Byzantium

In "Byzantium: The Early Centuries", the author told the epic tale of the Roman Empire's second capital up to Christmas Day AD 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as a rival emperor. This second volume of the trilogy covers the following three centuries. The Byzantine Empire, although surrounded by hostile Muslims, Bulgars, Russians and Romans, wasted much of its time on obscure theological disputes. Yet despite being controlled by an extraordinary sequence of adventures, drunkards, lustful empresses, sinister eunuchs and unworldly scholars, it somehow managed to survive. Here, Lord Norwich continues his chronicle up to the coronation of the heroic Alexius Comnenus in 1081.

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.