Dynasty

A swaggering history of the dynastic house that Julius Caesar built. Nothing entertains like excess and the weird cruelties, bloody intrigues and eye-popping depravities of emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero are queasily fascinating

Sunday Express

A witty and skilful storyteller . . . He recounts with pleasure his racy tales of psychopathic cruelty, incest, paedophilia, matricide, fratricide, assassination and depravity

New Statesman

Brilliant, terrifying and compelling

Observer

A thrilling book by one of the country's best popular historians . . . genuinely breathtaking

History Today

Holland has crafted a history of early Rome that has all the gripping detail and narrative momentum of a novel... he gives the reader a startlingly visceral sense of the violence and brutality and wretched excess of ancient Rome

New York Times

[A] dramatic, intrigue-ridden, blood-and-guts tale of Rome's first line of emperors

The Times

Dynasty, like its companion volume Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, is a fine example of narrative historical writing. Yet you could also read it as something else entirely: a meditation on the enduring power and possibilities of storytelling

Financial Times

Holland writes with all the excitement and immediacy of the gossip-mongers of Rome . . . One senses that if Tom Holland were emperor for the day he would give the crowd not only the bread and circuses but a jolly good education too

Evening Standard

A richly panoramic picture of Rome in the first century AD

Literary Review

Holland's Tacitean vision of the dynasty of Augustus makes for a very compelling read

Times Literary Supplement

Holland is at the top of his game, blending deep scholarly skill with real literary talent

Evening Standard

Thrilling, thunderous prose, fully equal to that of the great days of Thermopylae and Salamis

Wall Street Journal

Holland is perhaps Britain's most engrossing historical storyteller. He has a rare gift of combining academic respectability with a great knack as a narrator

Catholic Herald

This is great material, and Holland does it justice with a chiseled prose style and an eye for the luminous detail.... Holland is a master of narrative history. On the strength of Dynasty, he deserves a laurel wreath

Washington Post

A vivid account of five Roman emperors, emphasizing their vices and vicious behavior with less attention to the vast empire, which continued to prosper despite them

Kirkus

Dynasty has Holland's usual novelistic ability to bring a narrative alive, together with his extraordinary command of ancient sources

New York Times Book Review