Complete and unabridged, with 26 full-page plates by J. M. W. Turner, Canaletto and Karel Dujardin. The world from the first men to the present day, told to children as one story without dates learned by rote — Egypt, Greece, Rome, the middle ages, the discoveries, the revolutions and the war just ended. V. M. Hillyer was headmaster of the Calvert School in Baltimore and wrote it for pupils he taught by post. He assumes a child can hold a whole civilisation in mind if it is given as a narrative, and he is right. Twenty-six paintings by Turner, Canaletto and others carry the story across four centuries, from Rome's ruins to the streets of Victorian London.