Memoirs of a Millennium is an engaging and unconventional history of the last millennium, told through the lives of ten individuals across ten centuries. The characters and their compatriots are brought vividly to life by eyewitnesses both sympathetic and unsympathetic, and a colourful cast of subsequent commentators. In this insightful and entertaining book, Ted Pocock uncovers complex webs of humanity in a narrative that moves effortlessly from connection to connection across countries a...

Spies, Sadists and Sorcerers unveils the history you were never taught at school. With a breath-taking sweep spanning Rome to the modern day, popular historian and author Dominic Selwood challenges the traditional version of some of the best-known events of the past. From ancient Christianity to the voyages of Columbus, and from the medieval Crusades to ISIS and the modern Middle East, this book debunks dozens of historical myths.You will learn that:– Magna Carta was an inf...

Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, political journalist Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to th...

The international bestseller: E. H. Gombrich’s sweeping history of the world, for the curious of all ages“All stories begin with ‘Once upon a time.’ And that’s just what this story is all about: what happened, once upon a time.” So begins A Little History of the World, an engaging and lively book written for readers both young and old. Rather than focusing on dry facts and dates, E. H. Gombrich vividly brings the full span of human experience on Earth to l...

What is Europe? Firstly, of course, it is a continent made up of countless disparate peoples, races and nations, and governed by different ideas, philosophies, religions and attitudes. Nonetheless, it has a common thread of history running through it, stitching the lands and peoples of its past and present together into one fabric and held together by the continent's great institutions, such as the Church of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union, individual monarchies, trade orga...

This book examines the motives, means and consequences of the murders among members of Europe's ruling families over the last 1,000 years. Plucking true stories due to their historical significance and sheer intrigue, this book relates violent deaths amid royal splendour and the overthrow of tyrants by oppressed populations. Methods vary from sword and arrow, to bomb and bullet, to alleged witchcraft. Settings range from Russia to Portugal; British examples include the inv...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Life-filled and life-affirming history, steeped in romance and written with verve' GUARDIAN'Richly entertaining and impeccably researched' Peter FrankopanIstanbul has always been a place where stories and histories collide and crackle, where the idea is as potent as the historical fact. From the Qu'ran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, and overspil...

A lively and fascinating narrative history about the birth of the modern world.Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume—the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World—chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition.Popes continue to preach crusade, but the hope of a Christian empire comes to a bloody end at the walls of Constantinople. Arist...

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"-Abraham LincolnThroughout history, all monarchs have lived with the strange dichotomy of simultaneously being human and more than human. In our time, when monarchies seem little more than tourist curiosities and democracy is taken for granted, it is easy to forget just how much power pre-democratic rulers once wielded.The rulers a...

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century.Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas.

European History from the High Middle Ages, which began in approximately AD 1000, until the modern day.TABLE OF CONTENTS:A Background of European History: Thinking Historically Minded Fall of the Roman Empire Barbarians Unite Romanesque and Gothic Art Papal Power in the Middle Ages Society in the Middle AgesThe Crises of the Middle Ages: Introduction New Breeds of Art The Hundred Years War The Rise of Towns and Commerce Growth of National Monarchies The Black Death Challenges to Spiritual ...