Tom Holland

The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves, but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history....

Tom Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds....

Christianity is the most enduring and influential legacy of the ancient world, and its emergence the single most transformative development in Western history....

Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors....

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....

At the approach of the first millennium, the Christians of Europe did not seem likely candidates for future greatness. In The Forge of Christendom, Tom Holland masterfully describes this remarkable new age....

In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For 70 years, victory had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire....

In the 6th century AD, the Near East was divided between two venerable empires: the Persian and the Roman. A hundred years on and one had vanished forever, while the other seemed almost finished....

The formation of England happened against the odds - the division of the country into rival kingdoms, the assaults of the Vikings, the precarious position of the island on the edge of the known world....

Famed poet Lord Byron embarks on a life of adventure as the world's most notable vampire, following a dark trail of long-hidden secrets, ancient black arts, and the depths of evil....