The final vol of the history that he began in 1990. A staggering achievement for anyone, but for someone with a pretty demanding day job (he was Justice of the Supreme Court), it seems stagg... read more
Reframes the Silk Road as a diplomatic route, not simply a commercial thoroughfare, especially during the late Tang and Five Dynasties period. Draws on documents from Dunhuang.
What exactly is it that we preserve - and pay for - so carefully? Stourton looks at various parks, buildings and collections and charts two particular periods of conservation - the 1880s and... read more
The author of Europe's Tragedy, the definitive book on the Thirty Years War, has written a powerful narrative of five centuries of political, military, technological and economic change in G... read more
Siena's medieval golden age was brought to a grisly end by an appalling visitation of the plague in 1348. Nevertheless, the republic of Siena lasted for four hundred years, from the C12th un... read more
An immense and authoritative account that draws attention to Stalin's similarities with Hitler; their primary difference being that Stalin was a more successful murderous predator.
She arrived in America in 1807 as a refugee from Napoleonic France. Her sketches of the world she encountered there must show what Madame de la Tour du Pin a decade earlier. A lovely book.
The great historian of late antiquity mixes the personal with the scholarly in telling the story of his life and work. Engagement with the non-European world has been intrinsic to his work.
Following Cromwell's death, there were 10 changes of government in 2 years. Reece argues that there was still no great support for a return to the monarchy and yet, despite strong military b... read more
In a particularly elegant diplomatic gesture, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Aachen in 802 AD. This fresh perspective draws on many Arabic sources.
A new and updated edition of the great French historian's 1990 Europe: A History of Its Peoples. First published in 1990, this has now been brought up to date, from the fall of the Iron Curt... read more
Following High Minds, The Age of Decadence and Staring at God, this is the fourth in his series on the changing face of Britain. It covers the period 1919-1939.
1,500 years of cultural history: to accompany the tremendous exhibition at the British Museum that shows the many influences that have created contemporary Myanmar.
The long shadow of Ottoman rule: Mestyan argues that new local polities were based on recalibrated Ottoman structures rather than on European colonialism (with the exception of Palestine).