Pen Sword History imprint: 259 books
Fatal Evidence
Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor & the Dawn of Forensic Science
Language: English
Release Date: July 30, 2017
A surgeon and chemist at Guy’s Hospital in London, Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor used new techniques to search the human body for evidence that once had been unseen. As well as tracing poisons, he could identify blood on clothing and weapons, and used hair and fiber analysis to catch killers.
Taylor...
Regency Spies
Secret Histories of Britain's Rebels & Revolutionaries
Language: English
Release Date: November 30, 2015
Sue Wilkes reveals the shadowy world of Britain's spies, rebels and secret societies from the late 1780s until 1820. Drawing on contemporary literature and official records, Wilkes unmasks the real conspirators and tells the tragic stories of the unwitting victims sent to the gallows.
In this...
by Stephen Basdeo
Language: English
Release Date: February 28, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: February 28, 2018
In 1381, England was on the brink - the poor suffered the effects of war, the Black Death, and Poll Tax. At this time the brave Wat Tyler arose to lead the commoners, forming an army who set off to London to meet with King Richard II and present him with a list of grievances and demands for redress....
Heartbeat and Beyond
Memoirs of 50 Years of Yorkshire Television
Language: English
Release Date: November 30, 2017
In 1968 a group of young people took over a derelict trouser factory in a rundown part of Leeds and set about producing programmes that were to define the British television world of the late 20th Century.
These included the investigative documentary series First Tuesday, Darling Buds of May,...
The Dark Side of Samuel Pepys
Society's First Sex Offender
Language: English
Release Date: February 28, 2018
Samuel Pepys is popularly known as the founder of the modern navy, a member of the Royal Society and most of all, as a unique and frank diarist. Less well known is the fact that he was a serial sexual offender by modern standards; a voyeur, a groper and a rapist.
Set against the London society...
by Gill Hoffs
Language: English
Release Date: June 30, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: June 30, 2018
“The ship was almost instantly in flames … Some jumped overboard immediately, and all was in indescribable confusion. The masts began to fall one after another, and it is supposed killed great numbers by their descent. Others, it is feared, were roasted alive, but the majority were drowned.”...
by Bernadette Fallon
Language: English
Release Date: January 31, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: January 31, 2018
**Pointing persistently to heaven: A guide to UK cathedrals**
Power, glory, bloodshed, prayer: cathedrals in the UK are as much about human drama as spiritual sanctuary, as much about political wrangling as religious fervour. From Christian beginnings in the Middle Ages through Reformation,...
Father of the Modern Circus 'Billy Buttons'
The Life & Times of Philip Astley
Language: English
Release Date: April 30, 2018
The true story of a larger-than-life man who changed the world of entertainment in eighteenth-century England.
The world of the circus has a long and colorful history, but it was with a man named Philip Astley that the modern circus was founded. In April 1768, Astley pegged out a circular ride...
Six For The Tolpuddle Martyrs
The Epic Struggle for Justice and Freedom
Language: English
Release Date: June 3, 2017
In 1834 six farm laborers from the Dorset hamlet of Tolpuddle fell foul of draconian Victorian laws prohibiting ‘assembly’. Today the names of George Loveless and his brother James, Thomas Standfield and his son John, James Brine and James Hammett, who made up the Tolpuddle Martyrs, stand high...
by Lissa Chapman
Language: English
Release Date: September 30, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: September 30, 2016
A portrait of the doomed queen’s image and influence that provides “a detailed look at real life in Tudor England” (Manhattan Book Review).
Romantic victim? Ruthless other woman? Innocent pawn? Religious reformer? Fool, flirt, and adulteress? Politician? Witch? During her life, Anne Boleyn,...
Death on the Victorian Beat
The Shocking Story of Police Deaths
Language: English
Release Date: May 30, 2018
Death on the Victorian Beat is the first book dedicated solely to the murders of police officers in the Victorian era, recalling numerous cases from across the United Kingdom. Martin Baggoley highlights the resistance faced everyday by officers of all ranks, in both the great cities and in the supposedly...
by Andrew Beattie
Language: English
Release Date: March 30, 2019
Language: English
Release Date: March 30, 2019
The story of the Princes in the Tower is well known: the grim but dramatic events of 1483, when the twelve-year-old Edward Plantagenet was taken into custody by his uncle, Richard of Gloucester, and imprisoned in the Tower of London along with his younger brother, have been told and retold hundreds...
Balloonomania Belles
Daredevil Divas Who First Took to the Sky
Language: English
Release Date: March 31, 2018
Award-winning journalist Sharon Wright presents a fascinating account of the fabulous eighteenth and nineteenth-century female pioneers of balloon flight.
More than a century before the first airplane took flight, women were heading for the heavens in crazy, inspired contraptions that brought...
Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong
Pearl of the Orient
Language: English
Release Date: March 30, 2018
An in-depth look at the life of Captain Charles Elliot—from his Royal Navy career to his controversial role in establishing Hong Kong as a British colony.
On January 26, 1841, the British took possession of the island of Hong Kong. The Convention of Chuenpi was immediately repudiated by both...