When Marcus Sidonius Falx insults the Emperor Caligula there is only one possible outcome. He has to leave Rome in a great hurry. With the help of his amanuensis Jerry Toner he decides to write an eyewitness travel guide to the whole Roman Empire, the first of its kind. Toner helpfully provides a commentary on each chapter, explaining where the facts for this fictional travelogue originated in the literature of the Roman world. Falx first heads to his villa on the bay of Naples at Baiae, playground for the Roman elite. He travels light with only twenty slaves, his head chef and team of apprentices, a barber and a cobbler, carrying his map on a long scroll which is a guide to the road network without being a realistic representation of the topography. Greece is the first port of call, the first destination Olympia, home to the eponymous Games, with respects paid to Phidias's gigantic statue of Zeus on the way. Sparta and Athens follow, where Falx is tricked into staying in a low-life inn, setting up his travelling commode in a corner and desperate to avoid the attentions of bedbugs. On Rhodes he experiences an earthquake and in Troy relives highlights from Homer's great epic. Judea is mounting determined resistance against the Roman occupation, but Egypt has a more laid back atmosphere, popular with Roman travellers ever since first Caesar and then Mark Antony became lovers of Cleopatra, while Alexandria with its numerous population of Jews and Greeks is one of the empire's most cosmopolitan cities. The writings of Hadrian, Diodorus Siculus and Pliny provide local colour. From Africa Falx sails to Hispania, then through the bleakness of Gaul to the outpost of Britannia and Hadrian's Wall, where he surprisingly notes that the Britons cheerfully bear the taxes and conscription imposed by the Roman occupiers. A highly entertaining window on the ancient world. 287pp, sources, line drawings.

1215, the year of Magna Carta, was one of the most momentous in British history, ranking with 1066 as a watershed when everything changed. King John owned vast territories in France when he ascended the throne following the death of his brother Richard the Lionheart, but by 1215 they had all vanished. The loss of Normandy was a particular blow because many nobles owned territories and titles on both sides of the Channel and now they had to choose whether to be English or French. The ruling élite consisted of about 100 barons and their lives were seriously disrupted by John's extortionate tax demands in the spirit of his father Henry II, who had levied punitive charges on the nobility for services such as marriage. Meanwhile Pope Innocent III placed the English church under an interdict forbidding clergy to conduct church services. John's quarrel with the Pope began when they disagreed on the choice of Archbishop of Canterbury, with Innocent insisting on the appointment of Stephen Langton, a scholar in the tradition of the martyr Thomas Becket who had been murdered for his temerity in criticising John's father. John himself was excommunicated, but the inconvenience caused by the suspension of rites such as marriage finally led him to make peace with the Vatican. In 1213 John accepted the Pope as his feudal overlord, promising to stop pillaging the church and vowing to go on a crusade. This was the last straw for the barons, who went on the offensive beginning with the siege of Northampton and concluding with the Magna Carta, signed at Runnymede. The agreement only had two months' currency before Innocent intervened to nullify its conditions, and John died the following year. A highly readable history. 312pp, paperback, colour photos, feature boxes on 13th century life.

In the words of the Sunday Times: 'A winning portrait of seven centuries of empire, teeming with life and colour, human interest and oddity, cruelty and oppression mixed with pleasure, benevolence and great artistic beauty.' Baer has written a brilliantly panoramic account of the history of the Ottoman Empire from its genesis to its dissolution and challenges and transforms how we think of the East and the West, Enlightenment and modernity, and directly confronts the horrors as well as the achievements of Ottoman rule. Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2022, this is a major new history of the diverse empire that straddled East and West. The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic-Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West when, in reality, the Ottomans' multi-ethnic, multilingual and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe's heart. Recounting their remarkable rise to a world empire, Baer traces their debts to the Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic and Byzantine heritage and upends Western accounts of the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration and the Reformation. He describes how they used both religious tolerance and conversion to integrate conquered peoples and how in the 19th century the Ottomans embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide and the dynasty's demise after the first world war. The account challenges our understandings of sexuality, orientalism and genocide in this radical retelling of a remarkable story, and a magisterial portrait of a dynastic power. 543pp, paperback with many photos including colour.

