Charts world history from the dawn of civilisation to the modern culture we live in today. From the origins of homo-sapiens to the release of Nelson Mandela, from the French Revolution to the Space Race, this book presents an exploration of the human timeline up to and including modern Islam, the world wide web, and the global financial crisis.

‘An absolute gem’ Sunday Times ‘A mouthwatering history’ The Guardian

FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL PRIZE FOR HISTORY ‘Not only deserves the description “epic”, in its true sense, but the term “masterpiece” as well’ Independent

Spying has changed. In this era of email intercepts and drone strikes, spooks are expected to uncover plots buried in mountains of data. Yet this makes the need for trained field operatives who can verify facts and uncover secrets more acute than ever. The human factor endures. This book gives an account of how modern espionage works.

The calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread. The author examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s.

The intriguing history of Dickens’s London, showing how tourists have reimagined and reinvented the Dickensian metropolis for more than 150 years