The great Roman senator and historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus once stated: “Great empires are not maintained by timidity.“ The Roman Empire is certainly proof of that, ruling its territories and borders with ferocity and efficiency to become...
Spies are everywhere. Or, at least, the fictional ones are. Every year a host of new books, films and television series tell the stories of secret agents who engage in thrilling adventures in the world of shadows. As for the real spies, their faces...
The Sherlock Holmes Book, the latest in DK's award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, tackles the most "elementary" of subjects — the world of Sherlock Holmes, as told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Sherlock Holmes Book is packed with...
Over the centuries, humankind has dwelled on the question of how the Solar System came into being around 4.5 billion years ago. In the 21st Century, our pursuit of knowledge is as insatiable as ever, and new technology advances our understanding all...
Who could fail to be fascinated by the ancient world? From the pyramids of Egypt to the great emperors of Rome, it is filled with astonishing stories, momentous achievements and people who can be both surprisingly similar and utterly different to...
Central to three major faiths, the land that is now Israel and the Palestinian territories has a global significance that far exceeds its small size. It is, of course, bitterly contested today, with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute seemingly one of...
It is surely the most famous date in English history. On 14 October 1066 William of Normandy’s army defeated and killed King Harold at the battle of Hastings. It was the decisive moment in the Norman conquest of England, which heralded the end of...
From the crumbling of Roman rule in the fifth century AD until the triumph of the Normans (themselves descended from Norsemen) in 1066, Britain’s – and especially England’s – history is dominated by two groups: the Anglo-Saxons and the...