'From whom did you steal that beauty? The rose laughs softly out of shame, but how should she tell?' - Rumi. Acclaimed horticultural historian Jennifer Potter shows that this most fragrant flower, the rose, has potency in societies around the world. She begins her story in the Greek and Roman empires and travels across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas to unravel its evolution from a simple briar of the northern hemisphere to the height of cultivated perfection found in rose gardens today. She lays bare the flower's long association with sexuality and secret societies, questioning the Crusaders' role in bringing roses back from the Holy Land, or hunting for its elusive blooms in the gardens of the Empress Josephine at Malmaison. An exquisitely beautiful heavyweight tome printed on quality paper and with hundreds of full page colour plates not only of roses but of archive paintings and historical artifacts and illuminated manuscripts, the book challenges many cherished beliefs about the rose and this thick tome looks to establish itself as the definitive history of the Queen of Flowers. Celebrated as a sacred symbol and as a token of womanhood, the rose unites Venus with the Virgin Mary, the blood of Christ with the sweat of Muhammad, the sacred and the profane, life and death, the white rose of chastity and the red rose of consummation. Not forgetting the delicate petals in different hues in the exquisite perfumes, we learn about roses which came to Europe from Turkey and Bulgaria and the Balkan mountains, rosemania and Redouté's exquisite portraits of their best creations which further inflamed passions. We have a 21st century view of cultivated roses be they old garden roses from Alba to tea and climbing tea, or modern roses like Floribunda to Polyantha. Chinese Whispers, American Beauties, the Housewife's Friend and its uses, here is trade and travel and sex and sorcery. 521 magnificent pages with approximately 100 colour illus. 16.5 x 24.1cm.
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How did 13 isolated colonies who in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution was a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than 21 navies fighting on five oceans to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French and American history. Simultaneous naval campaigns were fought in the English Channel, the North and Mid-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, off South Africa, in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the North Sea, and of course off the eastern seaboard of America. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theatres. Sam Willis traces every key military event in the path to American Independence from a naval perspective and also brings this important viewpoint to bear on economic, political and social developments that were fundamental to the success of the Revolution. He offers valuable new insights into American, British, French, Spanish, Dutch and Russian history and the result is a more profound understanding of the influence of sea power upon history, the path to American Independence and the rise and fall of the British Empire. Using original logs, reports, diaries and archaeological discoveries it is the gripping tale of the birth of the New World. Colour plates, 572 page paperback.

Ten years since the death of the world renowned and controversial intellectual, this stylish edition is one of 12 commemorating Christopher Hitchens' most wry and provocative works. Thomas Paine was one of the greatest advocates of freedom in history, and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defence of man's inalienable rights. It has been celebrated, criticised, maligned, suppressed and co-opted, and forms the philosophical cornerstone of the first democratic republic whose revolution is the only example that still speaks to us - the United States of America. Hitchens marvels at the book's forethought and revels in its contentiousness and this brilliant portrait is an attractive introduction to Paine's life and work as a whole. 158pp, paperback.

