What was life on a great aristocratic estate such as Thomas Coke's Holkham in Norfolk like? Where did the money come from? How does an up and coming young aristocrat make his way in the often murky world of royal and political circles? Using the extraordinary riches of the Holkham archives, D.P. Mortlock recreates in stunning detail the lives of the great and the little people of eighteenth-century England. He brings us those who peopled the world of Thomas Coke; the lords and ladies, the mobile middle-classes, the money-lenders, the country parsons, the arrogant footmen and the footpads. Mortlock's book brings to life a lost world of aristocratic splendour and the illuminated lives of hundreds of ordinary people. Coke's lasting monument is undoubtedly the great house he created at Holkham in Norfolk, at the heart of which is money, and money is at the heart of this book. From the carefully detailed marriage settlement arranged in 1718 when Coke married Lady Margaret Tufton, to the shilling which Coke had to borrow from a footman in an emergency, the financial dealings were recorded in fascinating detail, as were the lives of the people of the age.

They were the black sheep of aristocracy and this is their story. From stately homes to the prisons of wartime Britain; from the House of Lords to Edwardian asylums; from the Ritz and the Dorchester to East End dives, Splendour and Squalor tells the fascinating stories of three of Britain's most illustrious aristocratic dynasties and of the black sheep who brought them down.

The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome once dominated the world, and they continue to fascinate and inspire us. Classical art and architecture, drama and epic, philosophy and politics -- these are the foundations of Western civilization. In The Classical World, eminent classicist Robin Lane Fox brilliantly chronicles this vast sweep of history from Homer to the reign of Augustus. From the Peloponnesian War through the creation of Athenian democracy, from the turbulent empire of Alexander the Great to the creation of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Christianity, Robin Lane Fox serves as our witty and trenchant guide. He introduces us to extraordinary heroes and horrific villains, great thinkers and blood-thirsty tyrants. Throughout this vivid tour of two of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known, we remain in the hands of a great master.