For millennia, mankind has devised ingenious and diabolical means of inflicting pain on fellow human beings. This deplorable but seemingly universal trait has eaten away at mankind's very claim to civilisation. The Big Book of Pain is an exploration of the systematic use throughout the ages of various means of punishment, torture, coercion and torment; which takes the reader into the Ancient Roman Coliseum, the medieval dungeon, the Inquisitional interrogation, the auto-da-fe, the witch-trial, and the most horrid of prisons. It is a shocking and compelling study of the shameful methods and motives of the torturer and the executioner, and of the heinous duty they have performed through the ages. Since the earliest times it is an acknowledged fact that anyone can be made to confess to anything under torture, making such confessions inadmissible. The Big Book of Pain questions why we have continued such practices for so long.

The award-winning collaboration of MARK P. DONNELLY and DANIEL DIEHL has, since 1996, authored twelve books and over a hundred hours of non-fiction documentary television. Other titles by the authors include: Eat Thy Neighbour: A History of Cannibalism and Tales from the Tower of London.