You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Hutchinson is to publish a broad-ranging book on the ancient world by author and broadcaster Michael Scott.
Senior editor Sarah Rigby acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the as yet untitled study, which will give “a truly connected perspective of the beginning of the world we know today”.
The publisher said the “significant deal” was struck at auction through Patrick Walsh at Conville & Walsh.
Scott, who writes and presents television programmes for National Geographic, History Channel, Nova and the BBC, will take readers “on a journey around the ancient world as he looks at civilisation, politics, religion and war, from Greece to Italy, South America to China”. The book is planned for spring 2016.
Rigby said: “Michael charmed us all with his huge expertise, deep knowledge and extremely personable approach to history. It is his eye for the telling details, his storytelling ability, his love of connections and his joy at conveying all of this that we believe make him, and his writing, so appealing to readers and to television and radio audiences.
“He’s well on his way to becoming one of our most recognised history broadcasters and will be a star of the Hutchinson list.”
Scott, who recently moved from Cambridge University to become assistant professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, said: “We live in a global and connected world. But that is not how we study history. Instead, we look at events situated in a particular time and place, isolated from their global contexts, leaving us with a disconnected sense of our past.
“This book, in contrast, seeks to crash through the disciplinary boundaries that have shackled the study of history, enabling the reader to connect up different strands of our human story and thereby to develop a more sophisticated sense of how our world has developed, and why it now exists as it does.”
Scott has also written Delphi (Princeton University Press), due out this year.