Ancient Worlds
In his trailer for the TV series which accompanies this book, Richard Miles describes his work not as the history of other people, made strange to us by the distance of time and place, but of ‘us, then.’ The great achievement of this history of civilisation in its literal sense, of the organisation of communities into cities, is the way in which it brings its subjects to life for the modern reader. In eminently readable prose, even allowing for the fact that ‘the onward march of civilisation was one that was full of blind alleys, cul-de-sacs and dead ends,’ he draws a clear line connecting us to our ancestors in the cities of Mesopotamia, Greece or Rome. Then, as now, cities were contradictory institutions, full of aspirational architecture and economic vigour, home also to drunks and drug addicts, dropouts from the drive to civilisation yet still under its protection, without whom there is no yardstick for success.
While Miles covers familiar ground, he does it in a refreshing way, shedding light from an unashamedly populist angle that makes his erudition accessible and entertaining.
