It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...

    Hamer Shawcross is a victim of his own success, and certainly one of the great characters of English literature.

    A British air reconnaissance officer falls for a pub waitress, but finds his lift in chaos when he accidentally bombs a British submarine, mistaking it for a German U-boat. What begins as a romantic fling develops into true love as Mona fights to present the evidence she has discovered about this tragedy in the hope that it will absolve her lover.

    The book begins in 27 BCE with Augustus, Emperor of Rome, and follows the various manifestations of the empire through to Byzantine Constantinople and to Germany, ending with the fall of the Holy Roman Empire and the last (Holy) Roman Emperor, Francis II, in 1806. It is comprehensive in coverage, including both 'official' emperors and usurpers. Each chapter looks at a specific period of Roman imperial history, focusing not only on the emperors' reigns, but also on the rulers as people, discussing their personality and motivation and bringing them to life for a modern audience. "

    The advocates of the principles of virtue & pleasure are brought together into a single inexpensive volume for the first time; hitherto their works were obtainable only in separate, expensive editions. The four thinkers here represented have been brilliantly translated by Cyril Bailey, H.A.J. Munro, P.E. Matheson & George Long. In addition, Cleanthes' famous poem Hymn to Zeus & Matthew Arnold's Essay on Marcus Aurelius are included.