Istanbul's history is a catalogue of change, not least of name, yet it has managed to retain its own unique identity. John Freely captures the flavour of daily life as well as court ceremonial and intrigue. The book also includes a comprehensive gazetteer of all major monuments and museums. An in-de[...]

This is the story of the Byzantine monuments of Istanbul, the city known in the medieval period as Constantinople and in classical antiquity as Byzantium. Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire from 330 until 1453 and was renowned for the beauty and grandeur of its churches and palac[...]

Histories of modern science often begin with the heroic battle between Galileo and the Catholic Church, which sparked the Scientific Revolution and led to the world-changing discoveries of Isaac Newton. In reality, more than a millennium before the Renaissance, a succession of scholars paved the way[...]

Throughout the 1960's John Freely and Hilary Sumner-Boyd explored every alley, cove and monument of their adopted home of Istanbul in between their teaching jobs. They created a legendary guidebook, covering 1,500 years of Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, to a city that was still innocent of tour[...]

In October 1945 at the age of 19, John Freely passed the southernmost tip of Crete on his way home from the war in China, just as Odysseus did on his homeward voyage from the battle of Troy. He has been bewitched by Homer and the lands of Homer's epics ever since. As the culmination of a life spent [...]

The Cyclades are the quintessential Greek isles, renowned for the beauty of their seascapes, their historical monuments and a unique way of life deeply rooted in the remote past of the Aegean. This guide to the Cyclades describes these enchanting islands.[...]

Sultan Mehmet II, the Grand Turk, was the seventh of his line to rule the Ottoman Turks. Mehmet was barely 21 when he conquered Byzantine Constantinople, which became Istanbul and the capital of his mighty empire. This biography reveals the world in which Mehmet lived and illuminates the man behind [...]

This classic guide to Istanbul by Hilary Summer-Boyd and John Freely - the 'best travel guide to Istanbul' ("The Times"), 'a guide book that reads like a novel' ("New York Times") - is here, for the first time since its original publication thirty-seven years ago, published in a completely revised a[...]