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'This thrilling book is the first occasion on which early Byzantine history has been rendered both readable and credible' - Independent. 'He is brilliant . . . He writes like the most cultivated modern diplomat attached by a freak of time to the Byzantine court, with intimate knowledge, tactful judgement and a consciousness of the surviving monuments' - Independent. 'Lord Norwich's skill is to communicate . . . the humanity of his subject - the human faces of emperor and priest - and to transmit his own imaginative interest to ourselves . . . Lord Norwich has appeared as a silver-tongued Virgil to guide us through Tartarian regions with the amenity and amusement of a luxury tour' - Sunday Times. 'The reader is conveyed in comfort, as it were in a very superior hovercraft, which glides smoothly over all the unevenness of the ground, to the regular, melodious sound of the author's prose' - Sunday Telegraph.… (more)
User reviews
It's a rollicking read, if hard to follow in detail, especially as the leading names are often the same or similar; "Theo- this and that", "Constan-give or take" recur over the centuries. Makes Hannibal Lektor or Scandi Noir seem pretty tame.
This history of Constantinople grips the reader from the start, and Norwich guides him through the labyrinthine complex of similar names with
There are some sumptuous euphemisms [Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine I was "a humble innkeeper's daughter from Bithynia. Some historians have alleged that as a girl she had been one of the supplementary amenities of her father's establishment, regularly available to his clients..."] and pen portraits [Attila the Hun is described as "typical of his race: short, swarthy and snub-nosed, , with tiny beady eyes set in a head too big for his body, and a thin straggling beard"].
It is a sad tale - the inexorable decline from greatness, through decadence, to ignominy is as compelling as it is heartbreaking.
This book is an overwhelming success: while perfectly accessible to a simple country boy such as myself, Norwich never leaves on in doubt about the depth of his scholarliness, nor the extent of his research.
I am very eager to move on to Volume 2!
The author doesn't shy away from passing moral judgment on the various protagonists. He does it so well that this doesn't disturb at all; in fact I found myself agreeing with him.
I can't wait to read the other volumes of his history of Byzantium.