Identifying Ellis Peters’ Cadfael books as a starting point for a huge expansion in the writing of historical crime, this review of the genre profiles key writers, novels, TV programmes and films, and includes a number of interviews with authors.

From Ptolemy and Galileo to Maxwell and Hawking, this witty and accessible guide to the universe introduces the great minds of astronomy and cosmology and the ideas that changed our understanding of space and time.

St George is England’s patron saint, yet many other nations, from Hungary to Ethiopia, consider him their own. This compact guide reviews what is known about this early martyr, and traces his battle with the dragon to legendary pre-Christian heroes.

Inaccessible and mysterious, the icy polar wastes have lured explorers for centuries. This concise history recounts their perilous voyages, from early pioneers such as Frobisher to the triumphs of Amundsen and Peary and the tragedies of Franklin and Scott.

Successive empires and invasions have made India one of the world’s most culturally diverse nations. This history charts their rise and fall and looks at how, since independence, the country has undergone rapid change and increased its global influence.

This concise, readable book reviews the people, events and ideas that have shaped Africa's long history: Islam, the kingdoms of Ghana and Benin, colonialism, slavery, and the struggles of independence and its aftermath.

This brief introduction to the history of European witchcraft explores the beliefs that created a stereotype and led to the killing of some 40,000 supposed witches in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Over the centuries, disease has claimed more lives than natural disasters and warfare combined. Largely a social history, this book starts in prehistoric times, and moves from the Black Death of the 14th century to more modern conditions such as Ebola and MRSA. Incorporating individual case studies, the text also explores the human struggle to drive all disease to extinction.

The Middle East has given rise to three great religions, but also to some of the world's most intractable conflicts. This succinct, accessible history charts its development from ancient Babylon and Egypt to the present day. It examines the impact of the Roman and Persian empires, the rise of Islam, the long years of Ottoman rule, the struggles of the 20th century and the growth of Islamic radicalism.

The religious schools embraced by the term 'Gnosticism' formed the official church's main rival during the early centuries of Christianity. Introducing key texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, this book outlines Gnostic beliefs - that the world was created by an evil God, that Christ came to teach liberating knowledge and that women are men's equal - and shows how these ideas survived underground to influence modern writers including Blake, Camus and Philip K Dick.