In 1728 a stranger handed a letter to Governor Yue calling on him to lead a rebellion against the Manchu rulers of China. Feigning agreement, he learnt the details of the plot and immediately informed the Emperor, Yongzheng. The ringleaders were captured with ease, forced to recant and, to the confusion and outrage of the public, spared. Drawing on an enormous wealth of documentary evidence - over a hundred and fifty secret documents between the Emperor and his agents are stored in Chinese archives - Jonathan Spence has recreated this revolt of the scholars in fascinating and chilling detail. It is a story of unwordly dreams of a better world and the facts of bureaucratic power, of the mind of an Emperor and of the uses of his mercy.

With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era

Will Montague is a page to Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII. As the King's favourite, Will gains many enemies in Court. His enemies convince the King that Will's father has committed treason and he is thrown into Newgate Prison. Will flees Hampton Court and goes into hiding in the back streets of London. Lost and in mortal danger, he is rescued by a poor boy, Nick Drew. Together they must brave imprisonment and death as they embark on a great adventure to set Will's father free.

King-makers - Conspirators - Criminals - Nobles - Seducers 'A riveting story, splendidly told' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Gripping and gruesome' BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH 'Fascinating close-ups of outlandish Tudor behaviour' DAILY MAIL The Howard family - the Dukes of Norfolk - were the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats in Tudor England, regarding themselves as the true power behind the throne. They were certainly extraordinarily influential, with two Howard women marrying Henry VIII - Anne Boleyn and the fifteen-year-old Catherine Howard. But in the treacherous world of the Tudor court no faction could afford to rest on its laurels. The Howards consolidated their power with an awesome web of schemes and conspiracies but even they could not always hold their enemies at bay. This was a family whose history is marked by treason, beheadings and incarceration - a dynasty whose pride and ambition secured only their downfall.

Drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined material, this staggering account sheds new light on the Allies’ responsibility for a landmark agreement that had dire consequences. On returning from Germany on September 30, 1938, after signing an agreement with Hitler on the carve-up of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain addressed the British crowds: “My good friends…I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” Winston Churchill rejoined: “You have chosen dishonor and you will have war.” P. E. Caquet’s history of the events leading to the Munich Agreement and its aftermath is told for the first time from the point of view of the peoples of Czechoslovakia. Basing his work on previously unexamined sources, including press, memoirs, private journals, army plans, cabinet records, and radio, Caquet presents one of the most shameful episodes in modern European history. Among his most explosive revelations is the strength of the French and Czechoslovak forces before Munich; Germany’s dominance turns out to have been an illusion. The case for appeasement never existed. The result is a nail-biting story of diplomatic intrigue, perhaps the nearest thing to a morality play that history ever furnishes. The Czechoslovak authorities were Cassandras in their own country, the only ones who could see Hitler’s threat for what it was, and appeasement as the disaster it proved to be. In Caquet’s devastating account, their doomed struggle against extinction and the complacency of their notional allies finally gets the memorial it deserves.

Professor Bellamy places the theory of treason in its political setting and analyses the part it played in the development of legal and political thought in this period. He pays particular attention to the Statute of Treason of 1352, an act with a notable effect on later constitutional history and which, in the opinion of Edward Coke, had a legal importance second only to that of Magna Carta. He traces the English law of treason to Roman and Germanic origins, and discusses the development of royal attitudes towards rebellion, the judicial procedures used to try and condemn suspected traitors, and the interaction of the law of treason and constitutional ideas.