The White Horse at Uffington is an icon of the English landscape – a sleek, almost abstract figure 120 yards long which was carved into the green turf of the spectacular chalk scarp of the North Wessex Downs in the early first millennium BC. For centuries antiquarians, travellers and local people speculated about the age of the Horse, who created it and why. Was it a memorial to King Alfred the Great’s victory over the heathen Danes, an emblem of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers or a prehistoric banner, announcing the territory of a British tribe? Or was the Horse an actor in an elaborate prehistoric ritual, drawing the sun across the sky? The rich history of this ancient figure and its surroundings can help us understand how people have created and lived in the Downland landscape, which has inspired artists, poets and writers including Eric Ravilious, John Betjeman and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The White Horse itself is most remarkable because it is still here. People have cared for it and curated it for centuries, even millennia. In that time the meaning of the Horse has changed, yet it has remained a symbol of continuity and is a myth for modern times.

The coast means something different to everyone.

It’s a place of pleasure and reckless pursuits, of fishing, fearless endeavours and a crashing, rugged beauty. The coast is, and always has been, our first line of defence and our springboard to other cultures.

Through the lens of 100 carefully selected objects, this treasure chest of a book delves into the myriad ways our coastlines have shaped, and been shaped by, our history, culture, and identity. From Roman lighthouses to rosary beads, knitted jumpers to Viking slave shackles, each object serves as a portal to a unique story.

Sally Coulthard’s engaging narrative goes far beyond the traditional seaside holiday to illuminate the coast’s role as a first line of defence, a site of trade, and a catalyst for cultural exchange. Readers will discover how the coast has influenced our beliefs, economy, and even our domestic lives. And, looking out to sea, this book will show how Britain’s story is anchored to those of our European neighbours and of faraway lands.

From one of Britain’s finest historians of material culture, this book vividly captures the enduring magic and significance of our shores. Whether it’s smugglers’ underpants or sailor’s hoaxes, whale vomit or pickled puffin – it all washes up on the British coast…

'Forget white marble statues and philosophical debates: Emma Southon takes you on a journey through the hell of ancient slavery that defined the classical world as few other things – a true masterwork of historical enquiry. – Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director General of Pompeii

The 'electrifying' untold story of slavery in the Roman Empire by the author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

We associate the Romans with majesty and greatness: we marvel at their straight roads and innovative underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, at the grandeur of their palaces and temples. But the Romans were also enslavers. They built an empire on the backs of millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment or, simply, born enslaved.

Servus takes us into the invisible spaces of the Roman world, where millions of enslaved lives were unwillingly dedicated to the perpetuation of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman their daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses, and the miners who kept Rome a city of gold and marble, enslaved people were the bedrock of the Roman Empire. These enslaved people were ubiquitous, but silenced. Through the fragments they left behind, historian Emma Southon traces the pain and tragedy of their lives alongside the love stories, lifelong friendships, small victories and hard-won freedoms.

Servus tells the truth about the Roman empire and the unseen lives that made it so dominant.

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'A much-needed corrective to centuries of obfuscations and misunderstandings. Servus is a challenging read yet a simultaneously sensitive and even entertaining one, striking that peculiar balance that . . . only Emma can fully achieve.' Jane Draycott, author of FULVIA

'Electrifying, rousing and flowing with passion, this deeply researched book zips along in a way that defies expectation. What a skill Southon has for maintaining an energetic yet empathetic tone while bringing such dark realities to light.' – Daisy Dunn, author of THE MISSING THREAD

'This book upended my understanding of the ancient world' Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters

'Lizzie Wade is an exceptional journalist and a master storyteller' Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

The history of humanity is one of devastating, once-in-a-thousand-year events: rising seas that make land uninhabitable, decades-long droughts, civilisational collapse, epidemics like the Black Death and the Spanish Flu that reduce a city’s population by fifty percent. And yet, despite enormous destruction and very real tragedy, these catastrophes all share one common denominator: we survived.

