The award-winning historian sub-titles his book 'A Year In the Life of Plantagenet England', and it is a new beautifully illustrated edition of Realm Divided. 1215 was not just a year of Magna Carta and King John's war with his barons, but a year of crusading and church reform, foreign wars and dramatic sieges, trade and treachery. It was a year in which England was invaded by a French army, and London was stormed by angry barons, and the supposedly impregnable castle at Rochester was brought down with burning pig fat. But for most people life just went on. The book throws open a window onto everyday life - home and church, love and marriage, education and agriculture, outlawry and hunting, food and clothing from royal court to peasant weddings. It is medieval life in the round and an exhilarating and revelatory exploration of politics, warfare, religion, feudalism and the law during this transformative year in English history. Chapters include Crowns, Gowns and Slippers, Justice, Law and Outlaws, Wisdom, Health and Beauty, Runnymede, Widows, Wives and Children, Birds, Beasts and Blood Sports. Lavishly illustrated with full page colour plates on almost every other page, 360 beautifully designed and decorated pages with medieval ornamentation and facsimile images from illuminated manuscripts and capitals. A real page turner to stop you in your tracks.

Short, informative chapters cover subjects as diverse as the Greek alphabet, the Olympic Games, Minoan, Mycenae and Homeric Greece, the Oracle of Delfi, the lyric poetry of Lesbos, Greek philosophy, the Persian wars, Greek philosophy and theatre, Alexander the Great, Pergamon, Hellenistic art, the Etruscans, Roman dress the Punic wars, the rise of Julius Caesar, women in the Roman empire, the generalship of Pompey, Roman portraiture, Roman roads and glassware the army and Fort childhood, dining, mystery cults, the city of Constantine, Ravenna, and many other subjects. This book stands out among the many histories of Ancient Greece and Rome for its highly readable style and confident understanding of the larger picture as civilisations rise and fall, communities migrate and potentates wheel, deal and stab each other in the back. The Palace culture of the Minoans, centred round Knossos, operated through local administrative and trading centres, and their original language, linear A, has yet to be deciphered. The palace gave way around the 8th century to the city state, whose most famous example Athens was a democracy. In the 4th century, Macedonia under Alexander the Great emerged as dominant, absorbing distant lands such as Afghanistan into a vast empire. Meanwhile in central Italy a very different civilisation was emerging, influenced by Greek culture and institutions but military and aggressively expansionist, and finally collapsing under the pressure of peoples from beyond the empire. The author covers Rome's ambitious public works including monuments, aqueducts and sewers, a sophisticated road network, as well as the personal stories of the line of emperors that started with Augustus, who was granted extraordinary powers following the assassination of Julius Caesar. His successors included megalomaniacs like Nero and Caligula, expansionists such as Trajan, and intelligent realists like Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. 303pp, paperback, photos.

The difference between privateers and pirates was that one had a licence to attack foreign shipping, the other acted illegally. In practice, however, they were often indistinguishable. This interesting book redefines the glamorous swashbuckling image of both pirates and privateers, replacing it with a buccaneering pragmatist operating in dangerous conditions and politically ambiguous situations. Many pirates did achieve fame based on personality, as we can see from the stories of some of the most famous, for instance Blackbeard, Captain Morgan and Mary Read. At the end of the golden age of piracy, stretching from 1650 to 1730, a colourful "General History of the Pyrates" was published, influencing the mythology for centuries, although it was probably not written, as at first supposed, by Daniel Defoe. The myth of gold bullion was always greatly exaggerated, and a pirate's booty was more likely to be tobacco, sugar or cotton. Walking the plank was probably also a myth, though the so-called "Enlightenment" was an age of barbaric punishment. In the 1690s the Caribbean became too crowded, and European pirates went further afield to the Red Sea and coast of east Africa. Pirates flew a black flag which was sometimes enough to make a ship surrender, but privateers operating under government licence might adopt the flag of an enemy nation to give a false sense of security. The book examines pirates' lifestyle, looking at how the sinking of a Spanish treasure fleet in a storm off the coast of Florida led to a pirates' gold rush and how the King's Pardon was a desperate gamble which paid off, and it considers the role of individual island governors such as Woodes Rogers in the Bahamas in bringing piracy under control. Captain Morgan was a privateer on good terms with the Governor of Jamaica, whom he paid handsomely to overlook certain clauses in his contract. Henry Avery was an interesting case of a pirate who quit with his booty while he was winning, whereas most buccaneers went on until killed or captured. By the mid-18th century regulations were being tightened and the enterprise squeezed out of existence. 173pp, photos and illustrations.

