He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past--a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house--and describes in rich prose the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French.With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes the wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. All are brought vividly to life through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers.

    Introduction 2. The Sources 3. Pre-Roman Italy and the Etruscans 4. The Foundation of Rome 5. The Kings of Rome 6. Regal Society 7. The Beginnings of the Republic 8. The Struggle of the Orders 9. Roman Expansion in Italy 10. The Roman Confederation in Italy 11. The International Scene on the Eve of Roman Expansion 12. Carthage and the First Punic War 13. The Second Punic (or Hannibalic) War 14. Rome in the Eastern Mediterranean 15. Explaining the Rise of the Roman Empire 16. "The Captured Conqueror"-Rome and Hellenism 17. Governing the Roman Republic, Part I-Senate and Magistrates 18. Governing the Roman Republic, Part II-Popular Assemblies and Provincial Administration 19. The Pressures of Empire 20. The Gracchi Brothers 21. Marius and Sulla 22. "The Royal Rule of Sulla" 23. Sulla's Reforms Undone 24. Pompey and Crassus 25. The First Triumvirate 26. Pompey and Caesar 27. "The Domination of Caesar" 28. Social and Cultural Life in the Late Republic 29. Antony and Octavian 30. The Second Triumvirate 31. Octavian Emerges Supreme 32. The New Order of Augustus 33. The Imperial Succession 34. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty 35. The Emperor in the Roman World 36. The Third-Century Crisis 37. The Shape of Roman Society 38. Roman Slavery 39. The Family 40. Women in Roman Society 41. An Empire of Cities 42. Public Entertainment, Part I-The Roman Baths and Chariot Racing 43. Public Entertainment, Part II-Gladiatorial Games 44. Roman Paganism 45. The Rise of Christianity 46. The Restoration of Order 47. Constantine and the Late Empire 48. Thoughts on the "Fall" of the Roman Empire

    Includes genealogical tables, coats of arms, and royal heraldry.

    Philippa Gregory and two historians, leading experts in their field who helped Philippa to research the novels, tell the extraordinary 'true' stories of the life of these women who until now have been largely forgotten by history, their background and times, highlighting questions which are raised in the fiction and illuminating the novels. With a foreword by Philippa Gregory - in which Philippa writes revealingly about the differences between history and fiction and examines the gaps in the historical record - and beautifully illustrated with rare portraits, The Women of the Cousins' War is an exciting new addition to the Philippa Gregory oeuvre.

    The fate of the country rested in the hands of George V's sorely unequipped sons: Edward VIII abandoned his throne to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson; Prince Henry preferred the sporting life of a country squire; the glamorous and hedonistic Prince George, Duke of Kent, was considered a wild card; and stammering George VI felt himself woefully unprepared for the demanding role of King. As Hitler's Third Reich tore up the boundaries of Europe and Britain braced itself for war, the new king struggled to manage internal divisions within the royal family. Drawing on many new sources including from the Royal Archives, Princes at War goes behind the palace doors to tell the thrilling drama of Britain at war.

    to the 20th century, and in locale from Mesopotamia and China to Europe and America. He focuses on intellectual history and ethics, taking underlying ideas of each great work and revealing how these ideas can be put to use in a moral and ethical life.Course Lecture Titles36 Lectures 30 minutes / lectureBonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison Homer, Iliad Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Bhagavad Gita Book of Exodus Gospel of Mark Koran Gilgamesh Beowulf Book of Job Aeschylus, Oresteia Euripides, Bacchae Plato, Phaedo Dante, The Divine Comedy Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag ArchipelagoShakespeare, Julius Caesar George Orwell, 1984 Vergil, Aeneid Pericles, Oration; Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front Confucius, The Analects Machiavelli, The Prince Plato, Republic John Stuart Mill, On Liberty Sir Thomas Malory, Morte d'Arthur Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 2 Henry David Thoreau, WaldenGibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Lord Acton, The History of Freedom Cicero, On Moral Duties (De Officiis) Gandhi, An Autobiography Churchill, My Early Life; Painting as a Pastime; WWII Lessons from the Great Books

    David Starkey's thrilling new paperback charts the rise of the British monarchy from the War of the Roses, the English Civil War and the Georgians, right up until the present day monarchs of the 20th Century.

    Churchill's most magnificent literary works. Begun during Churchill's 'wilderness years' when he was out of government, first published in 1956 after his leadership through the darkest days of World War II had cemented his place in history and completed when Churchill was in his 80s, it remains to this day a compelling and vivid history.The first volume - The Birth of Britain - tells the story of the formation of the British state, from the arrival of Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire through the invasions of the Vikings and the Normans, the signing of the Magna Carta and establishment of the mother of parliaments to the War of the Roses.

