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Julia Blackburn

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 
 
A journey told through stories and songs into Doggerland, the ancient region that once joined the east coast of England to Holland 
 
Time Song tells of the creation, the existence and the loss of a country now called Doggerland, a huge and fertile area that once connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC. 
 
Julia Blackburn mixes fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen 'songs' and all sorts of stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of this vanished land. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream... 
 
'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator 
 
'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley

Time Song

Searching for Doggerland

Robin Lane Fox

Homer's Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its dreadful consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. It was composed more than 2,600 years ago, but still transfixes us with its tale of loss and battle, love and revenge, guided throughout by the active presence of the gods. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving but great questions remain: where, how and when it was composed and why it has such enduring power? 
 
In this compelling book Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a life-long love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date and a method for its composition, giving us a sense of alternative approaches and grounding his own in discoveries about long heroic poems composed elsewhere in the world, and the ever-growing evidence of archaeology. 
 
Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world. Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. In this superbly written and conceived tribute, Lane Fox expresses and amplifies what old and new readers can find in it. It is pervaded, he argues, by a poignant hardness which is not just a poetic trick. It is a deeply held view of the world.

Homer and His Iliad

Francis Pryor

Landscapes reflect and shape our behaviour. They make us who we are and bear witness to the shifting patterns of human life over the generations. Formed by a complex series of natural and human processes, they rarely yield their secrets readily. 
 
Bringing to bear a lifetime's digging, Francis Pryor delves into England's hidden urban and rural landscapes, from Whitby Abbey to the navvy camp at Risehill in Cumbria, from Tintagel to Tottenham's Broadwater Farm. Scattered through fields, woods, moors, roads, tracks and towns, he reveals the stories of our physical surroundings and what they meant to the people who formed them, used them and lived in them. These landscapes, he stresses, are our common physical inheritance. If we can understand how to make them yield up their secrets, it will help us, their guardians, to maintain and shape them for future generations.

Paths to the Past

Encounters with Britain's Hidden Landscapes

Frank Pope

The Hoi An, a wreck deep beneath the waves of the South China Sea. In her fifteenth-century hull a priceless treasure; on the waves above a team of treasure hunters racing against the clock to claim the fabulous cargo via dangerous saturation dives. But typhoons, pirates, gunships, mutiny, rival treasure hunters, storms and greed were to make this deep-sea dive one of the most dramatic and gruelling expeditions ever undertaken. Frank Pope was there and his gripping tale of this high-stakes folly will captivate anyone who loves undersea adventure.

Dragon Sea

Emily Hauser

THE INSTANT TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
Award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends, and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . . . 
 
'Bold and intellectually thrilling . . . blending history and science, rigorous scholarship and dazzling feats of imagination.' TOM HOLLAND, historian and co-host of 'The Rest is History' podcast 
 
'Absolutely blew me away . . . rich, evocative and original work . . . this book is quite wonderful.' ELODIE HARPER, author of The Wolf Den 
 
'Offers a dazzling new way of thinking about the ancient world . . . a wonderful, beautifully written and important book.' DAN JONES, author of Henry V 
 
'A book the world has been waiting for . . . I loved it.' 
BETTANY HUGHES, author of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World 
 
Contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men – and it's not only men's stories that deserve to be told. 
 
In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them. 
 
A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer’s epics charted entirely by women – from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope – Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece’s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.

Mythica

A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It

Neil Oliver

"Everyone should have two copies - one for the car and one for the house to plan journeys. . . a reminder to think more about the places you pass and less about your route, because every British journey is through rich history." (Edward Stourton) 
 
From much-loved historian Neil Oliver, comes this beautifully written, kaleidoscopic history of a place with a story like no other. 
 
The British Isles, this archipelago of islands, is to Neil Oliver the best place in the world. From north to south, east to west it cradles astonishing beauty. The human story here is a million years old, and counting. But the tolerant, easygoing peace we enjoy has been hard won. We have made and known the best and worst of times. We have been hero and villain and all else in between, and we have learned some lessons. 
 