A ground-breaking book on the Titanic is rare, but this detailed account of the disaster from the perspectives of six first-class passengers, three survivors and three who perished, is a gripping read from a new angle. The beautiful Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes was the only member of the British nobility on board a ship accommodating some very rich people. Noelle Dyer-Edwardes divided her time between a Kensington house and French chateau before marrying the Earl of Rothes, who was leading opposition to the "Lords Act" designed to tax the aristocracy and curtail the powers of the House of Lords. The launch of the Titanic at the Harland and Wolff shipyard claimed the vessel's sixth life even before she set sail. Thomas Andrews, the 39 year old managing director of Harland, was dominated by the Protestantism, patriotism and propriety of his Belfast upbringing, but he also rode to hounds and mixed easily with the upper classes. Embarkation at Southampton was a long-drawn out process, with strict separation between first and third class passengers, most of whom were emigrating and had long farewells on the quayside. Lady Rothes was dissatisfied with her B-Deck cabin so she joined the millionaires and plutocrats on C Deck. Ten doors down were Ida Straus and her husband Isidor, the owner of Macy's department stores. Isidor's Confederate links coupled with southern prejudice against Jews had led them from Georgia to New York. John Borland Thayer, Sr, was the fabulously wealthy vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, accompanied on board by his wife Marian and son Jack. Finally the film star Dorothy Gibson, one of the highest paid actresses in the world, had taken one of the cheaper first-class cabins. That night, John and Jack Thayer discussed the ship's accelerating speed with the White Star owner, Bruce Ismay, who controversially survived the disaster. When the Countess of Rothes was awakened by "a slight grating sound" the tragedy began to unfold. Women and children entered the lifeboats, but Ida Straus refused to leave her husband and although infirm he refused to go ahead of the other men. They perished together in one of the Titanic's most touching stories. John Thayer, who courageously helped other passengers to escape, also was lost. With a wealth of social and political detail, this is a sensitive if at times harsh picture of early 20th century Britain and America and the bygone golden age. Remainder mark. Dramatis Personae, 423pp, colour and mono photos.

Aegae is the capital of ancient Macedon, home to the legendary Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great. David Grant has previously challenged settled assumptions in his account of Alexander's life and has now turned his attention to a grave complex that may be the burial place of the kings of Macedon. The excavations of the 1970s took place at the modern town of Vergina, now believed to be the ancient Aegae in line with the theories of the venerable British scholar Nicholas Hammond. In 1977 Professor Manolis Andronikos was wrapping up the year's dig which had focused on the "Great Tumulus", when a change in soil colour suggested to Manolis that an older and smaller tumulus lay under the south-west perimeter of the hill. The team quickly revealed the foundations of a once-freestanding building that had been looted in antiquity, with an accompanying box-like tomb that had also been pillaged. Beyond it was a carved stone façade at the entrance to a much more ornate building. The heavy marble doors to the building were wedged so the archaeologists removed the keystone and lowered themselves inside, where Manolis made a remarkable discovery of a double burial with exquisite gold artefacts. Years of debate about the identities of the deceased followed. When the author visited in 2017 he found that Tomb II was provisionally labelled as the tomb of Philip II, and this book describes his efforts to convince the archaeologists that their identification was unreliable. The loss of literature from the period, as the Graeco-Macedonian world failed following Alexander's death, puts more weight on the evidence of archaeology. Alexander conquered the Persian Empire in 11 years, but died mysteriously in Babylon - it was 2300 years later that these subterranean tombs unearthed in northern Greece contained the remains of the Macedonian royal line. In the 5th century BC Darius of Persia had annexed the territory and 300 Spartans held the pass at Thermopylae, part of a resistance that led eventually to the crumbling of the Persian empire. When Philip later stepped in, he made diplomatic alliances through his seven wives and reformed the structure of the army, but injuries on the skeleton in the tomb do not necessarily point to Philip, while the accompanying woman buried with weapons and armour is a female warrior rather than a wife or concubine. The mystery remains. 351 weighty pages, many photos and illus in black and white and colour, maps.

