Though a founding member of NATO and the euro, Portugal is often overlooked, a small country on Europe’s southwestern edge. In The Portuguese, veteran journalist Barry Hatton blends historical insight with personal anecdotes to explore this enigmatic nation.

During the 1400s and 1500s, Portuguese explorers led Europe into the Atlantic and helped connect Asia with Europe, creating a vast four-continent empire. This legacy still resonates today, particularly through the Portuguese language, spoken by over 220 million people worldwide. Hatton examines Portugal’s vibrant yet turbulent past-from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which shook European thinking and began a long decline, through António Salazar’s dictatorship, to its end in the 1974 Carnation Revolution, briefly thrusting Portugal into Cold War geopolitics. Hatton also explores the country’s complex ties with neighbouring Spain, and its oldest ally, England.

With diverse landscapes, rich cultural heritage, a love of food and fine wine, an easy-going lifestyle and a rebellious streak, the Portuguese are uniquely compelling. Hatton’s portrait is intimate and revealing, capturing the charms and contradictions of a fascinating country. .

Despite a relationship historically marred by mistrust and unmet expectations, the two regimes have worked together to promote their common interests in Syria, where battlefield coordination soon developed into much deeper political alignment. Drawing on extensive Russian and Persian primary sources, and interviews with elites from both countries, Nicole Grajewski uncovers the drivers of ever-closer cooperation between the Kremlin and the Islamic Republic. Detailing the internal structures, shared anxieties and broader ambitions underpinning this alignment, she explores the genesis of Russia and Iran's mutual antagonism towards the Western-led global order; the impact of deep-seated leadership concerns over regime security and domestic protests; and the future trajectory of the partnership within the larger world order.

Examining both military dynamics and economic endeavours, as well as elaborate sanctions evasion schemes and collaboration within international organisations, this is the definitive account of contemporary Russia-Iran relations.

Why not? No-one had ever done it: one of the longest of all overland journeys, from the English Channel to Singapore. Several expeditions had tried. Some had reached the Persian deserts; a few, the Indian plains. But none had gone further: over the jungle-clad Assamese mountains, across northern Burma, to Thailand and Malaya. It was 1955. For the final 3,000 miles, it seemed, there were ‘too many rivers and too few roads’. But no-one really knew…

They were undergraduates with no money, no cars-no nothing, except cool audacity. They wheedled and cajoled, coaxing the BBC into supplying film for a possible series; ‘persuading’ Rover to lend them two factory-fresh off-road vehicles; sweet-talking a book publisher into offering an advance. By the time they set off, their eighty-plus sponsors ranged from whiskey distillers to collapsible bucket-makers. Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two weary, police-escorted Land Rovers rolled into Singapore to flash-bulbs and champagne. Here, their bestseller is republished, with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough. He had given them that film, after all.

Ramsay MacDonald was born an illegitimate child in north-east Scotland. Leaving school at fourteen, he seemed bound to follow in his ploughman father’s footsteps. Instead, he would become the UK’s first Labour Prime Minister–a friend of George V and a global political star. How did he get there from his Highland bothy? Why has he been erased from political memory? And how did this leftist parliamentarian end up leading a Conservative-dominated National Government?

MacDonald’s was an elusive, Celtic personality, easier to criticise than to understand. Historian Walter Reid demystifies this fascinating politician, dismissing the common charge of treacherous ambition and tracing MacDonald’s personal odyssey–including half a life grieving his wife Margaret, a remarkable feminist and social reformer lost young to blood poisoning.  

History has been unkind to MacDonald, and most often written with politically hostile pens. Drawing extensively on his private diaries, this biography restores a towering figure to his rightful historical place, and reveals his full complexity–a man not without faults, but able and honourable, with deep and widespread interests.

Masterfully crafted and surprisingly modern, History of the Peloponnesian War has long been celebrated as an insightful, eloquent, and exhaustively detailed work of classical Greek history. The text is also remarkable for its deep political and military dimensions, and scholars have begun to place the work alongside Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Clausewitz’s On War as one of the great treatises on strategy. The perfect companion to Thucydides’ impressive History, this volume details the specific strategic concepts at work within the History of the Peloponnesian War and demonstrates, through case studies of recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the continuing relevance of Thucydidean thought to an analysis and planning of strategic operations. Some have even credited Thucydides with founding the discipline of international relations. Written by two scholars with extensive experience in this and related fields, Thucydides on Strategy situates the classical historian solidly in the modern world of war.

