For all those who, in their heart of hearts, yearn to shoot backwards from the saddle with a compound bow, sitting astride an embroidered saddle rug, wearing tattered silk and a metal bonnet... read more
Although never the language of a state or ethnic group, Syriac remains widely used across the globe and is regarded as the third language of Christianity. It even reached China, thanks to th... read more
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).
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.
A compelling account of the world's first empire, drawing extensively on recent discoveries in the field with the use of new archaeological techniques.
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.
Where did refugees from the American and French Revolutions go? This remarkable historical perspective shows how opening doors can be more profitable than closing borders.
The daughter of Russian immigrants in Leeds, Simpson made it her life's mission to help academic refugees. During WW2 alone, she saved 16 future Nobel Prize winners, 74 future Fellows of the... read more
A lively account of the origins of the American Dream - an idea which Moore traces back across the Atlantic to the intellectual and political bustling of Enlightenment Britain.
9000BC years ago there were pastoral economies; by 3000BC the desert reasserted itself. A fascinating study of human adaptability in the face of early climate change and geophysical influenc... read more
Leadership and moral compromise in Occupied France, seen through the lens of P?tain's trial in 1945. Julian Jackson is superb on the French Occupation and his biography of de Gaulle was magi... read more
Following his outstanding book 1913: The Year Before the Storm, , Illies looks at the affairs of de Beauvoir, Sartre, Dietrich, Mann (both T & K), Nabokov and others, set against the looming... read more