A unique box set containing an in-depth and evocative study telling the story of Christianity from its birth in the first century through to the present day. Powerful and dramatic it is a story of a religion which has inspired both selfless devotion and bloody conflict and formed the framework for our political, cultural, scientific and social history for two millennia. Volume One tells the story of the birth of Christianity from its Jewish roots to its spread through the Roman Empire and beyond, the loss of Jerusalem to Islam and the reconquest with the first crusade in the eleventh century. Volume Two takes us through Christianity's second millennium, from the flowering of the Middle Ages in the great medieval cathedrals of Western Europe, through the rupture of the church in the Reformation, to the modern world, in which the religion lives alongside new philosophical and scientific theories and in which the established power of the European churches is now shifting towards the expanding Christian communities in Africa and Latin America.

Foreword by: Melvyn Bragg