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A historical book, written in Latin by Paolo Diacono in the eighth century after Christ, tells the story of the Lombard people who left Scandinavia to reach Italy and reign there for over two centuries. Today, Milan is the capital of that region which bears the name of Lombardy, the land of the Lombards. The story is interesting even if the conquest Franca takes away the taste of the happy ending. On TV and fantasy there are stories that seem drawn from the events of this people, the life of Grimoaldo, King of the Lombards is worth a novel on its own It starts with the departure from Scandinavia and the legend of the name. Then follows a story of the long march towards Italy. A brief digression on San Benedetto with two unimportant poems, then the arrival of Italy, the description of the peninsula, Alboino, his exploits, Rosmunda and Elmiche who kill Alboino. The ten years of anarchy of the dukes, Autari and Teodolinda Catholic princess of the Bavari, Astolfo, second husband of Teodolinda, Rotari the King of the Edict and the first body of Lombard laws, after Roman law a first example of organic legislation, very important for the future history of legal law. This is followed by Grimoaldo's extraordinary adventure with the escape from captivity, intrigue, the Duchy of Bemevento and the conquest of the throne. Then Grimoaldosc defeats Franks and Byzantines, deceives the Avars .... Then go from king to king until the other human event, that of Liutprando and his family. A compelling and evocative story useful to understand today's Italian divided between north and south.

BBC2’s major TV series THE LAST KINGDOM is based on Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling novels on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. The Last Kingdom is the first book in the series.Season 2 of the epic TV series premiers this March.Uhtred is an English boy, born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria. Orphaned at ten, he is captured and adopted by a Dane and taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtred's fate is indissolubly bound up with Alfred, King of Wessex, who rules over the only English kingdom to survive the Danish assault.The struggle between the English and the Danes and the strife between christianity and paganism is the background to Uhtred's growing up. He is left uncertain of his loyalties but a slaughter in a winter dawn propels him to the English side and he will become a man just as the Danes launch their fiercest attack yet on Alfred's kingdom. Marriage ties him further still to the West Saxon cause but when his wife and child vanish in the chaos of the Danish invasion, Uhtred is driven to face the greatest of the Viking chieftains in a battle beside the sea. There, in the horror of the shield-wall, he discovers his true allegiance.The Last Kingdom, like most of Bernard Cornwell's books, is firmly based on true history. It is the first novel of a series that tells the tale of Alfred the Great and his descendants and of the enemies they faced, Viking warriors like Ivar the Boneless and his feared brother, Ubba. Against their lives Bernard Cornwell has woven a story of divided loyalties, reluctant love and desperate heroism. In Uhtred, he has created one of his most interesting and heroic characters and in The Last Kingdom one of his most powerful and passionate novels.

In this controversial and hotly discussed book, Sir Peregrine presents a reactionary and playful look at the origins, evolution and demise of the aristocracy.Every country has the aristocracy it deserves; so what does it say about Britain that it is in the process of removing the last vestiges of political power from one of the most ancient hereditary aristocracies in the world, and one, moreover, whose record of public service has been impeccable?The word aristocracy has many connotations, some good, some bad, and Britain's aristocracy has in the past earned most of them in some degree or another. But Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, one of our most influential and respected political commentators, argues that not only does the good far outweigh the bad, but that our aristocracy has contributed mightily to our stability and prosperity, and that without it we would have neither. And yet it is ever more being politically written out of the national story, with the result that soon there will be no hereditary peers in the House of Lords.The disestablishment of the peerage will bring cheers to the lips of many, but in this passionately argued and highly original essay Worsthorne forcefully demonstrates the shallowness of those who would crow. For though many now forget it, Britain once had an upper class which was the envy of the world, and which, crucially, 'had enough in-built authority – honed over three centuries – and enough ancestral wisdom – acquired over three centuries – to dare to defy the arrogance of intellectuals from above and the emotions of the masses from below; to dare to resist the entrepreneurial imperative; to dare to try to raise the level of public conversation; to dare to put the public interest before private interests; and to dare to shape the nation's will and curb its appetites … to do for Demos what courtiers could never do for princes: be a true friend rather than a false flatterer.'

An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen ‘warriors’ from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Max Hastings.Over the course of forty years of writing about war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) – and by their practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from different nationalities in modern history – including Napoleon’s ‘blessed fool’ Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early 19th-century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who became the hero of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu wars; and Squadron Leader Guy Gibson, the ‘dam buster’ whose heroism in the skies of World War II earned him the nation's admiration, but few friends.Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be – and how it has changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for gallantry – and why it is that so often the most successful warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men.