David Timson

The first volume of David Timson's series retelling of the stories from Shakespeare's plays was widely praised by newspapers and educators alike. Here is Volume II, with more key plays. It includes Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and Henry IV, all texts which regularly appear on the exam syllabus.

Laughter is unique to man. This delightful anthology presents some of the funniest extracts in English literature. David Timson starts with Anglo-Saxon riddles and continues with medieval memories, Tudor comic turns and Restoration buffoonery. The rise of the novel in the eighteenth century brought classic humour from Swift, Sterne and Smollet, passing the mantle to Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century. Included here are rarities as well, from...

Western theatre from ancient Greece to the present day. Tracing the development of dramatic art through the miracle plays, the great Shakespearean period, Moliere and Racine in France, Goethe in Germany, through the 19th century and the main movements in the 20th century.

The stories of 13 key Shakespeare plays - Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest, Henry V, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Timson presents the complex plots in a clear, entertaining and informal style, presenting the main characters in the context of the famous lines.

Arthur Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear (1915) is the fourth and final installment of the Sherlock Holmes crime novels. This work of riveting suspense and intrigue is loosely based on the infamous 18th Century Irish secret society, The Molly Maguires. First published in serial form in The Strand Magazine in 1914 and 1915, this novel brings Sherlock Holmes face-to-face with the evil Professor Moriarty, one of the most nefarious characters of crime...

On War (German: Vom Kriege) is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and influential on strategic thinking. On War is an unfinished work. Clausewitz...

John Harmon will inherit a fortune if he marries a girl whose peronality has been afffected by her wealth, adn friends and events conspire to prove her true worth.

Widely referred to as the "Father of History", Greek Historian Herodotus lived during the 5th century BC and "The Histories" is generally accepted as the first work of historical literature in Western Civilization. Departing from the ancient Homeric tradition of treating historical subjects as epically romantic figures, Herodotus instead approached his subjects with a systematic method of investigation. "The Histories" of Herodotus describe the important...

One of the most important historical records from classical antiquity, "The Annals of Imperial Rome" chronicles the history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius beginning in 14 AD to the end of the reign of Nero in 68 AD. Written by Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman Senator during the second century AD, it is a detailed first-hand account of the early Roman Empire and an important source for a modern understanding of that time. It is believed that...

Stranded deep in enemy territory, the Spartan general Clearchus and the other Greek senior officers were subsequently killed or captured by treachery on the part of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Xenophon, one of three remaining leaders elected by the soldiers, played an instrumental role in encouraging the Greek army of 10,000 to march north across foodless deserts and snow-filled mountain passes towards the Black Sea and the comparative security...