The Reader's Guide to British History is the essential source to secondary material on British history. This resource contains over 1,000 A-Z entries on the history of Britain, from ancient and Roman Britain to the present day. Each entry lists 6-12 of the best-known books on the subject, then discusses those works in an essay of 800 to 1,000 words prepared by an expert in the field. The essays provide advice on the range and depth of coverage as well as the emphasis and point of view espoused in each publication.

Thanks to its half-century under Communism, as well as its little-known language, Albania has suffered from neglect and a sense of isolation. Yet, as this study helps to show, the Albanian lands have a long history of interaction with others. They have been a meeting-ground of Christianity and Islam; a channel through which Venice connected with the Ottoman Balkans; a place of interest to the Habsburgs; and a focus for the ambitions of neighbouring powers in the late Ottoman period. Albanians themselves could have many different identities. The studies in this volume, by one of the world's leading experts on Albanian history, range from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, taking in politics, social history, religion and diplomacy. Each is based on original research; the longest, on Ali Pasha, uses a wealth of manuscript material to tell, for the first time, the full story of the vital role he played in the international politics of the Napoleonic Wars. Other studies bring to life ordinary individuals hitherto unknown to history: women hauled before the Inquisition, for example, or the author of the first Albanian autobiography. Some of these studies have been printed before (several in hard-to-find publications, and one only in Albanian), but the greater part of this book appears here for the first time. This is not only a landmark publication for readers interested in south-east European history. It also engages with many broader issues, including religious conversion, 'crypto-Christianity' among Muslims, methods of enslavement within the Ottoman Empire, and the nature of modern myth-making about national identity.

First published by Methuen in the 1980s Volume I: The Rise of Collectivism: This volume establishes the central theme that the most important feature of British political life since the nineteenth century has been the extension of the role of government at all levels. Volume II: The Ideological Heritage: The second volume reviews the development of the three main political ideologies in British politics: Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism, with special reference to the ways in which they have affected or responded to the rise of collectivism. Volumes III and IV: A Much-Governed Nation Parts 1 and 2: Examining the way in which our political arrangements have been adapted and extended to deal with the wider range of responsibilities thrust upon them, these two volumes also describe the changes in the main traditional institutions (Local government, the Civil Service, the Cabinet, Parliament etc) as they deal with the growth of the state, as well as looking at the increased use of delegated legislation and administrative tribunals.