The Professor was Rex Warner's second novel, published in 1938, only a year after his groundbreaking first novel, The Wild Goose Chase. It is one of the most extraordinary and enduring political novels from the 1930s and further confirmed Warner's status as a major writer. A Professor of Classics is appointed Chancellor of his (unnamed) country, under threat from both the government of a neighbouring country and its own fascist party. The Professor is a staunch believer in the liberal values his own country espouses but considers himself 'above politics', in contrast with his son, a revolutionary. The Professor's conviction that he must not enter into the political arena means that he finds himself unable to defend his liberal beliefs, even as he and his country are thrown into chaos. The consequences are violent and shocking.

Julius Caesar combines in one volume two of Rex Warner's most acclaimed historical novels: The Young Caesar and Imperial Caesar. The latter won the 1960 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Together these two novels create one of the most compelling and substantial portraits in modern fiction of Caesar's remarkable life and times. 'A very brilliant analysis of the emotional disciplines, the political subtlety and the moral realism required to secure absolute power. It is a remarkable historical reconstruction.' Angus Wilson, Observer 'As a feat of sustained historical imagination Rex Warner's autobiography of Julius Caesar is an astonishing achievement . . . A very wonderful book which grows in the memory.' C. V. Wedgwood 'This splendid books ranks with Graves's I, Claudius and with Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian as a near-masterpiece of the re-creation of the ancient world. It will banish forever the boredom that often still lingers round one's memories of having to translate Caesar.' Elizabeth Jennings, The Listener

The Wild Goose Chase, published in 1937 and Rex Warner's first novel, was a groundbreaking piece of fiction. The novel follows three brothers whose journey is a dazzling original political allegory of liberation through Marxism. While most socialist writing of the 1930s took the form of social realism or reportage, Warner broke with this tradition, drawing instead on surrealism, classical mythology, fairy tales, film, and popular genres of the time including Boys Adventure and science fiction. Its publication immediately secured Rex Warner's reputation as a major writer. In the novel, three brothers - Rudolph, David, and George - embark on a dangerous quest in search of the 'wild goose'. Their search takes them into a neighbouring country and they eventually arrive at a sealed-off town where the ruling dictators have enslaved the people and secured a life of privilege for themselves and a few harmless professors who teach at the town's university. Only George, the youngest brother, is able to stand up against the dictators, and he eventually leads a successful revolution against them.

In this moving and thought-provoking novel, the spirit of a dead soldier asks: 'Why was I killed?'. From each individual he questions, he receives a different answer. The English gentleman, the mechanic, the priest, the mother robbed of her son, the man who fought in Spain - for each of these people the war in which the soldier lost his life has a different meaning. Whether they believe it to be a pointless horror, an outcome of sinister politics, or an inevitable aspect of history, each of these individuals feels himself to have been cruelly robbed by war. But the soldier's own vision and revelation at the moment of his death offers an alternative interpretation of the consequences of war. Highly acclaimed when it was first published in 1943, Why Was I Killed? will continue to be relevant as long as humans go to war. 'A striking and rare work of imagination.' Edwin Muir 'The beauty of his prose, unsurpassed by any living English writer . . . springs from a sound moral core and from an intelligence which operates with the keenest edge upon our prejudices, our swollen abstractions, our confused thinking.' C. Day Lewis

One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, masterfully portraying Medea's pursuit of vengeance. Warner translation.

One of a series of top-quality fiction for schools, this is a retelling of 32 legends from Greek mythology.

Xenophon’s epic march into the heart of Persia has stirred the imagination of free men for centuries.

Written possibly from diaries compiled at the time, there is no doubt that The Persian Expedition is one of the best pictures we have of Greeks confronting the ‘barbarian’ world. We see the soldiers debate leaders and strategy in open assembly; we see them falling on their knees in superstitious fear; we see them planning a piratical colony on barbarian land. And at the same time we share the rigours of the march to Babylon, the dismay of unexpected defeat, the uncertainty of the long road home through wild Armenia, and the relief at last when the Ten Thousand reach ‘the sea, the sea!’.

'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.'

Written four hundred years before the birth of Christ, this detailed contemporary account of the long life-and-death struggle between Athens and Sparta stands an excellent chance of fulfilling its author's ambitious claim. Thucydides himself (c.460-400 BC) was an Athenian and achieved the rank of general in the earlier stages of the war. He applied thereafter a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth and romance in compiling this factual record of a disastrous conflict.

Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesman of the classical period. Taken from the Lives, a series of biographies spanning the Graeco-Roman age, this collection illuminates the twilight of the old Roman Republic from 157-43 bc. Whether describing the would-be dictators Marius and Sulla, the battle between Crassus and Spartacus, the death of political idealist Crato, Julius Caesar's harrowing triumph in Gaul or the eloquent oratory of Cicero, all offer a fascinating insight into an empire wracked by political divisions. Deeply influential on Shakespeare and many other later writers, they continue to fascinate today with their exploration of corruption, decadence and the struggle for ultimate power.

Continuing the story of the Peloponnesian War where Thucydides left off, Xenophon records the politics and battles that brought about the ultimate decline of Greece.

First published in 1941, The Aerodrome is one of the few works of fiction in the twentieth century to understand the dangerous yet glamorous appeal of fascism and the less than satisfactory answer of traditional democracy-and to transmute their deadly opposition into terms of enduring art. Mr. Warner brilliantly invents, on one side, a thoroughly degenerate Village representing fallen man, and on the other side a great Aerodrome dedicated to ruthless efficiency. The ideological struggle between the idealistic Air Vice-Marshal and the hero-narrator from the Village is portrayed with poetry, narrative speed, and great simplicity of language. It is a great symbolic novel of our time. "The value of The Aerodrome as literature becomes increasingly apparent at each rereading ... an intensely original work."-Anthony Burgess. "A moral dialogue thrown into narrative form. It is humanity versus power, sprawling fife versus death-dealing regimentation.... A parable worth reading."-New York Times. "The beauty of his prose, unsurpassed by any living English writer, has nothing to do with `fine writing' but springs from a sound moral core and from an intelligence with the keenest edge."-C. Day Lewis.