Pliny: life, letters and natural history in the shadows of Vesuvius

AD 79. Above the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius is spewing thick ash into the sky.

The inhabitants of nearby villages stand in their doorways, eyes cast on the unknown.

Pliny the Elder, a historian, admiral of the fleet, and author of an extraordinary encyclopaedia of Natural History, dares to draw closer to the phenomenon.

He perishes beneath the volcano. His 17-year-old nephew, Pliny the Younger, survives.

The elder Pliny left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 'Natural History' offering observations on everything, from the moon, to elephants, to the efficacy of ground millipedes in healing ulcers.

Adopted as his late uncle's son, Pliny the Younger inherited his notebooks - his pearls of wisdom - and endeavoured to keep his memory alive.

This biography resurrects the 'father and son' to explore their beliefs about life, death and the natural world in the first century AD.