Discover an original, entertaining and illuminating guide to a completely different world: England in the Middle Ages.

Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague?

In The Time Traveller's Guide Ian Mortimer's radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. History is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived, whether that's the life of a peasant or a lord. The result is perhaps the most astonishing history book you are ever likely to read; as revolutionary as it is informative, as entertaining as it is startling.

'Ian Mortimer is the most remarkable medieval historian of our time' The Times

'After The Canterbury Tales this has to be the most entertaining book ever written about the middle ages' Guardian

'A fresh and funny book that wears its learning lightly' Independent

Discover the era of William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I through the sharp, informative and hilarious eyes of Ian Mortimer.

We think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden age. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time?

In this book Ian Mortimer reveals a country in which life expectancy is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language, some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world.

'Vivid trip back to the 16th century...highly entertaining book' Guardian

The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook.

If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It is the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London; bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II — the civil wars are over and a magnificent new era has begun.

But what would it really be like to live in Restoration Britain? Where would you stay and what would you eat? How much should you pay for one of those elaborate wigs? Should you trust a physician who advises you to drink fresh cow’s urine to cure your gout? Why are boys made to smoke in school? And why are you unlikely to get a fair trial in court?

The third volume in the series of Ian Mortimer’s bestselling Time Traveller’s Guides answers these crucial questions and encourages us to reflect on the customs and practices of daily life. This unique guide not only teaches us about the seventeenth century but makes us look with fresh eyes at the modern world.

'Excellent... Mortimer's erudition is formidable' The Times

A time of exuberance, thrills, frills and unchecked bad behaviour...Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in British history - the Regency, or Georgian England.

This is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets; the paintings of John Constable and the gardens of Humphry Repton; Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo. It was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality.

And like all periods in history, it was an age of many contradictions - where Beethoven's thundering Fifth Symphony could premier in the same year that saw Jane Austen craft the delicate sensitivities of Persuasion.

This is history at its most exciting, physical, visceral - the past not as something to be studied but as lived experience. This is Ian Mortimer at the height of his time-travelling prowess.

'Ian Mortimer has made this kind of imaginative time travel his speciality' Daily Mail

The first biography of the rebel baron who deposed and murdered Edward II.

One night in August 1323 a captive rebel baron, Sir Roger Mortimer, drugged his guards and escaped from the Tower of London. With the king's men-at-arms in pursuit he fled to the south coast, and sailed to France. There he was joined by Isabella, the Queen of England, who threw herself into his arms. A year later, as lovers, they returned with an invading army: King Edward II's forces crumbled before them, and Mortimer took power. He removed Edward II in the first deposition of a monarch in British history. Then the ex-king was apparently murdered, some said with a red-hot poker, in Berkeley Castle.

Brutal, intelligent, passionate, profligate, imaginative and violent: Sir Roger Mortimer was an extraordinary character. It is not surprising that the queen lost her heart to him. Nor is it surprising that his contemporaries were terrified of him. But until now no one has appreciated the full evil genius of the man. This first biography reveals not only the man's career as a feudal lord, a governor of Ireland, a rebel leader and a dictator of England but also the truth of what happened that night in Berkeley Castle.

‘Mortimer's book roars, races and sings... with a sense of passion and drama and an unrelenting pace’ Daily Telegraph

We are an astonishing species. Over the past millennium of plagues and exploration, revolution and scientific discovery, woman’s rights and technological advances, human society has changed beyond recognition.

Sweeping through the last thousand years of human development, Human Race is a treasure chest of the lunar leaps and lightbulb moments that, for better or worse, have sent humanity swerving down a path that no one could ever have predicted.

But which of the last ten centuries saw the greatest changes in human history?

History’s greatest tour guide, Ian Mortimer, knows what answer he would give. But what’s yours?