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You could be mistaken for thinking [[:Category:Tony Robinson|Tony Robinson]] had written books like this before, for he was doing 'Horrid History'-style TV programmes before the official ones were made. This series fits so well into his erudite yet family audience-friendly manner, and this second book takes us in a primary school curriculum-suiting way into the world of Rome. A lot is in these books, from trivia for all ages (I didn't know, or had forgotten, that all those Julius Caesar reliefs and statues are of him in a wig as he was bald), to the delectable gross-out (the posh man's cuisine) to the foregrounding of the obvious difference between them and us (in a word, slavery).

But still there's room for everything else - the Romulus/Remus myth, the very nature of living in such a metropolis as the world had never seen, the gladiators, the animal sacrifice, the roads... About the only things I can think of that are not there are the obvious exclusions - the bisexual orgies and worst excesses of the Caesars, and all the rude bits on the statues. And there's still room for quite lame captions - speech bubbles from the cartoon characters and those added to Roman mosaics, portraits and sculpture. I know graffiti was found all over Pompeii, but all the same...