The search for a children’s history of Cyprus that children will want to read is over. A new, beautifully illustrated book about the island’s fascinating history has just been published - the perfect gift for children the world over who may have Cypriot origins or who may have been there on holiday.

For writer Marina Christofides, the history of Cyprus has always been a series of fun stories, many of them amusing, some of them sad, but always varied and colourful.

So when her children were young, she went in search of a book that would depict this for them. Instead she found whatever books were available in bookshops were dull and text book like. There was no way the children of today fed on an instant entertainment diet of television, Playstation and video would read them unless forced to do so in school. Feeling she could do better than that, she sat down and wrote one herself.

“There are so many lovely stories associated with Cyprus”, she says. “There’s the story of King Peter who always took his wife’s nightie with him when he travelled. Some horrific ones, like the slaying of Marcantonio Bragadino. And some funny ones.

“I wanted to make our history come alive, to be fun not boring, and above all to be easy to read for children so they would learn”, she adds.

In a nutshell she wanted to show that the history of Cyprus has been a history of conquest, where through the ages the island was controlled by the various powers of the day, hence the title. As a leading producer of copper in antiquity, Cyprus fell prey to the big regional powers of the day - Egyptians. Persians, Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Franks, Venetians, Ottomans and the British. Whoever ruled the Mediterranean had to have Cyprus.

“I envisioned a book where each period or event was shown through a single illustration covering a two page spread with as few words as possible”.

Paramount to her vision was finding the right illustrator. After several attempts, she found Eleni Lambrou, whose beautiful painstaking pictures taking almost three years to complete, simply make history come alive.

“We used historical sources for inspiration and tried through each picture to convey the feeling of each period”.

Wherever possible artefacts from the museum are included for each relevant period, like the famous octopus pot that can be seen in the illustration about the copper age, the Kyrenia ship, which ploughed the seas during the reign of the Ptolemies, and the Pafos mosaics shown in a house as it was collapsing during an earthquake.

The artist used historical sources for depicting period costumes and other details as accurately as possible. Those parents in the know, will recognise the style of the mosaics of Ravenna, which are the inspiration behind the illustration for the Byzantine period. The Venetian period shows Nicosia being attacked by the Ottomans based on an original engraving, while in the period on Independence, people are shown in Eleftheria Sq complete with billboards with advertisements from the time, driving 60s cars and Vespas and reading newspapers announcing independence which are exact copies of the originals.

“Children love to play games, so we decided to hide a little figurine on every page for children to spot”, the author says. “It is first seen being carved in the village of Chirokitia and then appears in each period going down through the ages”.

Basically there isn’t anything like this book on the market. It is one of those books that children will cherish, and is so beautiful that adults will also want to keep it as a coffee table book.