The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places is Neil’s very personal account of what makes these islands so special, told through the places that have witnessed the unfolding of our history. Beginning with footprints made in the sand by humankind’s earliest ancestors, he takes us via Romans and Vikings, the flowering of religion, through civil war, industrial revolution and two world wars. From windswept headlands to battlefields, ancient trees to magnificent cathedrals, each of his destinations is a place where, somehow, the spirit of the past seems to linger.

The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places

Tom Chivers

'A lyrical meditation on landscapes and cities, vivid reportage and a memoir. And also a beautifully realised and moving read.' Financial Times 
 
'A beguiling mix of history, geology, folklore and memoir that captivated me from the first page.' Lara Maiklem, author of Mudlarking 
 
'Tom Chivers brings a poet's sensibility to this book about the hidden parts of the capital, mixing the past with the present, the known with the unknown and his personal story with social history and geology.' Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other 
 
What secrets lie beneath a city? 
 
Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of our streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves. 
 
A lyrical interrogation of a capital city, a landscape and our connection to place, London Clay celebrates urban edgelands: in-between spaces where the natural world and the metropolis collide. Through a combination of historical research, vivid reportage and personal memoir, it will transform how you see London, and cities everywhere. 
 
'Tom Chivers, with the forensic eye of an investigator, the soul of a poet, is an engaging presence; a guide we would do well to follow.' Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London

London Clay

Journeys in the Deep City

THE PERFECT READ FOR TROUBLED TIMES 
 
From the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places comes this inspiring and beautifully written meditation on the wisdom inherited from our ancestors. 
 
For all we have gained in the modern world, simple peace of mind is hard to find. In a time that is increasingly fraught with complexity and conflict, we are told that our wellbeing relies on remaining as present as possible. But what if the key to being present lies in the past? 
 
In Wisdom of the Ancients, Neil Oliver takes us back in time, to grab hold of the ideas buried in forgotten cultures and early civilizations. From Laetoli footprints in Tanzania to Keralan rituals, stone circles and cave paintings, Oliver takes us on a global journey through antiquity. A master storyteller, drawing on immense knowledge of our ancient past, he distils this wisdom into twelve messages that have endured the test of time, and invites us to consider how these might apply to our lives today. The result is powerful and inspirational, moving and profound.

Wisdom of the Ancients

Life lessons from our distant past

Dan Hicks

Tracing the origins of contemporary conflicts over art, heritage, memory, and colonialism, Every Monument Will Fall joins the dots between the building of statues, the founding of academic disciplines like archaeology and anthropology, and the warehousing of stolen art and human skulls in museums — including the one in which he is a curator. 
 
Part history, part biography, part excavation, the story runs from the Yorkshire wolds to the Crimean War, from southern Ireland to the frontline of the American Civil War, from the City of London to the University of Oxford — revealing enduring legacies of militarism, slavery, racism and white supremacy hardwired into the heart of our cultural institutions. 
 
Every Monument Will Fall offers an urgent reappraisal of how we think about culture, and how to find hope, remembrance and reconciliation in the fragments of an unfinished violent past. Refusing to choose between pulling down every statue, or living in a past that we can never change, the book makes the case for allowing monuments of all kinds to fall once in a while, even those that are hard to see as monuments, rebuilding a memory culture that is in step with our times.

Every Monument Will Fall

A Story of Remembering and Forgetting

Susan Casey

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
An awe-inspiring portrait of the mysterious world beneath the waves, and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets. 
______________________________________________'Fantastical and forbidding' Washington Post 
A fascinating history' Time 
'Entralling' Boston GlobeFor all of human history, the deep ocean has been a source of fear and fascination, an unknowable realm that evokes a singular, compelling question: what’s down there? But now cutting-edge technologies are allowing scientists and explorers to discover this strange and exotic underworld: a place of soaring mountains, smouldering volcanoes and valleys 7,000 feet deeper than Everest is high. A realm long thought to be devoid of life is, in fact, a vibrant new world, home to pink gelatinous predators and shimmering creatures a hundred feet long, creatures that breathe iron and communicate through their skin, ancient animals with glass skeletons and sharks that live for half a millennium. 
 
