Coming Soon

For centuries, men have been writing histories of antiquity filled with warlords, emperors and kings. But when it comes to incorporating women aside from Cleopatra and Boudica, writers have been more comfortable describing mythical heroines than real ones. While Penelope and Helen of Troy live on in the imagination, their real-life counterparts have been relegated to the margins. In The Missing Thread, Daisy Dunn inverts this tradition and puts the women of history at the centre of the narrative.

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.

The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biography invites us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than that by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in AD 121. Placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius injected flesh and blood into their stories.

It was a time of revolution. The Roman Revolution describes the little known "crisis of the third century", and how it led to a revolutionary new Roman Empire. Long before the more famous collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, in the years between AD 235-275, barbarian invasions, civil war, and plague devastated ancient Rome.

Ever since the Greek and Roman historians speculated on the seemingly ever-growing violence and greed of the world, metal has been to blame. We have gone from a “golden age” of peace and shared plenty, to an “iron age of bloodshed and conquest”—and beyond. Today, according to geologist Shefa Siegel, we are threatened not by metal, but by its absence. Metal that once lay close enough to the surface of the earth so that primitive miners could more or less chip off what they needed is now so scarce that entire landscapes are pulverized to extract a fine dust of precious, powdered ore.