Product Description

'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 In this exciting narrative history, John Julius Norwich, one of most accomplished popular historians, reveals the beginning of Byzantium. He tells of the five formative centuries of an empire that would enthral the western world for more than eleven hundred years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21492 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

About the Author
Born in 1929, John Julius Norwich served in the foreign office for twelve years before resigning in 1964 in order to write. His many publications include his two-book history published by Penguin in one volume entitled The Normans in Sicily; two travel books, Mount Athos (with Reresby Sitwell) and Sahara; The Architecture of Southern England; Glyndebourne; three anthologies of poetry and prose, Christmas Crackers, More Christmas Crackers and Still More Christmas Crackers; A History of Venice; and his three-volume history of the Byzantine empire of which this is the first, Byzantium: The Apogee is the second, and Byzantium: The Decline and Fall is the third. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Geographical Society and the Society of Antiquaries, a Companion of the Royal Victorian Order and a Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.

Customer Reviews

Byzantium for everyone
In our Westerncentric (I think I made that word up!) history we learn that the Roman Empire ended in 410AD with the sack of Rome by the Goths. What we don't learn is that a large part of it carried on in the East and formed the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, there is almost a conspiracy of silence to deny its existence as if doing so would cover up the fact that Western Europe was going through the Dark Ages at the same time.
I knew nothing of Byzantine history until I picked up this book but was soon immersed in its history. The book reads like a novel and is hard to put down. You are transported to the court of the Byzantine Emporers and you have to keep turning the page to find out what happens next.
Once you have read the first, you will want the next two in the trilogy straight away.
A first class read. History as it should be.

BYZANTIUM: THE EARLY CENTURIES - JOHN JULIUS NORWICH
This is the sort of book that brings history back to what it ought to be; a rattling good tale backed-up but not swamped by detail. There are many excellent books on Byzantine history but this is one of the few that unashamedly sets out to tell it primarily through its personalities. More Carlyle than Spengler. Character sketches that personalise some the great figures of the Roman Empire in the east as it continued on after the Fall of the West. A much needed book, the first of a trilogy, outlining what is undeniably a much neglected area of history. Despite its struggles, internal as well as external, if it had not existed, it's fair to say every aspect of our existence would be radically different today. Written in a conscious imitation of the great Gibbon, like him it's the little vignettes that bring the characters to life; Constantine the Great, Heraclius, the first Crusader, Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, Constantine Copronymus (`the S**t'), Justinian Rhinotmetus (the runny-nosed). I don't think it would hurt to repeat the quote from the back of the paperback edition..."The reader is conveyed in comfort, as it were in a very superior hovercraft, which glides over all the unevenness of the ground, to the regular melodious sound of the author's prose".
Buy it and tell everyone that Rome did not fall in 475 A.D.

This is a wonderful read
The Byzantium Series is a most wonderful and engaging read, given in an anecdotal style. It does not set out to be a piece of the most in-depth scholarship - though it has all that too, but rather is a magnificent vision of the glory which was Byzantium. No one can approach this subject and not have read the trilogy.

It has inspired me and a colleague to write an Oratorio called "Defeats and Reversals of Byzantine Emperors"

Viscount Norwich's work is simply a must read for everyone!