A fascinating look at the genesis and meaning of Van Gogh's famed paintings of his bedroom

A compelling and vivid narrative history of one of the founding civilizations of the modern world, the Byzantine empire, evocatively told through the lives of its 92 emperors.

The Byzantine empire was one of the most successful states of the Middle Ages, ruling over a huge terrain straddling Europe and western Asia for an unrivalled eleven hundred years. Yet its history remains largely unfamiliar. This chronicle brings this majestic yet turbulent period to life through the lives of...

Maya peoples have long dominated southern Mesoamerica, an area stretching from the lowland coast of the Yucatán Peninsula to the highland mountains of southern Guatemala. While never a unified people, they gave rise to a great civilization with a dynamic set of beliefs and stories that varied between groups and retellings. To the Maya these have always been more than fireside tales: their myths formed the foundation of their culture, weaving together their ancestral and primordial pasts into...

A new way of appreciating art that puts the artwork front and centre, brought to us by one of the freshest and most exciting new voices in cultural criticism.

From the bestselling author of The Robin: A BiographyThe wren is a paradox of a bird. The wren was on postage stamps and the farthing, it featured in nursery rhymes and greetings cards, poems and rural `wren hunts', still a recent memory in Ireland particularly.