H. V. Morton turns his traveler's intuition and his reporter's eye for detail to the city that has fascinated him since childhood—London past, present, and timeless. He explores the City and the Temple, Covent Garden, SoHo, and all the "submerged villages beneath the flood of bricks and mortar," uncovering layer upon layer of London's history. Morton follows the thread of imagination back and forth across the city, tracing unforgettable scenes: the Emperor Claudius leading his war elephants across the Thames. . .the grisly executions at the Tower. . .the world of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Queen Victoria. . .and the shattered yet defiant city of the Blitz as well as the postwar London of "ruins and hatless crowds." Morton's quest for London’s heart reveals how its daily life is rooted in a past that is closer and more familiar than we might think, making the book as informative, entertaining, and rich in human color today as when it was written fifty years ago.

Eighteen years ago, Joe Bennett left England. Now, he's back. But how is the England of his memory different from the England of the motorway? Identikit High Streets, New Labour, poker-machine pubs - things aren't what they used to be. But Joe begins to wonder if things were ever what they used to be. Even a century ago, H.V Morton, the nation's most celebrated eulogiser, was In Search of England... Joe Bennett delivers a dazzlingly funny and poignant portrait of his homeland, which is part love letter, part eulogy and part diatribe.

Chronicles the experiences of Ditie, who rises from busboy to hotel owner in World War II Prague, and whose life is shaped by the fate of his country before, during, and after the conflict.

In a rich unfolding of history and legend, the author of "Conquistadors" explores the character and origins of the Anglo-Saxon world, a culture that has had a significant impact worldwide. 30 illustrations, 16 in color.

What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines, the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds? As Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King suggests, present obscurity may conceal a find as significant as the emergence from beneath a Leicester car-park of the remains of Richard III. For Bury, Francis Young now reveals, is the probable site of the body - placed in an `iron chest' but lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries - of Edmund: martyred monarch of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia and, well before St George, England's first patron saint. After the king was slain by marauding Vikings in the 9th century, the legend which grew up around his murder led to the foundation in Bury of one of the pre-eminent shrines of Christendom. In showing how Edmund became the pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied, this fascinating book points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.

A VILLAGE AND ITS PEOPLE THROUGH THE WHOLE OF ENGLISH HISTORY The village of Kibworth in Leicestershire lies at the very centre of England. It has a church, some pubs, the Grand Union Canal, a First World War Memorial - and many centuries of recorded history. Bought in the thirteenth century by William de Merton, who founded Merton College, Oxford, it also lodges 750 years of village history. Michael Wood tells the extraordinary story of one English community over fifteen centuries - from the moment that the Roman Emperor Honorius sent his famous letter in 410 advising the English to look to their own defences to the village as it is today. He builds on this unique archive, enlisting the help of Kibworth's inhabitants in a village-wide archaeological dig and the first complete DNA profile of an English village. The story of Kibworth is the story of England itself, a Who Do You Think You Are? for the entire nation. 'Better than any historian for decades, Wood brings home not just the ways in which buildings, landscapes and written texts may be read, but the sensual beauty of encounters with them' TLS

This book studies approaches to the production of manuscripts in medieval England, from the first commercial guilds to the advent of print.

Our Hearts Are in England offers an impassioned salute to our most cherished destinations.

Based on a survey of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics.