Books by two of our historians have been selected by Waterstones (link is external) as paperbacks of the year 2015. Chosen for the history category were The Greatest Knight (link is external), by Dr Tom Asbridge, and Ten Cities That Made an Empire (link is external) by Dr Tristram Hunt.
The Greatest Knight chronicles the life of William Marshal – a peerless warrior and paragon of chivalry – at a time when the West was emerging from the Dark Ages into modernity. The book, published to wide acclaim, brings to life the brutal realities of medieval warfare and the murky machinations of royal court.It draws upon an array of contemporary evidence – as well as a thirteenth century biography of Marshal – to present a compelling account of the Knight’s life and times.
From Dr Tristram Hunt, Ten Cities that Made an Empire presents a new approach to Britain's imperial past through the cities that epitomised it.Through an array of first-hand accounts and personal reflections, Ten Cities portrays the great colonial and imperial cities of Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi, and twentieth-century Liverpool: their architecture, culture, and society balls; the famines, uprisings and repressions which coursed through them; the primitive accumulation and ghostly bureaucracy which ran them; the British supremacists and multicultural trailblazers who inhabited them.