The world’s third-largest island, and the only one administered by three different sovereign nations, Borneo is something of a mystery. Home to an incredibly diverse indigenous population, once infamous for headhunting; a hotbed of military activity during World War II; a poster child for the ecological movement even as its rainforest is destroyed; and the host of Indonesia’s planned new capital city, Nusantara-Borneo’s past, present and future are nothing if not eclectic.

But hidden under its enigmatic façade is an extraordinary island at the centre of world affairs in ancient times, yet often aloof from them. From early visitors bringing new religions to the island, to a fluctuating relationship with China, to a time when piracy ruled, Olivier Hein’s sweeping tale uncovers the little-known events that shaped not only Borneo but the whole Malay Archipelago.

Linking Indonesian, Malaysian and Bruneian history, Hein brings together, for the first time, all the elements that make this island so unique. With Borneo sitting uncomfortably in the firing line of today’s great global power shift from Trans-Atlantic to Trans-Pacific, and now attracting millions of visitors a year, the story of this rich and complex island has never been more relevant.

In the 2010s, as China slid deeper into authoritarianism and the UK veered towards political uncertainty, the two countries declared a ‘Golden Era’ of relations. This challenge to the established international order came amid rising global concern around Chinese party-state intrusions abroad.

All That Glistens peels away the shiny exterior of the Sino-British ‘golden age’ to reveal a relationship built on global capitalism, British corruption and Chinese Communist Party influence over UK affairs–to the disquiet of London’s allies.

Drawing on his years on the ground in Beijing, as well as investigative research using open-source intelligence, Martin Thorley’s timely book sheds light on a murky aspect of international relations. He reveals coordinated Chinese state actions reaching into the heart of Parliament, and the widespread compromise of British politics by Chinese commercial entities–particularly nuclear energy, property development and currency-trading enterprises. Exposing the close connections between Western financialisation and China’s geopolitical interference, this book offers a cautionary tale for all liberal democracies.

In this history, Nicholas Hewitt explores Marseille’s extraordinary cultural wealth from the Revolution to the present century, charting the development of its bad reputation, its ‘rogue status’ within France, and its international importance. The narratives devoted to this great port city range from the legend of its football team to The Count of Monte Cristo. Hewitt discovers Marseille through the eyes of writers, painters and sculptors, film-makers, music hall stars, architects and rappers; from the viewpoints of French, German, British and American visitors; and as a celebration of its humane cosmopolitanism, often in contrast with national French sentiment.

Wicked City is a vivid and complex portrait of one of the Mediterranean’s great cities, going beyond the popular stereotypes to uncover the true Marseille in its full richness.

From British country homes to Republican Spain and civil rights America, the inspiring, wildly entertaining story of Jessica Mitford–investigative journalist, radical activist, renegade aristocrat.

Jessica ‘Decca’ Mitford was raised to marry well, not fight for others’ rights. Yet she rejected her eccentric, blue-blooded roots, running away from England to become an anti-fascist and anti-racist. Why is this rebellious heroine less famous than her glamorous sisters, who ranged from naughty to Nazi?

Troublemaker is the remarkable story of Decca’s life in pursuit of justice, in the Spanish Civil War and the Communist Party USA; her intrepid social reporting, and her relentless antics. Carla Kaplan celebrates a fierce intellect and powerful ally who brought joy to the struggle, unearthing fascinating details through interviews with the Mitford family, and exploring Decca’s thousands of witty letters. From Vietnam War dissident Dr Spock to Decca’s close friend Maya Angelou, this Mitford sister’s irreverent anti-authoritarianism deeply influenced American culture. Back home in Britain, her activism shamed those of her class–and her family–on the wrong side of history.

This passionate, often hilarious biography captures an extraordinary woman, and an extraordinary time in world history. Facing today’s injustices, we need Decca’s vibrant, committed example more than ever.