Sinclair McKay

"Sinclair McKay's portrait of Berlin from 1919 forward explores the city's broad human history, from the end of the Great War to the Blockade, rise of the Wall, and beyond. Sinclair McKay's Berlin begins by taking readers back to 1919 when the city emerged from the shadows of the Great War to become an extraordinary by-word for modernity-in art, cinema, architecture, industry, science, and politics. He traces the city's history through the rise of...

A remarkable look at day-to-day life of the codebreakers whose clandestine efforts helped win World War II. Bletchley Park looked like any other sprawling country estate. In reality, however, it was the top-secret headquarters of Britain's Government Code and Cypher School-and the site where Germany's legendary Enigma code was finally cracked. There, the nation's most brilliant mathematical minds-including Alan Turing, whose discoveries at Bletchley...

An illustrated history of the English manor house and grounds that were home to the famous World War II codebreakers. The huge success of Sinclair's The Secret Life of Bletchley Park-a quarter of a million copies sold to date-has been symptomatic of a similarly dramatic increase in visitors to Bletchley Park itself, the Victorian mansion in Buckinghamshire now open as an engrossing museum of wartime codebreaking. Aurum is publishing the first comprehensive...

Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret…The men and women of the 'Y' (for Wireless') Service were sent out across the world to run listening stations from Gibraltar to Cairo, intercepting the German military's encrypted messages for decoding back at the now-famous Bletchley Park mansion. Such wartime postings were life-changing adventures – travel out by flying boat or Indian railways, snakes in filing cabinets...

A chilling true crime story of a baffling boarding house murder in Victorian London and the stunning secrets revealed by the investigation. Someone must have known what happened to Matilda Hacker. For someone in that house had killed her. So how could the murderer prove so elusive? Standing four storeys tall in an elegant Bloomsbury terrace, No. 4, Euston Square was a well-kept, respectable boarding house. But beneath this genteel Victorian London...

When Winston Churchill made one of the most inspiring speeches of the 20th century-'we will fight them on the beaches'-he was giving thanks for the miracle of deliverance, the harrowing and breathless evacuation of over 338,000 troops from the beaches and harbour at Dunkirk. Churchill was determined it shouldn't be labelled a victory. He was already too late. Hours later, broadcaster JB Priestley was to call it 'an absurd English epic'. Those days...

A gripping work of narrative nonfiction recounting the history of the Dresden Bombing, one of the most devastating attacks of World War II. On February 13th, 1945 at 10:03 PM, British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of WWII: the bombing of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens,...

The unlikely story of how Eon Productions -- the owners of the Bond franchise -- has kept James Bond at the top of the charts for forty-five years when originally only three or fours films were planned. Through twenty-one films featuring three M's, two Q's, and six Bonds -- from Sean Connery's career-transforming turn in 1962's Dr. No to Daniel Craig's debut in the 2006 blockbuster Casino Royale -- the action superstar and perfect English gentleman...