Sean Martin

Catharism was the most successful heresy of the Middle Ages. The Cathars believed themselves to be heirs to the true Christian heritage, completely rejecting the Catholic Church and all of its trappings, and holding their services in fields, barns and people's homes. Alarmed at the movement's spread, the Catholic Church founded the Inquisition and launched the Albigensian Crusade – the...

This second edition contains an afterword on COVID-19, looking at the origins and nature of the virus, and how governments across the globe dealt with the most serious public health emergency in a century. A Short History of Disease chronicles the historical and geographical evolution of infectious and non-infectious diseases, from their prehistoric origins to the present. It offers a...

Andrei Tarkovsky is the most celebrated Russian filmmaker since Eisenstein, and one of the most important directors to have emerged during the 1960s and 70s. Although he made only seven features, each one was a major landmark in cinema, the most well-known of them being the mediaeval epic Andrei Rublev - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of...