Fontana Press imprint: 8 books

A dazzling short assessment of the life and work of the poet and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature. Among Heaney’s many published collections are ‘Death of a Naturalist’, ‘North’, ‘Field Work’, ‘Station Island’ and ‘Spirit Level’ (May 1996), which was that rarest...

The vast land empire that Alexander the Great left to his successors was without parallel in Greek history. Alexander’s family and generals created a new order of monarchies and city-states which was to control most of the territory between the Adriatic Sea and western India for three hundred years....

The first book to address everyone who relishes reading Proust and wants to know more about how his writing works. This is a matchless close reading of a literary masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, and a lesson in how to read the Great Books profitably and pleasurably. ‘Read this excellent book’...

A brilliantly entertaining and innovative history of the ancient Athenians’ consuming passions for food, wine and sex. Sex, shopping and fish-madness, Athenian style. This fascinating book reveals that the ancient Athenians were supreme hedonists. Their society was driven by an insatiable lust for...

How Tory Governments Fall is a landmark study of the forces that shape – and ultimately destroy – political power. It assesses the factors that are common to the decline and fall of each Conservative administration in British history since the beginnings of the modern, party-based system. Each...

The seventy years since the end of the Second World War have seen dramatic changes in Britain’s cultural, intellectual and political climate. Old class allegiances have been challenged by new loyalties to gender, ethnicity, religion or lifestyle and a new sensibility of self-fulfilment – sometimes...

Between the Sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC and the middle of the second century BC, a part-time army of Roman peasants, under the leadership of the ruling oligarchy, conquered first Italy and then the whole of the Mediterranean. The loyalty of these marauding heroes, and of the Roman population...

Originally published in 1995 and now available as an ebook. This edition does not include illustrations. European Union is the grand political enigma of the late twentieth century. Its very essence resists definition, and why and how it works defy agreed explanation. For politicians, it is endlessly...