Hot off the press and weighing in at a spectacular 2.35kg with glossy purple, pink, fluorescent pink and orange and yellow and lime page edges and on glossy white paper, extraordinary statistics are brought to life on nature and environment, science and technology, economy and development, society and people and culture and media. This superb and selective history of graphic information begins with medieval maps of the world and Portolan charts to navigate the oceans, mapping the body and knowledge, the Universe and planets, dinosaur timeline, currents of air showing the global wind system as it was perceived in the mid 19th century, tsunamis, where fish are caught, a world of sensations and a fantastic voyage of the incredible shrinking robots, racial inequality and the Corona virus, waste in space, imports and exports and a woman's place in the economy, Africa missing infrastructures, disputed areas of the world. In the centre pages is a spectacular triple gatefold showing on one side gun nations and states, on the other gay acceptance where countries like Spain and Germany have become more accepting of homosexuality. Foods, unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, a guide to coffee and a cocktail chart of film and literature, the periodic table of heavy metals, comic characters and the football clubs of Europe in a spectacular double page map, this is a very special coffee table book featuring 280 colourful graphics, seven fold-out spreads and all focussing on the 21st century but including some historical masterpieces. 456pp, 21.59 x 33.02cm. Text in three languages, new full price from Taschen.
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In this wide-ranging and sometimes controversial study, one of our pre-eminent political historians dispels the popular myths that have grown up about this critical period in Britain's story, and argues that it set the scene for much that is laudable about our nation today. He looks at how Britain has been governed, the franchise and electoral system, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the monarchy, the Cabinet, local government, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the Empire. He looks at the politics of unionism and the 1895 General Election, at Lord Salisbury's foreign policy and challenges from America, the Middle and Far East. He looks at the war in South Africa and the challenge from the Boers, confident unionism, the Labour Party representing the working class and the trade unions. He does not shy away from the concentration camps in South Africa, Lord Rosebery's return. There was the problem the end of the Victorian Age of reforming education leading into new alignments and the alliance with Japan, the Irish Land Act and devolution, the Corn Duty and its repeal, Home Rule, the 1906 General Election, school meals and medical inspection, old age pensions, the reform of taxation, Churchill and social reform, the constitutional crisis and the end of Balfour's leadership, land reform, female suffrage, and from the entente with France and two world wars. The turbulent years of 1895 to 1914 changed Britain's political landscape for ever. They saw a transition from aristocratic rule to mass politics and heralded a new agenda which still dominates today. Economic modernisation, social welfare and equality, secondary and technical education, a new role for Britain in the world were all complex and difficult issues of the period which proved so thorny that despite the efforts of the Edwardians, they remain among the most pressing problems facing us in the 21st century. Vernon Bogdanor believes that the robustness of Britain's parliamentary and political institutions and her liberal political culture, with the commitment to rational debate and argument, were powerful enough to carry her through one of the most trying periods of her history, and so make possible the remarkable survival of liberal Britain. A thumping 3" thick tome of 880 pages with superb timeline of main events and seven maps in 2022 first edition.

A 'dynasty' is a family of rulers, who wielded power over a period of time as well as over a territory. Some are known by their geographical territory (Cappadocia, Baktria, Parthia), others by the name of their founder (Arsakids, Antigonids, Cerdings), others by their city (Athens, Syracuse, Damascus), or by the people they ruled (Visigoths, Vandals, West Saxons). Three major divisions have been imposed, apart from segregating the Roman Republican dynasties as a separate set. Several dynasties stand out as imperial, while others are civic, and these have been brought into separate parts of the Catalogue. This mammoth unique study of the ruling families of the ancient world known to the Greeks and Romans is a book of two parts. The first offers analysis and discussion of various features including the leading families and examines patterns, similarities and contrasts, categorises types of dynasty and explores common themes such as how they were founded and maintained, the role of women, and the various reasons for their decline. The second part is a catalogue of all known dynasties, over 150 of them, known to have existed between approximately 1000BC and AD750, from the Atlantic Ocean to Baktria, roughly modern Afghanistan. It gives genealogical tables and tells where and when they held power. And the whole forms a valuable study and reference to the families who ruled the Classical world. Of course it also covers usurpations, coup d'état, restorations, election, chieftains, complications and more. 512 pages, many tables.

The first examination of the seedier side of the canal routes which were, for almost two centuries, Britain's major transportation network. Even when traffic routes on canals imposed a speed limit of four miles an hour, criminals were still aboard and in what was seen as the fastest growing area of Britain's leisure industry. Books have been written retelling tales of bandits, footpads, highwaymen attacking the lone traveller, horseman, coachman, shipping line, locomotive engineer, lorry or van driver and even pilot. For almost two centuries the majority of goods travelled on Britain's famed canal network and this also attracted felons of all kinds, yet many of these tales have been largely ignored until now. From murders to muggings, parental problems to pilfering, arson, assault, smugglers, counterfeiters and even road rage canal-style, we follow the policeman on foot chasing down a thief on board the narrowboat and discover what really lies beneath the waters of the canal. Learn also about canal etiquette, the hardships, the kindness and the cruelty. Chapters cover dozens of characters from William Hancock in 1826, Ann Bridges in 1847 to Southwick's Iron Foundry, Counterfeit Coin and one character just named Annie (just like our editor!) in 1915; Annie being the name of the vessel central to the story when she struck something beneath the waterline while travelling the Forth and Clyde Canal in a prosecution described as 'an act of piracy'. Fascinating social history. 120pp in illustrated large paperback.