'Wry, informative but deadly - a great book'

Will Hutton

'Fast-paced and impassioned'

Sunday Telegraph

Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. A fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seized power and why they fell.

There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup.

Every democracy, however ...

The astonishing story of one of the most significant years in modern European history.

Alev Scott's odyssey began when she looked beyond Turkey's borders for contemporary traces of the Ottoman Empire. Their 800-year rule ended a century ago - and yet, travelling through eleven countries from Kosovo to Greece to Palestine, she uncovers a legacy that's vital and relevant; where medieval ethnic diversity meets 21st century nationalism, and displaced people seek new identities.

It's a story of surprises. An acolyte of Erdogan in Christian-majority Serbia confirms the wide-...

Read the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer – and discover what it can teach us about the current Covid-19 pandemic. 'Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story...

Discover an original, entertaining and illuminating guide to a completely different world: England in the Middle Ages. Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century.

Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants, this book follows workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers as their world is consumed by revolution and then degenerates into violence and dictatorship.

The story of the Burgundian elite and its remarkable court and culture, a medieval and early modern epic of dynastic struggle, artistic achievement and eventual extinction.