Medieval & Early Modern History Books

An essential overview of great kingdoms in African history and their legacies, written by world-leading experts. From the ancient Nile Valley to the savannas of medieval West Africa, the highlands of Ethiopia and on to the forests…

This illustrated introduction offers a fresh approach to the history of the Islamic world from its origins to the present day. Told in six chapters, arranged both chronologically and thematically, and richly enhanced with outstand…

A true tale of high adventure in the South Seas. The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the Indonesian archipelago. Just two miles long and half a mile wide, it is remote, tranquil, and, these days, largely ignored. Y…

Control the sea, and you control everything...a gripping tale of naval warfare, dynastic rivalry, and technical innovation, from the author of the classic work Genghis Khanand the Making of the Modern World.Genghis Khan built a fo…

The life of William Shakespeare, Britain's greatest dramatist, was inextricably linked with the history of London. Together, the great writer and the great city came of age and confronted triumph and tragedy. Triumph came when Sha…

It's time to meet the real Vikings. A comb, preserved in a bog, engraved with the earliest traces of a new writing system. A pagan shrine deep beneath a lava field.A note from an angry wife to a husband too long at the tavern. Doo…

The culture of the Viking world speaks of both violence and of beauty. This extensively illustrated volume brings together nearly 200 carefully chosen artifacts that reflect the art and daily life of Viking-Age Europe and the Nort…

A revolutionary new history of the diffusion of Indian ideas, from the award-winning, bestselling author and co-host of the chart-topping Empire podcast. India is the forgotten heart of the ancient world. In the millennium and a h…

The history of the Middle Ages is typically the story of the rich and powerful, but archaeology represents another way of interrogating our history. By using cutting-edge science to examine human remains and burials, it is possibl…

September 1613. In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England’s great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is ‘tormented’ with violent convulsions.Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating deat…

How the Mongol invasions of the Near East reshaped the balance of world power in the Middle Ages. For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the …

Old English was spoken over a thousand years ago, when every animal was a deor. In this glittering collection of words and animals we find deors big and small, ordinary, extraordinary and delightfully baffling.From walker-weavers …

An authoritative and concise history of witchcraft from the ancient world up to the present day. Witchcraft has always been a fluid and intriguing belief system that has enchanted and sometimes terrified humanity. For over forty y…

Central Europe is not just a space on a map but also a region of shared experience - of mutual borrowings, impositions and misapprehensions. From the Roman Empire onwards, it has been the target of invasion from the east.In the Mi…

Through the lives of major figures from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, including Copernicus, Gutenberg, Luther, Catherine de Medici, Rabelais, van Eyck and Shakespeare, Paul Strathern tells the fascinating story of th…

When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent.Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was sketchy at best, and, to the …

Manuscripts teem with life. They are not only the stuff of history and literature, but they offer some of the only tangible evidence we have of entire lives, long receded.Hidden Hands tells the stories of the artisans, artists, sc…

Dan Jones's epic new history tells nothing less than the story of how the world we know today came to be built. It is a thousand-year adventure that moves from the ruins of the once-mighty city of Rome, sacked by barbarians in AD …

A rich blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with the thread of black comedy familiar to readers of William Dalrymple's previous work. In AD 587, two monks, John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist, embar…

In the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams.Children sicken and die. As…

Follow bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman - and the cutting-edge forensic techniques central to her research - as she uncovers epic stories of the Viking age and follows a small 'Carnelian' bead found in a Viking grave in Derbyshire to i…

An instant bestseller and one of the most celebrated history books of the year, Femina reveals the power and influence of medieval women who have been written out of our history. From royalty and religion to fame and fury, see the…

John Donne lived myriad lives. Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, …

The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic-Asian antithesis of the Christian-European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans' multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into …

The greatest conquest in historyGenghis Khan left an empire more than twice the size of Alexander's: his successors went on to conquer and govern an area stretching from Korea to the River Danube. How did a band of nomadic herdsme…

In the 6th century AD, the Near East was divided between two great empires: the Persian and the Roman. A hundred years on, and one had vanished for ever, while the other was a dismembered, bleeding trunk. In their place, a new sup…

The 'Viking Age' is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, and to end in September 1066, when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge …

Of all the civilisations existing in the year 1000, that of Western Europe seemed the unlikeliest candidate for future greatness. Compared to the glittering empires of Byzantium or Islam, the splintered kingdoms on the edge of the…

A SPECTATOR AND EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 This is the story of our love affair with books, whether we arrange them on our shelves, inhale their smell, scrawl in their margins or just curl up with them in bed. Taking u…

Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, BBC History Magazine and Tablet. The Middle Ages were a time of wonder. They gave us the first universities, the first eyeglasses and the first mechanical clocks as …