race and the First World War, Jim Ring's acclaimed biography of Childers does full justice to this dramatic and intriguing story.

'Jim Ring has written a fine and fluent biography of an extraordinary man, navigating the angry waters of Irish politics] with a sure hand but dodging none of the difficulties.' "Independent on Sunday"

"We Come Unseen," first published in 2001, follows the careers of six Royal Navy submariners from their graduation from Dartmouth's Britannia Royal Naval College in 1963, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Between these dates, it seemed that nuclear war was never far away - and Jim Ring explains not only the nuclear threat and its beginnings in the last days of the Second World War, but why the Polaris and Trident submarines ('capable of inflicting the damage of the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki many times over'), and their accompanying attack submarines, were critical to avoiding war. Alongside a gripping narrative of the Cold War game of hide-and-seek played out under the waves of the northern seas, Ring gives an account of the history of submarine warfare from its earliest, pre-nuclear days to the 1982 combat in the Falklands.

'A welcome acknowledgement of one of the Cold War's little-known aspects.' Alan Judd, "Sunday Telegraph"

'An extraordinary story . . . one of the most significant naval books of the year.' "Ship's Telegraph"

'A remarkable story.' "Navy News"

For English read British which is not to quibble with the title but, as Jim Ring himself explains, 'During the period on which this book focuses, it was the custom - in the words of a Scot - ''to let the part - the larger part - speak for the whole.'' Those countries which received them - France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and above all Switzerland - all talked of the English, and the presence of the English in the Alps was precisely so described. To use the term British would thus have been an anachronism.'

The nineteenth century will forever be associated with the growth of the British Empire, but nearer home there was a quieter conquest taking place. Gradually the English were taking over the Alps, scaling their peaks, driving railways through them, and introducing both winter sports and those quintessential English institutions - tea, baths, lawn tennis and churches - to remote mountain villages.

Jim Ring tells the remarkable story of the English love affair with the Alps, from its beginnings with the Romantic movement, when poets such as Byron and Shelly wrote of the mountains with awed delight, through the great days of the 1850s and 1860s and the formation of the Alpine Club, to the inter-war years when the English assured the future prosperity of the alpine resorts by virtually inventing and then popularizing downhill-skiing.

Part history, part biography, How the English made the Alps brings the characters - the artists, the scientists, the gentleman-adventurers, the invalids, the aristocrats, eccentrics and mountain-scramblers - vividly to life.

'Jim Rings's book cannot be bettered.' "Daily Mail"

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'Fascinating' Stephen Venables, "Daily Telegraph"

'Evocative and entertaining' "Financial Times"

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'A comprehensive, well-written account of a fascinating subject' "Guardian"

In a mountain resort in the Alps, Hitler built his 'Eagle's Nest' from which he conceived and directed the war. Skiing resorts were turned into training centres for mountain warfare, plans were made to invade Switzerland, and concentration camps were seeded. But the Alps were also cradles of resistance -- home to US and British spies and double agents, along with French, Italian and Yugoslavian allies. There were tales of courage, heroism, self-sacrifice and armed struggle. Storming the Eagle's Nest brings together these stories of the definitive account of this crucial arena of the Second World War, in which Europe's exclusive playground became a battlefield.

Interregnum offers an alternative history of the country's-and Winston Churchill's-finest hour. 1946. Britain is occupied by Nazi Germany. All seems lost-until the February Rising sees off Hitler. The Fuhrer's death triggers a struggle for power among the Nazis, revolt across the Occupied Continent, and schism in the Oval Office in Washington. Caught in this maelstrom are the teenage princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. For Churchill, what price the lives of the two women, first and second in line to the throne, weighed against the threat of an atom bomb poised to destroy New York? There's a Tolstoyan cast including the princesses themselves, their uncle Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, President Roosevelt, the Kennedy family and sundry Air Chief Marshals, Field Marshals and First Sea Lords. As to the plot, this triple-decked thriller, detective story and literary Ludo keeps its readers guessing until the very last word.

When BOAC Flight 480 disappears from the radar screens over the Mediterranean, passengers and crew are soon posted missing. Three months later what seems to be the same aircraft reappears and lands on an Ionian holiday island. Gathered there are the world's media, agog to discover what has happened to the Boeing. There are, though, more questions than answers from the captain and crew of the vanished flight; and the passengers are more interested in getting their money back from BOAC than explaining where they have been. Join Mrs Tugendhat, SiSi, Mr Tulkinghorn, 'Senator' Welles, Boris, Mr Mao and Alexa the ginger cat to find out what really did happen to Flight 480, where the missing passengers have been, how they unearthed the low door in the wall that leads to the undiscovered country - and how they found their way back again. If any man thinks he can build and lead a world and resolves its problems he has yet to meet the stupendous force that is Mrs Tugendhat. A comedy, a beach read, a shiningly clever game of a book, a satire, an exuberant piece of magic realism, all deliciously illustrated by breakout artist Decca Faire - take your pick. But strap in for the ride.