Glory and B*llocks

Colin Brown is the acclaimed author of Operation Big: The Race to Stop Hitler’s A-Bomb, ‘The Scum of the Earth’: What Happened to the Real British Heroes of Waterloo? and Whitehall: The Street That Shaped a Nation. Formerly political editor of the Sunday Telegraph and the Independent on Sunday, he covered breaking news in Downing Street and Westminster for over thirty years. He lives in London.

• 1215: The Magna Carta. 1415: Henry V. 1588: Defeat of the Spanish Armada. 1688: The Bill of Rights. 1815: Waterloo. 1833: Abolition of the slave trade. 1928: Women's suffrage. 1940: Dunkirk and Churchill's last stand. 1945: Creation of the welfare state. 1982: Falklands War.

‘This is as much a travel book as history. Brown goes to significant sites… It’s in evoking such a strong sense of place that the book succeeds in conveying a sense of history.’