From the celebrated British author and historian: a brilliant new book combining historical inquiry and storytelling elan to paint an unprecedentedly vivid portrait of Socrates and the Golden Age of classical Athens.

We think the way we do because Socrates thought the way he did; in his unwavering commitment to truth and in the example of his own life, he set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy. And yet, for twenty-five centuries, he has remained an enigma: a man who left no written legacy and about whom everything we know is hearsay. His life spanned...

'The Hemlock Cup' gives Socrates the biography he deserves, setting him in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean that was his home, and dealing with him as he himself dealt with the world.

A major new book about the life and legend of the world's 'most beautiful woman' by the new star of TV history.
As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject. Hesiod, a poet born around 700BC and one of the first named authors in history, called her 'the most beautiful woman in the world' and the description endured. Even though we have no contemporary representations of her, this Bronze Age princess is still seen as a paradigm of absolute beauty. Helen, 'whose beauty summoned Greece to arms, and drew a thousand ships to Tenedos' (Marlowe), has stood for three...