The title of this book would lead a reader (this reader, anyway) to believe the focus to be the Achaemenid Empire and it's leading men, Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, leading up to and through the clash between Persia and Greece. That assertion is an error of scope, as Holland looks not only at the r...
”Rather than gesture his men onward, Gaius Julius Caesar instead gazed into the turbid waters of the Rubicon, and said nothing. And his mind moved upon silence.The Romans had a word for such a moment Discrimen, they called it--an instant of perilous and excruciating tension, when the achievements...
Slave of My Thirst is an engaging trip through a number of narrative styles, from an hilariously oafish British colonial officer, to Bram Stoker's journal, to the diary of the Sherlock Holmes-like hero, Jack Eliot, and beyond. Each voice is distinctive, advancing the plot from its own point of vi...
A narrative history of the poisoned arrow that shot Paris, which is a part of the 'World Book Day Quick Reads'.
Sardis was by any reckoning a great and fitting prize. The capital of the west, it ranked, in the opinion of the Persians, as one of the four corners of their dominion, a city so fabulously wealthy that even its rivers ran with gold. Croesus, when not bribing the Delphic oracle or being stung by ...
to everlasting infamy if published. JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, Journals Mr Nicholas Melrose, who was head of his law firm and an important man, did not like to feel upset. He was not used to it, and hadn’t been for many years. ‘We never give the keys to anyone,’ he said rudely. He glared with some resent...
Even so the best, I may venture to hope, is still to come and I shall duly await, with the keenest sense of anticipation, your following me onwards within the next two days. By then, I trust, all should be readied for yourself and Lady Evelyn, for my preparations here in Cairo have gone exceeding...
Paul had taught, Antichrist was destined to appear in Jerusalem, seated upon the mount where Solomon in ancient times had built his temple, “proclaiming himself to be God.”1Yet it was the sublime character of Scripture that its meaning, even when to the unlearned it appeared precise, could be int...
Rubicon was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History in 2004, and Persian Fire won the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award in 2006. Tom Holland's latest book, Millennium, is also available as an Abacus paperback. All three are available as audioboo...
How else was the size of their empire to be explained? Yet they also knew that the Republic’s greatness carried its own risks. To abuse it would be to court divine anger. Hence the Romans’ concern to refute all charges of bullying, and to insist that they had won their empire purely in self-defen...
'Why?' Sir Henry's eyes darted to and fro, bright with a desperate, hunted fear. 'It..." He swallowed; and at the same moment, from the depths of the house, there came a second faint cry, a long, soft sobbing moan. 'It is not safe,' Sir Henry began again, loudly, as though to blot out the noise. ...