    They first came into existence as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. They have lasted as a recognizable entity ever since, and their defining national institutions can be traced back to the earliest years of their history.The English have come a long way from those precarious days of invasion and conquest, with many spectacular changes of fortune. Their political, economic and cultural contacts have left traces for good and ill across the world. This book describes their history and its meanings from their beginnings in the monasteries of Northumbria and the wetlands of Wessex to the cosmopolitan energy of today's England. Robert Tombs draws out important threads running through the story, including participatory government, language, law, religion, the land and the sea, and ever-changing relations with other peoples. Not the least of these connections are the ways the English have understood their own history, have argued about it, forgotten it, and yet been shaped by it. These diverse and sometimes conflicting understandings are an inherent part of their identity. Rather to their surprise, as ties within the United Kingdom loosen, the English are suddenly beginning a new period in their long history. Especially at times of change, history can help us to think about the sort of people we are and wish to be. This book, the first single-volume work on this scale for more than half a century, and which incorporates a wealth of recent scholarship, presents a challenging modern account of this immense and continuing story, bringing out the strength and resilience of English government, the deep patterns of division, and yet also the persistent capacity to come together in the face of danger.

    Katherine’s sister, Juana of Castile, wife of Philip of Burgundy and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, is portrayed as “Juana the Mad,” whose erratic behavior included keeping her beloved late husband’s coffin beside her for years. But historian Julia Fox, whose previous work painted an unprecedented portrait of Jane Boleyn, Anne’s sister, offers deeper insight in this first dual biography of Katherine and Juana, the daughters of Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella, whose family ties remained strong despite their separation. Looking through the lens of their Spanish origins, Fox reveals these queens as flesh-and-blood women—equipped with character, intelligence, and conviction—who are worthy historical figures in their own right.When they were young, Juana’s and Katherine’s futures appeared promising. They had secured politically advantageous marriages, but their dreams of love and power quickly dissolved, and the unions for which they’d spent their whole lives preparing were fraught with duplicity and betrayal. Juana, the elder sister, unexpectedly became Spain’s sovereign, but her authority was continually usurped, first by her husband and later by her son. Katherine, a young widow after the death of Prince Arthur of Wales, soon remarried his doting brother Henry and later became a key figure in a drama that altered England’s religious landscape.Ousted from the positions of power and influence they had been groomed for and separated from their children, Katherine and Juana each turned to their rich and abiding faith and deep personal belief in their family’s dynastic legacy to cope with their enduring hardships. Sister Queens is a gripping tale of love, duty, and sacrifice—a remarkable reflection on the conflict between ambition and loyalty during an age when the greatest sin, it seems, was to have been born a woman.

    To send a clear message to the fallen monarch, the rebels executed four of the senior officers captured at the castle. Yet still, the king refused to accept he had lost the war. As France and other allies mobilized in support of Charles, a tribunal was hastily gathered and a death sentence was passed. On January 30, 1649, the King of England was executed. This is the account of the fifty-nine regicides, the men who signed Charles I’s death warrant. Recounting a little-known corner of British history, Charles Spencer explores what happened when the Restoration arrived. From George Downing, the chief plotter, to Richard Ingoldsby, who claimed he was forced to sign his name by his cousin Oliver Cromwell, and from those who returned to the monarchist cause and betrayed their fellow regicides to those that fled the country in an attempt to escape their punishment, Spencer examines the long-lasting, far-reaching consequences not only for those who signed the warrant, but also for those who were present at the trial and for England itself. A powerful tale of revenge from the dark heart of England’s past, and a unique contribution to seventeenth-century history, Killers of the King tells the incredible story of the men who dared to assassinate a monarch.

    England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and countercoups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, had clambered to the top of the heap--a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England's throne. For many he remained a usurper, a false king.But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Queen Elizabeth was a member of the House of York. Henry himself was from the House of Lancaster, so between them they united the warring parties that had fought the bloody century-long War of the Roses. Now their older son, Arthur, was about to marry a Spanish princess. On a cold November day sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrived in London for a wedding that would mark a triumphal moment in Henry's reign.In this remarkable book, Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic Henry VII--a controlling, paranoid, avaricious monarch who was entering the most perilous years of his long reign.Rich with drama and insight, Winter King is an astonishing story of pageantry, treachery, intrigue and incident--and the fraught, dangerous birth of Tudor England.

    Although almost six centuries old, the Battle of Agincourt still captivates the imaginations of men and women on both sides of the Atlantic. It has been immortalized in high culture (Shakespeare's Henry V) and low (the New York Post prints Henry's battle cry on its editorial page each Memorial Day). It is the classic underdog story in the history of warfare, and generations have wondered how the English -- outnumbered by the French six to one -- could have succeeded so bravely and brilliantly. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, eminent scholar Juliet Barker casts aside the legend and shows us that the truth behind Agincourt is just as exciting, just as fascinating, and far more significant. She paints a gripping narrative of the October 1415 clash between outnumbered English archers and heavily armored French knights. But she also takes us beyond the battlefield into palaces and common cottages to bring into vivid focus an entire medieval world in flux. Populated with chivalrous heroes, dastardly spies, and a ferocious and bold king, Agincourt is as earthshaking as its subject -- and confirms Juliet Barker's status as both a historian and a storyteller of the first rank.

    In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain's most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other. Today, hundreds of military cemeteries spread across the fields of northern France and Belgium contain the bodies of millions of men who died in the war to end all wars. Can we ever avoid repeating history?