The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
The historic role and place of the Templars in European history is interwoven with legend and indeed, as Steve Tibble has demonstrated in this very closely argued work, it has attracted any number of misrepresentations and false trails. This book offers us discussion...
Tamerlane (Timur ‘the Lame’, c. 1327-1405) was the last major conqueror to emerge from Inner Asia. He was not himself a nomad – except insofar as he spent several decades in incessant campaigning. But the kernel of his army was made up of nomadic cavalry. Although a...
Nicholas Orme, many congratulations on your new book, The History of England's Cathedrals. How does one define a cathedral? A cathedral is the church of a bishop and is the chief church of the area that he rules: the diocese. Important ceremonies are held in it, like...
Michael H. Kater, congratulations on After the Nazis. You’ve written about how important democracy was for culture to thrive in Germany. Were there any cultural achievements under the Nazis? In the Third Reich, cultural achievements in line with a democratic value...
Templars: From Crusaders to Conspiracists Galilee, 4 July 1187. The dry heat caught the stench of blood and death and held it close to the earth – the fear was palpable and, for many, overwhelming. The men, already severely dehydrated, were almost finished. Even the...
Vesuvius in the Age of Revolution Volcanic is the first and only book I have written not focused on Britain, the only one that concerns the history of science, and the only one centred on Italy. So why the departure, the urge to explore something new? Restlessness...
Culture & Democracy in West Germany In the dictatorship of the Third Reich, the absence of democracy meant the absence of individual liberties. For visual artists, musicians, and men and women of letters, film and the stage, next to governmental content criticism...
Plutarch observed that the “many virtues” of the Roman general and triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus “were obscured by one vice, avarice.” Peter Stothard’s life of Crassus is the story of that vice. The book opens by laying bare the contradiction at the heart of the...
The second volume of David Carpenter’s magisterial two-part biography of King Henry III covers the latter fourteen years of his reign, 1258-1272. It opens with the revolutionary events of 1258, in fact more far-reaching than 1215’s Magna Carta, when a group of armed...
Leading historian of the French Revolution John Hardman provides a compelling new biography of Antoine Barnave, the influential statesman who advocated for a constitutional monarchy in early revolutionary France. Frequently described as being politically two-faced,...