In The Underworld, Susan Casey traverses the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet. She interviews the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers as they uncover this vast unseen realm. And she discovers the mind-blowing complexity and ecological importance of the abyssal ocean and the quadrillions of creatures who live in its depths.

The Underworld

Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

Christopher Somerville

Travelling a thousand miles and across three billion years, Christopher Somerville, author of The January Man and Ships of Heaven, sets out to discover how the land beneath our feet shapes our past, our present and our future. 
 
Taking a journey of a thousand miles, Christopher Somerville begins in the far north, at the three-billion-year-old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, formed when the world was still molten, and travels south-eastwards to the furthest corner of Essex, where new land is being formed. Crossing bogs, scaling peaks and skirting quarry pits, he unearths the stories bound up in the layers of rock beneath our feet, and examines how they have influenced everything from how we farm to how we build our houses, from the Industrial Revolution to the current climate crisis. 
 
Told with characteristic humour and insight, this gripping exploration of the British landscape and its remarkable history cannot fail to change the way you see the world beyond your door. 
 
&lsquo;Somerville is a walker&rsquo;s writer&rsquo; Nicholas Crane

Walking the Bones of Britain

A 3 Billion Year Journey from the Outer Hebrides to the Thames Estuary

John Man

'Man does for the reader that most difficult of tasks: he conjures up an ancient people in an alien landscape in such a way as to make them live.' - Guardian 
 
The people of the first nomadic empire left no written records, but from 200 BC they dominated the heart of Asia for 400 years. They changed the world. The Mongols, today’s descendants of Genghis Khan, see them as ancestors. Their rise cemented Chinese unity and inspired the first Great Wall. Their heirs under Attila the Hun helped destroy the Roman Empire. 
 
We don’t know what language they spoke, but they became known as Xiongnu, or Hunnu, a term passed down the centuries and across Eurasia, enduring today in shortened form as ‘Hun’. Outside Asia precious little is known of their rich history, but new evidence reframes our understanding of the indelible mark they left on a vast region stretching from Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China. 
 
Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, Barbarians at the Wall traces their epic story, and shows how the nomadic cultures of the steppes gave birth to a ‘barbarian empire’ with the wealth and power to threaten the civilised order of the ancient world.

Barbarians at the Wall

The First Nomadic Empire and the Making of China

Graeme Lawson

Wonderfully engaging, expansive and ambitious, Sound Tracks tells the history of our relationship with music in sixty detective stories, each focusing on the discovery of a musical instrument - or its fragments - in archaeological digs around the world. Taking us from the present day - finding a 100-year-old wax cylinder recording on a flea market - all the way back to the dawn of time - the thrilling discovery of a prehistoric flute - long-lost music is itself reconstructed as we enter the worlds of those who created it. 
 
We feel the delight of a child in Peru in 700 AD, playing with a water-filled pot designed to chirp like a bird; we appreciate the difficult task of a soldier sending signals by trumpet to the next watchtower on Hadrian's Wall; we can almost hear the sounds of the sixty-four bells buried in a tomb in China in the 5th century BC. 
 
Graeme Lawson takes us on a grand tour of the world's greatest musical discoveries, revealing that music is part of human DNA - not just in its role as pastime, entertainment or religious expression but also as a medium in which we commemorate our pasts, communicate with each other, and shape our identities, relationships and communities. 
 
Written with verve and passion and brimming with astonishing insights, Sound Tracks is an enthralling alternative history of humanity in which the silences of the past are filled with a wonderful treasure hoard of forgotten sounds and voices.

