BYZANTIUM: THE DECLINE AND FALL - JOHN JULIUS NORWICH
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The last in the trilogy whose title again imitates Gibbons and whose style is as readable and captivating. Where Norwich differs is his deep understanding and I would say love of this much-neglected area of history and goes a great way to redressing the balance toward a better understanding of this tragic empire which so long stood as bulwark as well as a relic. No more so than its Western counterparts did it have its share of good and bad men acting heroically or venally according to character, but Norwich does go a long way to addressing the misconceptions and prejudices that Gibbon helped to nourish in the popular mind.
Well illustrated with maps and family trees to help with the confusing proliferation of dynasties
And always in the background, muffled at first but ever louder, the drum-beat of the Turk coming closer and closer.
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Stunning conclusion to an amazing trilogy
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I defy you not to read this work in one sitting. Norwich's final hours of Byzantium are tinged with sadness, stupidity and remarkable valour on the part of the final Emperor. This is a beautiful book which leaves the reader's curiosity about this remarkable empire parched - you will want to study more about Byzantium when you finish this trilogy - Norwich's account of the siege of 1453 is amazing - filled with real empathy for the people he has divested a great deal of time he has spent writing about. A stunning conclusion to his 'magnus opus.'
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A narrative to rate with the greatest
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This was the first book i ever read on Byzantium, loaned to me via my history teacher (Kinghorn) and since then i have rarely had the book out of my possession. It is a truely gripping tale detailing the rise and then fall of the Comneni dynasty, the sack of the city by the travesty that was the fourth crusade, the final revival, and then the glorious fall of Constantinople. Norwich has a flair for the dramatic, and he knows how to spin a yarn so to speak, as he charts the decline of the greatest metropolis in the world, until it ends up empty, hollow and impoverished. Sadly, so many historians share the bias of Gibbon, and have had a tendency to loathe Byzantium as a corrupt and decadent civilisation, and this is perhaps the best major work a reader can find. Though the maps are small, they detail key locations, and generally give you an idea of the area, all that is needed. By the end of the book, you will nearly be in tears at the pitifulness of what was a great empire at the beginning of the book.
A book that should be read by all, detailing the most glorious end to any empire on earth.
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Full Stop
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Most empires only fade away; Byzantium died spectacularly. It's a rare example in history of a definite full stop, the end of 2000 years of the old Graeco-Roman civilisation. This volume of Norwich's accessible history is an improvement on the previous one. Although it covers more history in the same space it seems more detailed, because he leaves behind the courtly navel-gazing and goes out into the rough-and-tumble world of medieval power-politics. However, as he admits, it's an unedifying story, the empire gradually disintegrating under internal strife, Western treachery and the Turkish advance. Only at the end do the Byzantines partially redeem themselves in one of the world's great heroic last stands. Like the earlier books this is physically flimsy, with irritatingly small type and inadequate maps; also like them, the text bears signs of not having been thoroughly revised. But if you've read those, you may as well finish the story off.
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The Trilogy Comes to an End
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Many factual books are readable, informative and stirring. But rarely are they moving. Byzantium: The Decline and Fall manages to be all of the above and so much more.
John Julius Norwich has achieved something great in that he can actually move the reader to the plight of a long destroyed civilisation.
His description of the long decline of the Byzantine Empire makes for painful reading. The fighting between the Orthodox and the Latin Christians, the plunder and destruction of Constantinople by the Crusaders and the collapse of dynasties are all covered. They all tell of an empire going through a long miserable death, but John Norwich manages to filter through these seperate events to reach a synthesis - lucidly explaining how the Empire was finally overwhelmed and destroyed.
It is in the final section of the book that the story is at its most powerful, as John Norwich tells us in dramatic descriptions how the Ottomans stormed the walls, and how Constantine XI died fighting for his city and his people.
I first read this trilogy about four years ago, and it still remains one of the finest narrative histories I have ever read. John Norwich is a fine historian who is able to write in a fluent and accessible way.
My only criticism of it is that it centers too much on the leading figures: the Emperors, generals and patriarchs, and less on the ordinary people who made up the bulk of the empire's population.
I personally believe that the Byzantium trilogy almost reaches the heights of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall, but it just falls short of this achievement. Nonetheless it's quite an achievement all the same. A must read for anyone interested in the decline of an Empire whose demise brought about the beginning of the modern world.
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