Discover The Cypress Tree, by Kamin Mohammadi

Published this week by Bloomsbury, The Cypress Tree is Kamin Mohammadi’s love letter to her family and her country, Iran…

The Lost Battles, by Jonathan Jones

Michelangelo and Leonardo lived five centuries ago, but their works still obsess our culture, with a popular and universal quality that nothing else matches.

Jonathan Jones chronicles how, in 1504, they competed with each other directly, to paint the walls of a room in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio…

Andrea di Robilant on Venetian Navigators

In his new book, Venetian Navigators, Andrea di Robilant sets out to investigate how much, if any, truth there is to the story that Antonio and Nicolò Zen really discovered the New World before Columbus.

Read our Q & A with the author…

Saul Frampton on Michel de Montaigne

In When I Am Playing With My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing With Me? Saul Frampton celebrates perhaps the most joyful yet profound of all Renaissance writers.

The January Competition [closed]

January’s competition offers three Bookhugger readers celluloid biography, historical intrigue and American adolescence…

An interview with Jean-François Parot

An in-depth interview with the author of the best-selling Nicolas le Floch thrillers, the latest of which, The Saint-Florentin Murders is soon to be published.

We Die Alone: an introduction

The following is Andy McNab’s introduction to David Howarth’s We Die Alone. During World War Two, Howarth ran a spy ring from which this volume and his previous best-seller, The Shetland Bus, both derive. Mr Howarth, who died in 1991, was the author of two dozen major books of history.

David Olusoga on The Kaiser’s Holocaust

In The Kaiser’s Holocaust, David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen give us the unknown story of the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Germany’s forgotten African empire – an atrocity that foreshadowed the Nazi genocides. It’s an important book and a fascinating – and often grim – read. Here is David Olusoga introducing it, putting the events into a wider context.

Meet the author of City of Sin, Catharine Arnold

The BBC’s Meet the Author talks to Catharine Arnold about her latest book, City of Sin.

Filmed in four different locations around the capital, including the Boneyward in Southwark, by the Globe theatre, in Covent garden, and on the Embankment by Waterloo Bridge – all locations covered in the book and connected to the history of prostitution in London.

July non-fiction round-up

This month, Bookhugger’s publishers have a wide-ranging selection of non-fiction titles – from classical, pop and jazz music to exploration in hot and cold extremes, from a must-read history of philosophy to observations on the soul-sapping world of work, and countries in economic and environmental crisis.

Explore The Lost City of Z!

David Grann discusses his ventures into the hazardous wild world of the Amazon to retrace the footsteps of the great Colonel Fawcett and his followers, in a bracing attempt to solve one of the greatest mysteries.

Ferdinand Mount on Full Circle

Author Ferdinand Mount talks about his new book Full Circle, which explores the idea that the society that is now emerging in the twenty-first century bears an astonishing resemblance to the most prominent features of what we call the classical world – its institutions, its priorities, its entertainment, its physics, its sexual morality, its food, its politics, even its religion.

Graham Robb on Parisians

No-one knows a city like the people who live there – so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Parisians introduces us to some of those inhabitants: we meet spies, soldiers, scientists and alchemists; police commissioners, photographers and philosophers; adulterers, murderers, prisoners and prostitutes.

Helen Rappaport: Lenin in Exile

Conspirator is the compelling story of Lenin’s exile: the years in which he and his political collaborators plotted a revolution that would change 20th century history. Historian and Russianist Helen Rappaport talks to George Miller

Hit the road with Joe Moran

We use roads every day, yet we have no idea of why our journeys are the way they are – of how roads are built, signposted, mapped or numbered. In unravelling this history, cultural historian Joe Moran throws a whole new light onto our history and our daily lives. Here he talks to George Miller.

Lucy Worsley discusses life in the Georgian court

Lucy Worlsey, curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, historian and TV presenter, tells stories of the Georgian court at Kensington Palace from her new book Courtiers.

Read the prologue to The Temptress

In Kenya’s ‘Happy Valley’ in the years spanning the 1920s to the 1940s no one paid too much attention to the privileged colonial set as they farmed their estates, partied until dawn and indulged in extra-marital affairs. Not until Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was shot dead at the wheel of his Buick in the early hours of 24 January 1941.

Listen to James Shapiro talk about Contested Will

In his new book Contested Will James Shapiro investigates one of literature’s great mysteries – did Shakespeare actually write what we think he wrote? George Miller talked to him about this controversial topic.

Listen now

Jenny Uglow talks to George Miller about A Gambling Man

Acclaimed biographer Jenny Uglow’s previous subjects have included Thomas Bewick and Elizabeth Gaskell. In A Gambling Man she takes on risk-taking Charles II and the regime changing Restoration – inspired, as she explains, by recent events.

Listen now

April non-fiction round-up – part two

Part two of our selection of the best non-fiction to be released in April, including fresh looks at the Gospels, insights in to the City of London and how to survive the end of civilisation as we know it!

Jonathan Jones on Michaelangelo and Leonardo’s great rivalry

Michelangelo and Leonardo lived five centuries ago, but their works still obsess our culture, with a popular and universal quality that nothing else matches. Here, Jonathan Jones talks about their great, and barely documented, rivalry, which is addressed in his new book The Lost Battles.

The Secret History of Kensington Palace, with Lucy Worsley

As Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces there is no one better placed than Lucy Worsley to take us on a tour of the history of Kensington Palace. In her new book Courtiers she gives us the men and women who considered it home, worked there and visited during the time of George II.