Sound Tracks

A Musical Detective Story

Uncovering Our Musical Past

Aubrey Manning

All 31 episodes of the archaeological series investigating the mysteries and secrets of the pastMuch of human history is hidden from us, buried deep under our feet. Layered beneath the landscape are the unknown stories of ancient peoples and civilizations, written in bones and long-lost artefacts, waiting to be revealed and deciphered. Between 1999 and 2006, over eight radio series, renowned author and broadcaster Aubrey Manning followed geological and archaeological clues in an attempt to unravel some of these mysteries – from the Lost Map of London and the Amber Room to the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Antikythera Mechanism and the Land of Punt. This landmark radio series, lost for years, can now be listened to again.Journeying around the British Isles and worldwide, he visits sites including tombs, tunnels and temples, setting out to uncover the secrets that lie within them. Could ‘KV 55’ in the Valley of the Kings be the final resting place of the great Pharaoh Akhenaten? What can the ‘Red Lady’ of Paviland tell us about how homo sapiens succeeded Neanderthals? Did the Saxons make top-notch steel 1,000 years before the Industrial Revolution? And was a swamp in the South Anatolian plain the unlikely location for the world’s first city?These and other burning questions are tackled by Manning, with erudite input from a host of expert researchers, historians, scientists and archaeologists. His investigations take in a Roman drinking cult; a Bronze Age archer dubbed the ‘King of Stonehenge’; Boudica’s forgotten husband, Prasutagus; the tale of a saint, severed hands and a sword in the stone – and the remarkable discovery of British prehistoric cave art...Production creditsPresented by Aubrey Manning and Brian Moffat (Series 1, Episode 4)Produced by Dave Sharp, Sue Broom, Pam Rutherford, Helen Sharp and Martin RedfernFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates:Series 1 (first broadcast 13 July-3 August 1999)Valley of the KingsGlozelLost Map of LondonSoutraSeries 2 (first broadcast 7-28 November 2000)Sounds of the Stone AgeThe Amber RoomThe Drinking CultThe Pharos Lighthouse of AlexandriaSeries 3 (first broadcast 30 October – 20 November 2001)The 'Red Lady' of PavilandLondon's Mediaeval MedicineSaxon SteelSan Galgano and the Sword in the StoneSeries 4 (first broadcast 5-26 November 2002)Taming the HorseCatal HuyukThe Amesbury ArcherMeadowcroft Rock ShelterSeries 5 (first broadcast 5-26 August 2003)Lynford NeanderthalsAncient Egyptian IllnessesTri Radial CairnsGreat Orme MineSeries 6 (first broadcast 7-28 December 2004)The Land of PuntWharram PercyBritish Cave ArtMound BuildersSeries 7 (first broadcast 20 December 2005-17 January 2006)The Tunnellers of the First World WarThe Romans in IndiaBen Lawers and Loch TayThe First AmericansSeries 8 (first broadcast 12-26 December 2006)The Antikythera MechanismFirst Residents of BritainPrasutagus, husband of Boudicca© 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Unearthing Mysteries: The Complete Series 1-8

A BBC Radio History Series

Francis Pryor's search for the origins of our island story has been the quest of a lifetime. In Home, the Time Team expert explores the first nine thousand years of life in Britain, from the retreat of the glaciers to the Romans' departure. Tracing the settlement of domestic communities, he shows how archaeology enables us to reconstruct the evolution of habits, traditions and customs. But this, too, is Francis Pryor's own story: of his passion for unearthing our past, from Yorkshire to the west country, Lincolnshire to Wales, digging in freezing winters, arid summers, mud and hurricanes, through frustrated journeys and euphoric discoveries. Evocative and intimate, Home shows how, in going about their daily existence, our prehistoric ancestors created the institution that remains at the heart of the way we live now: the family.

Home

A Time Traveller's Tales from Britain's Prehistory

Tom Holland

The formation of England happened against the odds - the division of the country into rival kingdoms, the assaults of the Vikings, the precarious position of the island on the edge of the known world. But King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex, his son Eadweard expanded it, and his grandson Æthelstan finally united Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and became Rex totius Britanniae. 
 
