Edward Gibbon's classic timeless work of ancient Roman history in 6 volumes collected into 2 boxed sets, in beautiful, enduring hardcover editions with elegant cloth sewn bindings, gold stamped covers, and silk ribbon markers.

Listed as one of the Guardian's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time. In September 1945 the fate of Adolf Hitler was a complete mystery. He had simply disappeared, and had been missing for four months. Hugh Trevor-Roper, an intelligence officer, was given the task of solving the mystery. His brilliant piece of detective work not only proved finally that Hitler had killed himself in Berlin, but also produced one of the most fascinating history books ever written. The Last Days of Hitler tells the extraordinary story of those last days of the Thousand Year Reich in the Berlin Bunker. Besieged in the shattered capital, but still dominating the remains of his court, Hitler reiterated the original alternative of Nazism: either total victory or annihilation. This book is the record of that carefully prepared, ceremonious finale to a terrible chapter of history. 'Brilliantly written and researched, The Last Days of Hitler remains the most vivid account of the final Wagnerian chapter of Hitler's tyranny' - Max Hastings 'This is an incomparable book, by far the best written on any aspect of the second German war: a book sound in scholarship, brilliant in its presentation . . . No words of praise are too strong.' - A. J. P. Taylor, New Statesman

These private journals, made available here for the first time, record Hugh Trevor-Roper's visit to the People's Republic of China in the autumn of 1965, shortly before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, and describe the controversial aftermath of his journey on his return to England. The visit was a catalogue of frustrations, which he relates with the verve and irony of a master narrator who relished the human comedy. His efforts to meet the real life and mind of China, in whose history and politics he had long been interested, were blocked at every turn by the resources of state propaganda and the claustrophobic attention of sullen Party guides. The visit was arranged by the London-based Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which was ostensibly committed to the impartial interchange of culture and ideas. It proved to be run by a Communist claque whose ruthless methods of control outwitted the well-connected membership. Back in England, and with help from MI5, he resolved to get to the bottom of the society's affairs. His investigations provoked a tumultuous public row which Trevor-Roper, no shirker of controversy, zestfully traces in these pages. Through the book, which closes with an account of his visit to Taiwan and South-East Asia in 1967, there runs the wisdom of historical perspective that he brought to contemporary events and his lifelong commitment to the defence of liberal values and practices against their ideological adversaries.

A brilliant, unknown work by the great historian Hugh Trevor-Roper Among the papers of Hugh Trevor-Roper, who died in 2003, was a manuscript to which he had repeatedly turned for more than thirty years, but never published. Attracted by the diverse life and vivid personality of Sir Theodore de Mayerne (1573-1655), the most famous physician in Europe of his time, Trevor-Roper pursued him across national and intellectual frontiers to uncover the details of his extraordinary life. Exploring an array of English and European sources, Trevor-Roper reveals the story of the pioneering Swiss Huguenot doctor who mixed medicine with diplomacy, with political intrigue, with secret intelligence, and with artistic interests at the courts first of Henry IV of France and then of James I and Charles I of England. A true "renaissance man," Mayerne's interests were broad, and due to considerable conspiratorial talent, he became a participant in bluff and intrigue at the highest levels. The most ambitious and perhaps the most original of all Trevor-Roper's books, written in his luminous prose, this is a major work of political and intellectual history that presents a whole period in a fresh and vivid light.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) won instantaneous and outstanding success in prose and poetry, in politics and oratory. His History, translated throughout Europe and achieving sales in America second only to the Bible, immediately became the canon of historical orthodoxy, replacing previous histories so completely that it is now difficult to see past its long and apparently effortless triumph. In the sweep and power of his writing Macaulay rivals the finest novelists. He was much influenced by Sir Walter Scott and relied heavily on literature to recapture the atmosphere of the past. Though the theme of his History is clearly defined - the 1688 Revolution and the reign of William III which effectively consolidated that Revolution - it succeeds in presenting Macaulay's interpretation of the whole course of English history. He possessed an unerring grasp of political reality and he firmly reasserted the primacy of politics in the historical process as the essential motor of social change.

The arrival of an unpublished memoir offering up a scandalous version of the hitherto blameless public life of the revered oriental scholar, Sir Edmund Backhouse, sets Hugh Trevor-Roper on the trail of an outrageous confidence trickster. One of the great detective stories of our age, told with a pace and an infectious delight in the process of historical research, "The Hermit of Peking" would have made an outrageously imaginative work of fiction but for the fact that it is all true. Trevor-Roper unearths scholars with bizarre sexual fantasies, eunuchs, rare manuscripts and a malicious dowager Queen, and sets them all against the backdrop of a decadent and intrigue-ridden Imperial Court.

