Matthew Kneale

Nominated for the 2017 Pen Hessell-Tiltman Daily Telegraph's Best History Books of 2017 Sunday Times' Best History Books of 2017 A sweeping history of the city of Rome, seen through the eyes of its most significant sackings, from the Gauls to the Nazis and everything in between. No city on earth has preserved its past as Rome has. Visitors can...

Former cinema camera director Julius Sewell journeys across Europe with his family to his sister's wedding in Rome. But this will be an unusual road trip. For one thing, Julius has been in an institution and has only just been released to travel. And then there is his family. This is Easter 1934 and Julius' stepfather and mother are keen...

No city tells the story of human ambition, folly, and resilience quite like Rome. Few cities wear their history so openly as Rome: walking its streets, you step between millennia, from ancient forums to Renaissance piazzas, Baroque fountains to the bleak constructions of Mussolini's Fascist regime. Nowhere else do we have such a continuous picture of how a city evolved...