Tom Holland recounts this extraordinarily exciting story with relish and drama. We meet the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Æthelflæd, 'Lady of the Mercians', who brought Æthelstan up at the Mercian court. At the end of the book we understand the often confusing history of the Anglo-Saxon kings better than ever before.

Athelstan (Penguin Monarchs)

The Making of England

Joyce Tyldesley

For over a decade Nefertiti, wife of the heretic king Akhenaten, was the most influential woman in the Bronze Age world; a beautiful queen blessed by the sun-god, adored by her family and worshipped by her people.  Her image and her name were celebrated throughout Egypt and her future seemed golden.  Suddenly Nefertiti disappeared from the royal family, vanishing so completely that it was as if she had never been.  No record survives to detail her death, no monument serves to mourn her passing and to this day her end remains an enigma - her body has never been found.   Joyce Tyldesley here provides a detailed discussion of the life and times of Nefertiti, Egypt's sun queen, set against the background of the ephemeral Amarna court.

Nefertiti

Egypt's Sun Queen

Patrick Roberts

Jungle is a new and ambitious history of the world, telling the remarkable story of the world's tropical forests from the arrival of the first plants millions of years ago to the role of tropical forests in the evolution of the world's atmosphere, the dinosaurs, the first mammals and even our own species and ancestors. Highlighting provocative new evidence garnered from cutting-edge research, Dr Roberts shows, for example, that our view of humans as 'savannah specialists' is wildly wrong, and that the 'Anthropocene' began not with the Industrial Revolution, but potentially as early as 6,000 years ago in the tropics. We see that the relationship between humankind and 'jungles' is deep-rooted, that we are all connected to their destruction, and that we must all act to save them. Urgent, clear-sighted and original, Jungle challenges the way we think about the world - and ourselves.

Jungle

How Tropical Forests Shaped World History

How Tropical Forests Shaped World History – and Us

'Oliver is an evocative storyteller, vividly bringing his tales to life' BBC History 
 
From Genghis Khan's domination on earth to Armstrong's first steps on the moon, discover the 100 moments that defined humanity and shaped our world forever. 
 
Neil Oliver takes us on a whistle-stop tour around the world and through a million years to give us this unique and invaluable grasp of how human history pieces together. 
 
From the east to the west, north to south, these 100 moments act like stepping stones allowing us to make sense of how these pivotal events have shaped the world we know today. 
 
Including many moments readers will expect - from the advent of the printing press to the birth of the internet - there are also surprises, and with them, some remarkable, unforgettable stories that give a whole new insight on our past. 
 
From the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places, this is outstanding new history of how our world was made from 5000 BC to the present. 
 
********************* 
Praise for Neil Oliver 
 
'Neil Oliver writes beautifully - bringing the past to life and letting us see ourselves in a new light.' - Professor Alice Roberts 
'Brilliantly demonstrates Neil's mastery of the broad sweep of British history and landscape.' - Dan Snow 
'Highly-crafted...a vivid, pungent history.' - TLS 
'Compelling' - Daily Mail

The Story of the World in 100 Moments

Discover the stories that defined humanity and shaped our world

Ruth Scurr

'A truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 
 
This is the autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote. 
 
You may not know his name. Aubrey was a modest man, a gentleman-scholar who cared far more for the preservation of history than for his own legacy. But he was a passionate collector, an early archaeologist and the inventor of modern biography. 
 
With all the wit, charm and originality that characterises her subject, Ruth Scurr has seamlessly stitched together John Aubrey's own words to tell his life story and a captivating history of seventeenth-century England unlike any other. 
 
'A game-changer in the world of biography' Mary Beard 
 
'Ingenious' Hilary Mantel 
 
'Irresistible' Philip Pullman

John Aubrey

My Own Life

Peter Wadhams

'Astonishing ... beautiful, compelling and terrifying' Observer 
 
'Wadhams' writing sparkles ... a lyrical sense of wonder at the natural world ... essential reading ... may be the best reader-friendly account of the greenhouse effect available to date' John Burnside, New Statesman 
 
Ice is beautiful and complex. It regulates our planet's temperature. And it is vanishing - fast. Peter Wadhams, the world's leading expert on sea ice, draws on his lifetime's research in the Arctic region to illuminate what is happening, what it means for the future, and what can be done. 
 