The 320-mile railway between the Atlantic Ocean port of Pointe-Noir and Brazzaville in the Congo was built with forced local labour between 1921 and 1934 by the French company Batignolles when Equatorial Africa was still a French colony. The railroad had to traverse difficult terrain including the unstable Mayombe and the Bamba tunnel, and abuses and cruelty led to the deaths of an estimated 20,000 workers. The fact that this took place under the management of the French with their ideals of liberty is a theme of the book. The Europeans on the project perversely believed that malnutrition was part of the African way of life, and a belief in the superiority of the white races went without question, though this was not unchallenged at the time, as a contemporary cartoon shows in which the bodies of workers appear as railroad sleepers. For the railroad's defenders, the project was a measure of French expertise and benevolence, bringing new technology and infrastructure to west Africa. In fact, workers died from accidents and wounds, they were murdered at the hands of overseers, whose own brutalisation forms an interesting additional theme of the book, and they died of diseases such as dysentery and, very interestingly, what is now regarded as possibly an early manifestation of AIDS. Around twice as many Africans died on the Congo-Ocean railway as on the better-known atrocity of the Burma-Siam railway in World War II. African workers were conscripted at gunpoint, separated from their families. They hacked their way through dense tropical foliage, excavating by hand thousands of tonnes of earth in order to lay down track. They blasted their way through rock to construct tunnels and risked their lives building bridges over otherwise impassable rivers. Porters were needed to transport building materials and often two men were assigned to lugging a 200-pound load and other "crushing and unmanageable burdens". When a doctor tried to intervene on one occasion, he was callously told that the men were expendable. 368pp, eye opening photographic evidence in photos. Map.

Covering a 3000-year period from 3100 BCE to 332, this book on a complex subject is written in a readable chronological style and looks at ancient diplomacy, travel, trade, warfare, domination and immigration. It covers military campaigns including the battle of Qadesh under Rameses II and Hatshepsut's trading mission to the mysterious land of Punt. The rich story behind Egypt's Foreign Relations includes the Nubian Kingdom of Kerma, Nile fortresses, the Sea Peoples and Persian satraps. An Egyptian priest named Manetho estimated that 30 dynasties had ruled Egypt during this time, and modern scholars have adopted Manetho's dynastic divisions largely unchanged, grouping them into longer periods such as the "Early" or "Middle" Kingdom. The book explores Egypt's foreign relations from the Predynastic period to the arrival of Alexander the Great. Egyptians saw their land as representing order, balance and justice, while the regions beyond represented disorder, and there was a further barrier between humans and gods. Peoples were roughly grouped as Egyptians, Nubians, Libyans and Asiatics. Egyptian iconography shows its rulers smiting and destroying their enemies, and a pharaoh's sandals had images of his enemies on the sole so that he was permanently represented as trampling them into the dust. The reality, though, was that Egyptian rulers also exchanged elaborate courtesies with neighbouring potentates, and in daily life foreigners in roles such as soldiers or diplomats were treated as equals. Egypt was a land of slaves, many of whom had been seized around the Mediterranean coast to work as household servants or navvies on building projects. In the political unrest at the end of the Old Kingdom, the royal court moved from Memphis to Herakleopolis, possibly driven by climate change and drought. Archaeological evidence shows that Nubians of different ethnicities continued to live in the unified territories, and that was still the case when Tuthmosis II and his wife Hatshepsut consolidated their control. His New Kingdom successor, Tuthmosis II, forged north into the Levant, marching through Gaza to confront a hostile coalition of city states at Megiddo. We know that the later Pharaoh Akhenaten received tributes from foreigners because they are pictured at Amarna, while a wrecked sea vessel of the same period provides evidence for trade with Mycenae. Amarna was also the site of diplomatic correspondence, strongly suggesting that the empire looked to Greece during its period of decline. 213 pages, many maps, photos.