During World War II, Britain enjoyed spectacular success in the secret war between hostile intelligence services, enabling a substantial and successful expansion of British counter-espionage. Hugh Trevor-Roper's experiences working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the war had a profound impact on him and he later observed the world of intelligence with particular sharpness. To him, the subjects of wartime espionage and the complex espionage networks that developed in the Cold War period were as worthy of profound investigation and reflection as events from the more distant past. Expressing his observations through some of his most ironic and entertaining correspondence, articles and reviews, Trevor-Roper wrote vividly about some of the greatest intelligence characters of the age - from Kim Philby and Michael Straight to the Germans Admiral Canaris and Otto John. Including some previously unpublished material, this book is a sharp, revealing and personal first-hand account of the intelligence world in World War II and the Cold War.

Hugh Trevor-Roper's historical essays, published over many years in many different forms, are now difficult to find. This volume gathers together pieces on British and European history from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, ending with the Thirty Years War, which Trevor-Roper views as the great historical and intellectual watershed that marked the end of the Renaissance.
Covering a wide range of topics, these writings reflect the many facets of Trevor-Roper's interest in intellectual and cultural history. Included are discussions of Renaissance Venice; the arts as patronized by that "universal man," the Emperor Maximilian I; the court of Henry VIII and the ideas of Sir Thomas More; the Lisle Letters and the formidable Cromwellian revolution; the historiography and the historical philosophy of the Elizabethans John Stow and William Camden; religion and the "judicious Hooker," the great doctor of the Anglican Church; medicine and medical philosophy, shaken out of its orthodoxy by Paracelsus and his disciples; literature and Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"; and the ideology of the Renaissance courts.
Trevor-Roper sets his intellectual and cultural history in a context of society and politics: in realization of ideas, the patronage of the arts, the interpretation of history, the social challenge of science, the social application of religion. This volume of essays confirms his reputation as a spectacular writer of history and master essayist.

Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the Bury Text, in a boxed set. Introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper

Famously sceptical about Christianity, unexpectedly sympathetic to the barbarian invaders and the Byzantine Empire, constantly aware of how political leaders often achieve the exact opposite of what they intend, Gibbon was both alert to the broad pattern of events and the significant revealing detail. Attacked for its enlightened views on politics, sexuality and religion, the first volume was none the less soon to be found 'on every table' and was widely acclaimed for the elegance of its prose. Gripping, powerfully intelligent and wonderfully entertaining, THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ranks as one of the literary masterpieces of its age.

Late in 1945, Trevor-Roper was appointed by British Intelligence in Germany to investigate conflicting evidence surrounding Hitler's final days and to produce a definitive report on his death. The author, who had access to American counterintelligence files and to German prisoners, focuses on the last ten days of Hitler's life, April 20-29, 1945, in the underground bunker in Berlin--a bizarre and gripping episode punctuated by power play and competition among Hitler's potential successors.
"From exhaustive research [Trevor-Roper] has put together a carefully documented, irrefutable, and unforgettable reconstruction of the last days in April, 1945."--"New Republic"
"A book sound in its scholarship, brilliant in its presentation, a delight for historians and laymen alike."--A. J. P. Taylor, "New Statesman"

During World War II, Britain enjoyed spectacular success in the secret war between hostile intelligence services, enabling a substantial and successful expansion of British counter-espionage which continued to grow in the Cold War era. Hugh Trevor-Roper's experiences working in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the war left a profound impression on him and he later observed the world of intelligence with particular discernment. To Trevor-Roper, who was always interested in the historical dimension of the present and was fully alive to the historical significance of the era in which he lived, the subjects of wartime intelligence and the complex espionage networks that developed in the Cold War period were as worthy of profound investigation and reflection as events from the more-distant past. Expressing his observations through some of his most ironic and entertaining correspondence, articles and reviews, Trevor-Roper wrote vividly about some of the greatest intelligence characters of the age - from Kim Philby and Michael Straight to the Germans Admiral Canaris and Otto John. The coherence, depth and historical vision which unites these writings can only be glimpsed when they are brought together from the scattered publications in which they appeared, and when read beside his unpublished, private reflections. The Secret World unites Trevor-Roper's writings on the subject of intelligence - including the full text of The Philby Affair and some of his personal letters to leading figures. Based on original material and extensive supplementary research by E.D.R Harrison, this book is a sharp, revealing and personal first-hand account of the intelligence world in World War II and the Cold War.

As a British Intelligence Officer during World War II, Hugh Trevor-Roper was expressly forbidden from keeping a diary due to the sensitive and confidential nature of his work. However, he confided a record of his thoughts in a series of slender notebooks inscribed OHMS (On His Majesty's Service). The Wartime Journals reveal the voice and experiences of Trevor-Roper, a war-time 'backroom boy' who spent most of the war engaged in highly-confidential intelligence work in England - including breaking the cipher code of the German secret service, the Abwehr. He became an expert in German resistance plots and after the war interrogated many of Hitler's immediate circle, investigated Hitler's death in the Berlin bunker and personally retrieved Hitler's will from its secret hiding place. The posthumous discovery of Trevor-Roper's secret journals - unknown even to his family and closest confidants - is an exciting archival find and provides an unusual and privileged view of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany. At the same time they offer an engaging - sometimes mischievous - and reflective study of both the human comedy and personal tragedy of wartime.