'This most experienced and rational scientist states what so many other researchers privately fear but cannot publicly say' John Vidal, Guardian 
 
'Wadhams brings huge expertise to his subject - and he is an excellent writer' Martin Rees 
 
'Utterly extraordinary' Jonathon Porritt

A Farewell to Ice

A Report from the Arctic

Fred Pearce

DEEP JUNGLE is an exploration of the most alien and feared habitat on Earth. Starting with man's earliest recorded adventures, Fred Pearce journeys high into the canopy - home to two-thirds of all the creatures on our planet, many of whom never come down to earth. During his travels he encounters all manner of fantastic flora and fauna, including a frog that can glide from tree to tree, a spider that can drag live chickens into its burrow and a flower that smells of decaying flesh. 
 
It is in the jungle that Pearce discovers secrets about how evolution works, the intricate links that connect us all, and maybe even clues to where humans came from - here is the key to our future foods and medicines, our climate and our understanding of how life works. At the start of a new millennium Pearce asks why we continue to waste precious time - and billions of dollars - looking for signs of life elsewhere in our universe when the greatest range of life-forms that have ever existed lies right here on our doorstep. Today environmentalists say we are on the verge of destroying the last rainforests, and with them the planet's evolutionary crucible, and maybe even its ability to maintain life on Earth. But nature has a way of getting its own back. The Mayans and the people of Angkor went too far in manipulating nature and paid the ultimate price. Their civilisations died and the jungle returned. Nature reclaimed it's own and it may do so again ...

Deep Jungle

Journey To The Heart Of The Rainforest

John Romer

The Book of the Dead is a unique collection of funerary texts from a wide variety of sources, dating from the fifteenth to the fourth century BC. Consisting of spells, prayers and incantations, each section contains the words of power to overcome obstacles in the afterlife. The papyruses were often left in sarcophagi for the dead to use as passports on their journey from burial, and were full of advice about the ferrymen, gods and kings they would meet on the way. Offering valuable insights into ancient Egypt, The Book of the Dead has also inspired fascination with the occult and the afterlife in recent years.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead

For nearly two thousand years after the last pharaoh ruled Egypt the wonders of this ancient culture remained hidden, seemingly lost and forgotten for ever. Then, in the late eighteenth century, Napoleons invasion of the country sparked an explosion of interest in ancient Egypt that burns as strongly today as ever. The obsession with anything and everything Egyptian has inspired many to dedicate their lives to the search for treasure in Egypts sands.   All of these explorers, collectors and archaeologists can be loosely classified as Egyptologists and this relatively new science has been blessed with more than its fair share of intriguing characters, some of whom, by virtue of their larger-than-life personalities, curious habits or spectacular finds, have come to dominate the story of the rediscovery of ancient Egypt - the story of this book.  In 'Egypt: How A Lost Civilization was Rediscovered', highly respected author and archaeologist Joyce Tyldesley follows these real-life Indiana Joneses in their quest for the splendid monuments, tombs and artefacts that have unlocked many of the secrets of this mesmerizing civilization. From the nail-biting race to crack the hieroglyphic code to Howard Carters dramatic discovery of the golden treasures in Tutankhamen's tomb - surely the most heart-stopping moment in the history of archaeology - we experience the excitement, emotion and intrigue of this gripping adventure story.    Praise for Joyce Tyldesley:    Tyldesley has added a new, more human dimension her book should be required reading. Sunday Times on Ramses: Egypts Greatest Pharaoh

Egypt

How A Lost Civilisation Was Rediscovered

David Graeber

David Wengrow

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself. 
 
 Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent of their past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture and cities did not mean a plunge into hierarchy, then what kinds of organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume. 
 
 The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action.

The Dawn of Everything

A New History of Humanity

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