Rasselas and his companions leave the 'happy valley' in search of 'the choice of life'. Johnson's philosophical tale considers such things as the nature of poetry, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and the pursuit of happiness. This new edition relates the novel to Johnson's life and the political and social context.

From the invasions of Julius Caesar to the unexpected end of Roman rule in the early fifth century AD and the subsequent collapse of society in Britain, this is an account of Roman Britain.

Henry of Huntingdon's History is a major source for events in England and Normandy during his lifetime, including the Battle of Hastings, the reigns of William II, Henry I, and Stephen, written with panache and passion and embellished with anecdotes such as Henry's death from a surfeit of lampreys, and Cnut and the waves.

Clarendon's History chonicles the English Civil War from the perspective of someone intimately involved in the events he describes. This classic work is admired for its literary quality as well as its historical value; this new selection also contains passages from The Life, Clarendon's autobiography, to produce a vivid narrative history.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens explores time measurement and the organisation of time into hours, days, months and years using a range of fascinating examples from Ancient Rome and Julius Caesar's Leap Year, to the 1920s' project for a fixed Easter.

An essay about how we study and understand history, this book begins by inviting us to think about various questions provoked by our investigation of history. It explores the ways these questions have been answered in the past. It also introduces the concepts of causation, interpretation, and periodization, through examples of how historians work.

HIV/ AIDS continues to be a major public health issue, affecting millions of sufferers worldwide. This Very Short Introduction explains the science, the international and local politics, the demographics, and the devastating consequences of the disease, and addresses some of the big issues that will concern us over the next decade.

Thomas Hobbes, the first great English political philosopher, has had the reputation of being a pessimistic atheist. This study evaluates Hobbes's philosophy, describing him to have been passionately concerned with the refutation of scepticism, and to have developed a theory of knowledge, which rivalled that of Descartes in its importance.