Description

‘The events of the first and second world wars are brought to vivid, startling life thanks to Amaral’s skill at colourising contemporary images’ Observer
The epic, harrowing and world-changing story – in words and colourized images – of global conflict from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the obliteration of Hiroshima by the dropping of the first atom bomb. The World Aflame embraces not only the total conflagrations of 1914-18 and 1939-45 and the international tensions, conflicting ideologies and malign economic forces that set them in train, but also the civil wars of the interwar period in Ireland and Spain, wars in Latin America, Britain’s imperial travails in such places as Ireland, Somalia and Palestine, and events on the domestic ‘fronts’ of the belligerent nations.

Like The Colour of Time, this is a collaboration between the gifted Brazilian artist Marina Amaral, and the leading British historian Dan Jones. A fusion of amazing pictures and well-chosen and informative words, The World Aflame offers a moving – and often terrifying – perspective on the bloodiest century in human history.

‘A new perspective on the bloodiest half-century in history’ Daily Mail

‘Immensely vivid’ Sunday Times

‘Brings history to life in breaktaking technicolour’ Financial Times

‘Revelatory’ Daily Express

‘The past – even its grimmest, darkest hours – was not in black and white’ Guardian

Publisher Review

'Amaral's colourisation process is most moving when applied to pictures of children. The addition of eye colour, skin tone, freckles - suddenly, they look like children you might know. And children, especially, relate to her colourised pictures because they are witnessing a reality that is more similar to their own, she says ... To see it more as the photographer saw it, and the way it actually was. The photographer might not have had the choice, or the technology, to take a picture in colour. But looking through the viewfinder, that's what they saw; the past - even its grimmest, darkest hours - was not in black and white' Guardian. 'You may need a strong stomach for some of the images, but they are immensely vivid, and Jones's text is crisp' Sunday Times. 'For the first time, we are seeing the scenes in colour as images from a new book show how much changes but how much stays the same as history unfolds. Covering the years between 1914-1945, The World Aflame shows the planet gripped by wars, the rise of right-wing governments and a deadly pandemic' Sunday Post.