Already receiving praise for revolutionising the history of sexuality, this book is bound to be a fascinating analysis of sex and identity in early-modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!" grumbled Mrs Elton at the marriage of Emma and the divine Mr Knightley. How times have changed!
An investigation of Jesus' messianic contemporaries and the reasons for Christianity's success. From the author of the highly regarded The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Cla... read more
Walls are famous for their ears - but they can also speak: Pelling gathers these silent shouts into a remarkable history through the scratchings and carvings in prisons, walls, lead roofs, t... read more
Traces the history of Sefton Delmer, the English propagandist who waged a disinformation war in Nazi Germany, and how that history can help us understand the present.
Contacts and connections as the drivers of cultural change: the West was built on far more than the values of ancient Greece and Rome, as per the Victorian paradigm. Erudite and compelling.
Joseph Seligman arrived in the US with $100 sewn into the lining of his clothes; the Lehman brothers followed; then Marcus Goldman and the 'forty-eighters' fleeing European anti-semitism. A ... read more
The C10th synthesis of Greek thought in Central Asi. Starr's magnificent book is a cultural and intellectual history of the Islamic Enlightenment and its two chief proponents - Ibn Sina and ... read more