A brilliant narrative of the interconnected lives of two Renaissance Portuguese men whose travels to India and China unseated contemporary certainties. Dazzling.
The Jena set: Caroline Schlegel's salon in the 1790s, in that small German university town, included Novalis, Schiller, Hegel, Goethe and Humboldt. They radically changed our ideas as the Fr... read more
Not just bar-room belles and pioneers wearing thin the soles of their boots on their immense journeys to the west, but Chinese laundresses and displaced native Americans too. Real stories, w... read more
A revisionist account by the distinguished historian, which argues that Magellan was less of a hero and more of a treacherous, irresponsible, tyrannical adventurer.
From the Bible to Simon Schama, a huge investigation of how the writing of history influences the record of human experience, and therefore its development.
A fascinating examination of how the prevailing causes of death have changed through history. It is a story of growing medical knowledge and social organisation, and is refreshingly optimist... read more
From Byzantium to England, the Normans achieved an extraordinary ascendancy in the C11th. This study draws particular attention to dynastic relations and to the role of women in what has hit... read more
Founded by mavericks in 1922, it evolved through the war, the invention of television and subsequent massive cultural changes. Whatever its problems, it is an extraordinary institution, and ... read more
Argues that the abolition of the slave trade in Britain owed more to a deep cultural shift - one that valued the idea of individual freedom - than it did to the actions of particular indi... read more
We heard about Molotov's library in Rachel Polonsky's superb Molotov's Magic Lantern (£12.99). Now we have a portrait of Stalin through the books he read - and he was an avid reader all his... read more