Published alongside his Sex Play at the National Theatre comes Desmond Dingle's mind-bendingly erudite account of how we all got to be where we are now. Desmond Dingle, founder and leading actor of the National Theatre of Brent, gives us the benefit of his encyclepaeadd - incyclicalpeed - huge and devastating knowledge by charting the history of the world in sixty-six chapters, three prefaces and a foreword by Omar Sharif. Starting, obviously, with The Creation of the Universe, and moving swiftly through The Dawn of Man, The Grandeur that was Rome and A History of the English Channel, each chapter is replete with erudition: "The Chinese Empire is one of the oldest Empires in the world and existed until recently without anyone knowing about it. Apart from the Chinese, obviously." Each chapter also ends with helpful suggestions of 'Things to Do': eg Make a scale model of the Big Bang. Discuss Civilisation generally. Release from bondage an oppressed person of your acquaintance. Originally published (in 1987) as All the World's a Globe, this revised and updated version is cynically and opportunistically re-issued to cashin on the anticipated success of the same author's Wonder of Sex at the National Theatre this Christmas. (Fingers crossed.)