Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare's Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK's highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series Living with the Gods received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.

Neil MacGregor

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George MacDonald Fraser

For George MacDonald Fraser the bully Flashman was easily the most interesting character in Tom Brown's Schooldays, and imaginative speculation as to what might have happened to him after his expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness ended in 12 volumes of memoirs in which Sir Harry Paget Flashman - self-confessed scoundrel, liar, cheat, thief, coward -'and, oh yes, a toady' - romps his way through decades of nineteenth-century history in a swashbuckling and often hilarious series of military and amorous adventures. In Flashman the youthful hero, armed with a commission in the 11th Dragoons, is shipped to India, woos and wins the beautiful Elspeth, and reluctantly takes part in the first Anglo-Afghan War, honing a remarkable talent for self-preservation.Flash for Freedom! finds him crewing on an African slave ship, hiding in a New Orleans whorehouse and fortuitously running into rising young American politician Abraham Lincoln...

Flashman, Flash for Freedom!, Flashman in the Great Game

Alexandre Dumas

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

On the day of his wedding, Edmond Dantes, master mariner, is arrested in Marseille on trumped-up charges and spirited away to the cellars of the Chateau d'If, an impregnable sea fortress in which he is imprisoned indefinitely. Escaping from the chateau by a series of daring manoeuvres, he unearths a great treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, buried there by a former fellow prisoner who bequeaths to him the secret of its whereabouts. Thus armed with unimaginable wealth and embittered by his long imprisonment, he resolves to devote his life to tracking down and punishing those responsible. 
This classic nineteenth-century translation has been revised and updated by Peter Washington, with an introduction by award-winning novelist Umberto Eco.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Mary Renault

In two remarkable historical novels, Mary Renault fashions from the myth of Theseus a convincingly flawed hero and weaves a thrillingly plausible account of the Labyrinth and the infamous Minotaur. 
The King Must Die follows the young Theseus as he discovers that his true father is the King of Athens, and volunteers to join the annual tribute of Athenian girls and youths sacrificed to a bull-worshipping cult on the island of Crete. Trapped in the labyrinthine palace of King Minos, Theseus enlists the help of high priestess Ariadne in a daring plan to free his people. 
The Bull From the Sea begins after Theseus's triumphal return to Athens. He is now king, but his confidence will be shaken by a life-changing encounter with the queen of the Amazons, the birth of a son who will insist on choosing his own path, and the tragic results of his wife's treachery. 
Renault's deep knowledge of the Greek world, her sure grasp of psychology and genius for inspired speculation bring the distant world of the legendary past enthrallingly to life.

The King Must Die / The Bull from the Sea

Joseph Conrad

In these three sea stories, based on his own experience, Conrad invests his portraits of mundane steamers and their crews with epic qualities of fortitude and courage in the face of overwhelming natural odds. At the same time, he probes the psychological condition of men together and under pressure with the greatest delicacy, raising the adventure story to the level of high art. The supreme poet of the sailor's life, Conrad here establishes his reputation as a master storyteller.

Typhoon And Other Stories

Alexander von Humboldt

Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing volcanoes in the Andes, swimming with crocodiles, racing through anthrax-infected Siberia, or publishing groundbreaking bestsellers. Ahead of his time, he recognized nature as an interdependent whole and he saw before anyone else that humankind was on a path to destroy it. He was one of the first European to study the Inca, Aztec and Mayan cultures and his epic five-year expedition to Latin America (1799–1804) prompted him to denounce slavery as 'the greatest evil ever to have afflicted humanity'. To Humboldt, the melody of his prose was as important as its content, and this selection from his most famous works - the Personal Narrative of his travels to Latin America, Cosmos, Views of Nature, Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, The Geography of Plants and his anti-slavery essay in Political Essay of the Island of Cuba - allows us the pleasure of reading his own accounts of his daring explorations and new concept of nature. Humboldt’s writings profoundly influenced naturalists and poets including Darwin, Thoreau, Muir, Goethe, Wordsworth, and Whitman. The Selected Writings is not only a tribute to Humboldt’s important role in environmental history and science, but also to his ability to fashion powerfully poetic narratives out of scientific observations.

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