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Showing 1-12 of 12 results for books

Pax

Pax

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£30
Format
Hardcover
Other Formats
Other formats available
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Holland, who co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is History, is at his best when having fun with Rome’s bloody history’ The Times

‘A book for lovers of traditional, grand sweep narrative history’ Sunday Times

The definitive history of Rome’s golden age – antiquity’s ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness

The Pax Romana has long been revered as a golden age. At its peak, the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to Arabia, and contained perhaps a quarter of humanity. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state the world had yet seen.

Beginning in 69AD, a year that saw four Caesars in succession rule the empire, and ending some seven decades later with the death of Hadrian, Pax presents a dazzling history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland portrays the Roman Empire in all its predatory glory. Vivid scene follows vivid scene: the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii, the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s Wall, the conquests of Trajan. Vividly sketching the lives of Romans both ordinary and spectacular, from slaves to emperors, Holland demonstrates how Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.

A stunning portrait of Rome’s glory days, this is the epic history of the pax Romana.
Dominion (50th Anniversary Edition)

Dominion (50th Anniversary Edition)

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£12.99
Format
Paperback
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Other formats available
The Sunday Times bestseller, with a new introduction by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

‘If great books encourage you to look at the world in an entirely new way, then Dominion is a very great book indeed’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times History Book of the Year
‘Terrific: bold, ambitious and passionate’ Peter Frankopan


Dominion tells the epic story of how those in the West came to be what they are, and why they think the way they do. Ranging from Moses to Merkel, from Babylon to Beverley Hills, from the emergence of secularism to the abolition of slavery, it explores why, in a society that has become increasingly doubtful of religion’s claims, so many of its instincts remain irredeemably Christian. Christianity’s enduring impact is not confined to churches. It can be seen everywhere in the West: in science, in secularism, in gay rights, even in atheism. It is – to coin a phrase – the greatest story ever told.

PRAISE FOR DOMINION
‘A masterpiece of scholarship and storytelling’ John Gray, New Statesman
‘Filled with vivid portraits, gruesome deaths and moral debates… Holland has all the talents of an accomplished novelist’ Terry Eagleton, Guardian
This extraordinary book is vintage Tom Holland: history boldly and elegantly retold’ Diarmaid MacCulloch
Dynasty

Dynasty

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£12.99
Format
Paperback
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‘A masterly account of this first wicked century of the Roman Empire’ Sunday Times



‘Holland does not just tell the story of the reign of the Julio-Claudian family. He knits the history of ancient Rome into his narrative – its founding myths, the fall of the republic, the religious superstitions – with a skill so dextrous you don’t notice the stitching. Dynasty is both a formidable effort to compile what we can know about the ancient world and a sensational story’ Observer

‘A witty and skilful storyteller… He recounts with pleasure his racy tales of psychopathic cruelty, incest, paedophilia, matricide, fratricide, assassination and depravity’ William Dalrymple, New Statesman

‘A wonderful, surging narrative… [for] anyone interested in history, politics or human nature – and it has never been better told’ Mail on Sunday

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
In The Shadow Of The Sword

In The Shadow Of The Sword

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£14.99
Format
Paperback
Other Formats
Other formats available

A SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER



‘A stunning blockbuster’ Robert Fisk

‘A brilliant tour de force of revisionist scholarship and thrilling storytelling’ Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘A compelling detective story of the highest order’ Sunday Times

‘Tom Holland has an enviable gift for summoning up the colour, the individuals and animation of the past’ Independent

In the 6th century AD, the Near East was divided between two venerable empires: the Persian and the Roman. A hundred years on and one had vanished forever, while the other seemed almost finished. Ruling in their place were the Arabs: an upheaval so profound that it spelt, in effect, the end of the ancient world. In the Shadow of the Sword explores how this came about. Spanning from Constantinople to the Arabian desert, and starring some of the most remarkable rulers who ever lived, he tells a story vivid with drama, horror, and startling achievement.
The Bone Hunter

The Bone Hunter

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£4.49
Format
ebook
An heir of John Buchan and Rider Haggard, Holland is a storyteller, dealing in mysteries and marvels … he holds the reader’s attention in an iron grip’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

1878. The golden days of dinosaur discoveries. In the still-Wild West, fossils of a monstrous size are being uncovered by America’s two greatest bone-hunters, Professors Marsh and Cope. Caught in the bitterest of feuds, their rival gangs steal or smash up each other’s collections of bones, and clash murderously in the badlands of the West.

Back in New York, the two professors are sniffing out tantalising rumours of the ultimate find. Also lured by these hints are enigmatic English scientist Captain Dawkins and Miss Lilian Prescott, a naïve but wilful heiress. Drawn into a web of corruption and murder, they are forced on a desperate hunt for a box of mysterious fossils – a quest filled with danger, adventure and extraordinary discoveries.
The Sleeper In The Sands

The Sleeper In The Sands

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£7
Format
ebook
Egypt, 1922: the Valley of the Kings. After years of fruitless labour, the archaeologist Howard Carter discovers a mysterious tomb, sealed and marked with a terrible curse. But what is the nature of the tomb’s deadly secret? And what is the web of strange connections spreading back through millennia, to the very heart of Egypt’s fabulous past? In a glorious Arabian Nightmare of lost cities, treacherous priests and daring archaeologists, an ancient civilisation shimmers into life; colourful, magical, and unutterably strange.

