The first volume of Decline and Fall was published in 1776, and by the time the final volume appeared in 1787, Gibbon had produced an exhaustive, million-and-a-half-word account of a 'revolution which shall ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth'.

This panoramic work, covering 13 centuries from 180 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, has been described as 'a bridge that carries one from the ancient world to the modern'.

Here, this masterpiece of the Enlightenment has been cut down to a manageable size, but still covers in detail the tyranny, cowardice and decadence that led to the fall of Rome. Gibbon described history as 'little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind', and this book serves as a dazzling, perceptive guide to every civilization before and since.