The World Aflame

A visually stunning history of global conflict from 1914 to 1945, from Dan Jones and Marina Amaral – the team who created The Colour of Time.

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

“PRAISE FOR THE COLOUR OF TIME : '[ The Colour of Time ] does something simple yet extraordinary. It takes black-and-white photos of historic events and colours them in. The effect is transformative' Daily Telegraph . 'I have long considered colourisation sacrilege ... after reading this book, I've changed my mind' The Times . 'The most breathtakingly colourised black-and-white pictures ever' Daily Mail . 'A splash of colour is all it took to bring these historic black and white photos back to vivid, breathtaking life ... Astonishing' Sun . 'Both revelatory and familiar. Amaral's skills bring 19th- and early 20th-century photographic images to wholly unexpected and vivid life ... Jones offers perceptive commentary, contextualising the events and people depicted with concise skill, meaning that this fine book is hugely readable' Observer .”

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
Amaral's colourised images bring history to life in breathtaking technicolour. Although, actually, Amaral's palette is far more nuanced and beautiful than that Financial Times
Frequently stark and sometimes bleak... but this is a testament to the quality of Amaral's work, and its effect on the human eye' Military History
The past – even its grimmest, darkest hours – was not in black and white Guardian
A new perspective to the bloodiest half-century in history Daily Mail
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
You may need a strong stomach for some of the images, but they are immensely vivid, and Jones's text is crisp Sunday Times
While many can claim to show you Winston Churchill as he's never been seen before, this photograph is perhaps a true first Discover Britain
To see Winston Churchill's youthful freckly face in 1911 is revelatory. In a single image, we see how far the journey was from a somewhat gadabout sea lord to Our National Saviour Daily Express
Stunning People's Friend
Jones's commentaries are small miracles of compression... Amaral's achievement in bringing colour as 'an emotional enhancing agent' to these photographs is extraordinary' World of Interiors
You may feel that you have seen it all before; this book triumphantly suggests otherwise Daily Mail

Dan Jones is a historian, broadcaster and award-winning journalist. His books, including The Plantagenets, Magna Carta, The Templars and The Colour of Time (with Marina Amaral), have sold more than one million copies worldwide. He has written and hosted dozens of TV shows including the acclaimed Netflix/Channel 5 series, Secrets of Great British Castles. His writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines including the London Evening Standard, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, GQ and The Spectator. Marina Amaral is a talented Brazilian artist who specialises in the colourisation of historical photographs.

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