Spies, Sadists and Sorcerers Edition by Renmin University of China Press (Beijing)

With a breath-taking sweep spanning Rome to the modern day, historian and author Dominic Selwood challenges the traditional version of some of the best-known events of the past. From ancient Christianity to the voyages of Columbus, and from the medieval Crusades to ISIS and the modern Middle East, this book debunks dozens of historical myths. You will learn that:

• Magna Carta was an infamous failure in medieval times
• Richard the Lionheart was a cruel and dreadful king
• The Knights Templar were heretical, and have left a genuinely baffling mystery
• The painter of the Turin Shroud was found in the 1300s
• Christopher Columbus never saw North America
• The first computer coder was a woman, a century before Alan Turing
• The man who unleashed mustard gas in the World War One trenches won the Nobel Prize for chemistry
• One incredible Spanish spy saved D-Day

This book will challenge everything you think you know about history.