The Seshat Global History Databank is a huge catalogue of historical statistics found online, and now in book form. From the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Iraq, China, Turkey, Mexico, Greece, India, Mali, Iran, Mongolia, Italy, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Japan, before we move on to the medieval era 500-1500CE and the early modern era 1500-1800CE. What was the tallest building of the ancient world? Or the average life expectancy in medieval Byzantium? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ritual human sacrifice ever? Join the radical historians Peter Turchin and Dan Hoyer as they draw on their own Seshat project, a staggeringly ambitious attempt to log each piece of demographic and econometric information that can be reliably estimated for every society that has ever existed, to find the large-scale patterns. Join them for a dive into the numbers that reveal the true shape of the past. Who were the first people to use calendars? What was history's largest empire? When was the most widely attended ritual? Covers the period from 3000BCE to 2000CE, a wonderfully interesting book to dip into reminiscent of the social, political and economic tables found in many atlases and information found in The Economist from which this publication comes. With lists of rankings like the ten largest societies by territory, regional adoption such as bureaucracy by world region, and nine maps showing the spread of agriculture, human sacrifice, bronze, writing, moralising religion, chariots, iron, cavalry, coinage and gunpowder. Eminently browesworthy paperback, 254pp.

Being the owners of a rather beautiful whippet, we very much approve of author Philip Womack leading his beloved lurcher Una and us on a fleet-footed odyssey through the classical world. From Aeneas to Cerberus to Polydorus, go on a quirky introduction to the Ancient Greeks and Romans and with a bit of luck we may be able to pass this knowledge on to our dogs. Engaging, funny and clever, he illuminates the pleasures and relevance of the Classics today and at any moment Donna Tartt, David Bowie, Stephen Fry or a reference to an obscure scholarly article might leap from the page. Plenty to catch the attention and arouse the interest of the curious, he writes with the verve of a novelist and the insight of a scholar as he has classical chats with his dog - before she runs off to chase another squirrel! He covers Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphosis, Catullus and Sappho and even sex and sewers before sharing some useful Latin phrases and grammar and the Greek alphabet. 322pp, paperback.

Henry Marten, soldier, member of Parliament, organiser of the trial of Charles I and signatory of the King's Death Warrant, is today a neglected figure of the 17th century. Yet his life was both extraordinary and emblematic. He was at the fulcrum of English history during the turbulent years of the Civil War, the Protectorate and the Restoration. Imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried at the Old Bailey, Marten was found guilty of High Treason, only to be held captive for years on the equivalent of death row. It was while he was in prison that his letters to his mistress Mary Ward were stolen and published in an attempt to destroy his reputation. Witty, clever, loving, sardonic and never despairing, the letters offer a rare and extraordinary insight into the everyday life of a man in the Tower of London awaiting a sentence of death. The attempt to expose him as immoral revealed him instead as a tender and brave man. In this revelatory biography, he emerges as a clever, lively-minded man, free of the fundamentalist zeal so common in many of his republican contemporaries. Marten never abandoned his beliefs in equality, in a representative Parliament under a Constitution (which he had helped to write) without a monarch or a House of Lords, and in that way can be seen as a very modern man. 'A deeply researched and convincing portrait of the later years of one of the most remarkable radical politicians in British history.' - Ronald Hutton. It also reminds us that not all regicides were soldier puritans, and that some men believed in a republic before the Civil War started. Illustrated, 214pp.