The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
On sale
18th January 2024
Price: £29.99
‘A wondrous wonderful achievement’ STEPHEN FRY
The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases for the reaches of human imagination.
Now only the great pyramid remains fully standing, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today. In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time. This is a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A magisterial work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting and nourishing notion that humans can make the impossible happen.
‘Fantastic…a joy from the outset’ PETER FRANKOPAN
‘Fascinating…all told with Bettany’s natural sense of wonder and adventure’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases for the reaches of human imagination.
Now only the great pyramid remains fully standing, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today. In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time. This is a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A magisterial work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting and nourishing notion that humans can make the impossible happen.
‘Fantastic…a joy from the outset’ PETER FRANKOPAN
‘Fascinating…all told with Bettany’s natural sense of wonder and adventure’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
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Reviews
This book will fire your imagination and take you on a wonderful tour of the ancient world.
Encourages the reader to question why humanity creates, why we remember some wonders over others, and what it is about the stories entwined with them that fire our curiosity
Hughes has long been one of television's more vivacious historical guides, and here she doubles down on her enthusiasm in a book that transforms these ancient sites into vivid three dimensions for even the most armchair-bound of travellers. It is at once a travelogue and a textbook, and is possessed of an insatiable craving for knowledge ... That she loves her subject is given, but the fact that she manages to endlessly fascinate even those amongst us for whom the ancient world rarely intrudes into the modern is perhaps the real achievement here. History couldn't ask for a better ambassador
A trip to modern-day Egypt is an appropriate starting point for Bettany Hughes's fascinating exploration of the impact such structures have had on our history and imagination. Mixing the latest archaeological and historical research with a bright, inquisitive style makes these places - and their peoples - come alive.
Every page of this generously illustrated travelogue yields a treasure house of information and reflection on Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek masterworks of architecture, urban planning and sculpture.
[A]well-researched travelogue, which draws heavily on recent archaeological discoveries.
In an age of travel lists, Buzzfeed popularity-style polls, and online travelogues, this is a fascinating look at the ancient monuments that were a craze in their own times
A thrilling armchair journey from a very wise woman. Bettany Hughes is the eighth wonder of the world.
Egypt's The Great Pyramid, the only one of the Seven Wonders that survives virtually intact, reminds us of the overwhelming human desire to collaborate and create "beyond the possibilities of the individual," states Bettany Hughes in her rich historical study The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and learned that "paradise" comes from the Persian word for a beautiful walled garden
A lively exploration of the ancient world, this fascinating book is brimming with stories of people and places, all told with Bettany's natural sense of wonder and adventure.
So vividly written that it is as if the reader is there, discovering the Seven Wonders first hand. The stories behind them are endlessly fascinating, often surprising, and stay in the memory long after the last page has been turned. A dazzling achievement.
Hugely engaging
Starting with the Great Pyramid at Giza - the oldest of the Wonders, and the only one to survive almost intact - Hughes makes a fascinating tour, combining classical sources with modern archaeology to tell the stories of these astonishing monuments (and, in the case of the Hanging Gardens, whether they really existed). Richly detailed and full of fascinating insights, her book is a wonder in its own right
A meditation on the enduring idea of wonder . . . Hughes's narrative is alive with detail relating to the construction and daily operations of the Seven Wonders in their prime. This is heightened by her intimate knowledge of the archaeological sites
Bettany Hughes is the most perfect tour guide I know. Her boundless enthusiasm, clarity and learning combined with a matchless gift for storytelling bring the Wonders of the World leapingly alive. A wondrous wonderful achievement.
A thrilling journey in the footsteps of the ancients... One of the great joys of Hughes's book is the way she follows her wonders into their own less-than-glorious afterlives... It is this capacity to move deftly between registers - mythic, historical, sacred, profane and pitifully personal - that makes her such a beguiling guide.
Bettany Hughes's vivid book is a work of reconstruction in which she recreates not just the buildings themselves but the reactions of the travellers of antiquity... There is no hint of the dry-as-dust lecture here, rather a palpable sense of her own excitement in disinterring these extraordinary edifices.
Thrilling, epic, exciting, Bettany Hughes' gripping and scrupulously researched Seven Wonders takes you as if by magic to the great, lost sites of ancient genius, these incredible feats of human imagination and breadth. With skill, scholarship and brilliant writing, Bettany Hughes explores these majestic sites in detail. A magical, sweeping, dazzling book.
This is an entrancing book, at once a love letter to the ancient world and a learned introduction to some of the most astonishing feats of imagination and engineering in human history. It is a pleasure to wander lost realms and inspect (mostly) vanished marvels through Bettany Hughes' bright and erudite writing.
Taking us on a truly fascinating journey through the ancient world, Bettany Hughes not only rebuilds the wonders themselves in the reader's imagination, but also vividly conjures up the culture and environment in which they existed. It is a tale of people as well as places, and I loved learning about what the wonders meant to those who built and visited them, their stories told by Bettany Hughes with trademark passion and humour.
This fantastic new book from the brilliant Bettany Hughes...is a joy from the outset.
One of our most intrepid and cherished TV historians
Informed by careful research and enriched by inspired prose, this book is itself a wonder. Bettany Hughes has given new and powerful meaning to the ancient world's most iconic monuments.