for his next few books, continuing to use his knowledge of ancient cultures and settings. In Attis (1996), he took historical figures from the ancient Roman Republic like Pompey and the poet Catullus and put them in a modern setting among a string of brutal murders. He set 1997's Deliver Us From Evil in 17th-century England, with a man named Faustus leading an army of the undead. 1999's Sleeper in the Sands is set in Egypt, starting with the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and travelling backward in time as a deadly secret is unveiled. Holland's last novel to date departed from the supernatural genre. The Bone Hunter (1999) is a thriller, set in the United States, about the rivalry between two 19th-century paleontologists around whom people begin dying. Historical non-fiction books While doing research for The Bone Hunter, Holland read From Alexander to Actium by historian Peter Green and his childhood passion for ancient history and civilisations was reignited. He gave up writing fiction and turned to writing history. His first book of history, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, was published in 2003 and garnered positive reviews. It was called "gripping and hugely entertaining" by The Sunday Times, "informative, balanced and accessible" by BookPage, and "a model of exactly how a popular history of the classical world should be written" by The Guardian. Rubicon won the 2004 Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content. Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (2005) is an account of the 5th-century B.C. Greco-Persian Wars. It was reviewed positively by Paul Cartledge, a professor of Greek history at Cambridge University, for The Independent: "If Persian Fire does not win the Samuel Johnson Prize, there is no justice in this world." Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, historian Dominic Sandbrook called it "riveting" and praised the "enormous strengths" of the author. It won the Anglo-Hellenic League's 2006 Runciman Award. Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom (2008) examines the two centuries on either side of the seminal year 1000 A.D., and how Western Europe ascended out of the Dark Ages to become a leading world civilization once again. Noel Malcolm reviewed it for The Daily Telegraph and called it "a tremendously good read" but criticised the lack of detail about historical evidence and Holland's "elevated"