‘True adventure stories are all too scarce nowadays. And adventure stories that have the capacity to make the reader think and wonder are an even rarer commodity. Tom Holland’s latest novel manages both with tremendous verve … a galloping page-turner’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
Millennium

Millennium

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£12.99
Format
Paperback
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Other formats available
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 Atlantic appeared impoverished, fearful and backward. But the anarchy of these years proved to be, not the portents of the end of the world, as many Christians had dreaded, but rather the birthpangs of a radically new order.

MILLENNIUM is a stunning panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state. The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe – restless, creative and dynamic – was forged from out of the convulsions of these extraordinary times is as fascinating and as momentous as any in history.
Supping With Panthers

Supping With Panthers

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£14.99
Format
Paperback
In 1888 Dr John Eliot returns to London haunted by the memory of a terrible expedition to a remote Himalayan kingdom, where he had uncovered horrors far beyond the frontiers of science. Yet Eliot’s faith in reason is to be tested even further when the body of a friend, drained white of blood, is dragged up from the Thames, and another associate goes missing. Eliot’s quest to uncover the mystery reveals a deadly conspiracy, but then, in the lair of an enigmatic Eastern adventuress, he glimpses hints of a truth yet more extraordinary, of dark and terrible pleasures, of a whole new world …

Vampires and immortals walk the gas-lit streets of Victorian London, mingling with Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Lord Byron, and Tom Holland meshes fact with fiction in this brilliantly imaginative novel of passion and suspense.
Deliver Us From Evil

Deliver Us From Evil

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£10.99
Format
Paperback
Wiltshire, during the dying days of Oliver Cromwell’s Republic. Robert Vaughan is the son of a Parliamentarian officer who is investigating a series of grisly murders which suggest a link with Satanic rituals at Stonehenge. The return of a notoriously wicked Cavalier, signalling the impending royalist restoration, leads to a terrible tragedy for the Vaughans. Robert’s flight from his violent, terrifying past leads him to Restoration London, where he works as scribe for Milton, and where he survives the Plague and the Great Fire.

But Robert is led along a dark path, to vampirism and beyond, as he devotes himself to gaining the powers that will enable him to fight an evil killer of seemingly satanic powers. He will travel the globe, from the ancient ghetto of Prague to the virgin forest of the New World, as he aims to gain revenge on those who betrayed him.
The Vampyre

The Vampyre

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£12.99
Format
Paperback
‘Ingenious and entertaining’ Sunday Times
‘ Byron himself would have been pleased by such an eerie, erudite addition to his myth’ Time Out

Infamous poet Lord Byron comes to life with incendiary brilliance in this spellbinding blend of gothic imagination and documented fact.

Wandering in the mountains of Greece, the supreme sensualist is drawn to the beauty of a mysterious fugitive slave; soon he is utterly entranced, and his fate is sealed. He embarks on a life of adventure even his genius could not have foreseen; chosen to enjoy powers beyond those any vampire has ever known, Byron traverses the centuries and enters a dark, intoxicating world of long-lost secrets, ancient arts and scorching excesses of evil.

But Byron’s gift is also his torment: an all-consuming thirst that withers life at the root, damning all those he loves.

With its impeccable scholarship and breathtaking storytelling, THE VAMPYRE is a wonderful combination of fact and fantasy.
Persian Fire

Persian Fire

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£12.99
Format
Paperback
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Other formats available

Tom Holland’s bestselling account of the world’s very first clash of civilisations between the Persians and the Greeks in 480BC



‘Magisterial… told with great authority and a novelistic colour and verve’
Books of the Year, Independent

‘Holland has a rare eye for detail, drama and the telling anecdote’
Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph

‘An unequivocal argument for the relevance of ancient history’
Observer

‘Holland brings this tumultuous, epoch-making period dazzlingly to life’
William Napier, Independent on Sunday

In the fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the most powerful man on the planet is as heart-stopping as any episode in history.
Rubicon

Rubicon

Contributors

Tom Holland

Price and format

Price
£12.99
Format
Paperback
Other Formats
Other formats available
‘The book that really held me, in fact, obsessed me, was Rubicon . . . This is narrative history at its best. Bloody and labyrinthine political intrigue and struggle, brilliant oratory, amazing feats of conquest and cruelty’ Ian McEwan, Books of the Year, Guardian

Re-evaluating Rome for a new generationRobert Harris, Sunday Times

‘Marvellously readable’ Niall Ferguson

The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness – the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall.
It is a story of incomparable drama. This was the century of Julius Caesar, the gambler whose addiction to glory led him to the banks of the Rubicon, and beyond; of Cicero, whose defence of freedom would make him a byword for eloquence; of Spartacus, the slave who dared to challenge a superpower; of Cleopatra, the queen who did the same.

Tom Holland brings to life this strange and unsettling civilization, with its extremes of ambition and self-sacrifice, bloodshed and desire. Yet alien as it was, the Republic still holds up a mirror to us. Its citizens were obsessed by celebrity chefs, all-night dancing and exotic pets; they fought elections in law courts and were addicted to spin; they toppled foreign tyrants in the name of self-defence. Two thousand years may have passed, but we remain the Romans’ heirs.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2004 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2003 HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS
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