In APOCALYPSE, Lizzie Wade reframes the story of human history to show how we can learn from these apocalyptic moments, seeing them not just as violent, world-ending events but as moments of progress and transformation. We travel back in deep time to when homo sapiens replaced other human species including the Neanderthals, witness the fall of the kingdom of Old Egypt, the end of the Mayans and the Black Death, as well as lesser-known catastrophes. To weave this unique narrative, Lizzie introduces us to a new generation of archaeologists using cutting-edge technology to tell new stories about our deep past, including flying planes equipped with lasers over Mayan ruins deep in the jungle, scuba diving to the bottom of the ocean, and sequencing the DNA of ancient people to show how we are far more connected to our ancestors than we think.

Written in a gripping style that reads like an Indiana Jones mystery, APOCALYPSE offers a refreshingly optimistic take on the crises our own generation and those after us will face – arguing that yes, catastrophes are painful and destructive, but we can and will survive them.

'An insightful and engaging reflection on the appeal of the ancient' – The Times

'I'm a card-carrying admirer of Peter Ross' – Robert Macfarlane

The prehistoric sites of Britain and Ireland are places of wonder and wondering. Who made these structures? What did they mean to them? And what do they mean to us now?

Author of the bestseller Steeple Chasing and prize-winning A Tomb With A View, Peter Ross journeys from midwinter at Stonehenge to midsummer at Sycamore Gap. Along the way he encounters bog bodies in Dublin, a wooden goddess in Edinburgh and a chalk giant in Dorset. He asks what it is like to live within the great stone circle at Avebury, what rituals occurred in an Anglesey tomb and what draws volunteers to care for the Uffington White Horse.

These objects and structures speak of the long human story. They offer the comfort of recognition and the pleasure of mystery. There is something about ancient places that fills a hollow in our souls.

Upon A White Horse is a celebration of landscape and people – and all that is beautiful, strange and old.

'Ross scores highly on his intuitive interpretations of places and his non-judgemental observations of human nature; he is empathetic, but can stand back' – Country Life

'Ross is a wonderfully evocative writer, deftly capturing a sense of place and history, while bringing a deep humanity to his subject' – Guardian

Beginning with their first meeting in over 20 years at their grandfather’s home in Lincolnshire, the two cousins – Eleanor and Lucilla – quickly learn that each has a fascination with unearthing historic artifacts, which will set them off on their metal detecting journey …

Over many weeks and months spent digging countless holes, the pair make startling discoveries: about the objects they find and what they tell us about our ancestors, about themselves and who they are as people, and about the power of community, as they forge connections with local villagers, detectorists and history lovers along the way.

This charming tale of (self-)discovery will capture the hearts and minds of those seeking escapism through the buried history that we walk over every day.

This comprehensive volume contains over 1,450 entries arranged alphabetically, together with lists of useful addresses and further reading, and is richly illustrated with colour and black and white photographs, plans and drawings. A wealth of subjects including architecture, liturgy, history and monasticism are covered in detail and assist in placing research in a wider historical context.

‘Tender, moving and vivid.’
ROBERT MACFARLANE

‘Beautiful’
STEPHEN GREENBLATT

‘Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece.’
GEORGE MONBIOT

‘Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid’s must-read, millennia-spanning history … spellbinding’
NEW SCIENTIST

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Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.

What they left behind, in a vast region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, preserves leaps in human ingenuity, like the earliest depiction of a wheel and the first approximation of pi. But they also capture breathtakingly intimate, raw and relatable moments, like a dog’s paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, or the imprint of a child’s teeth.

In Between Two Rivers, historian Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid reveals what these ancient people chose to record about their lives, allowing us to brush hands with them millennia later. We find a lullaby to soothe a baby, instructions for exorcising a ghost, countless receipts for beer, and the adorable, messy writing of preschoolers. We meet an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, an astronomer tracing the movement of the planets, a princess who may have created the world’s first museum, and a working mother struggling with ‘the juggle’ in 1900 BCE.

Together, these fragments illuminate not just the history of Mesopotamia, but the story of how history was made.