Author:Simon Price,Peter Thonemann
To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a 'classical Europe', using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures.
As this consistently fresh and surprising new book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past filled with great leaders and writers, emigrations and battles. Indeed, much of the reason we know so much about the classical past is the obsessive importance it held for so many generations of Greeks and Romans, who interpreted and reinterpreted their changing casts of heroes and villains. Figures such as Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar loom large in our imaginations today, but they were themselves fascinated by what had preceded them.
The Birth of Classical Europe is therefore both an authoritative history, and also a fascinating attempt to show how our own changing values and interests have shaped our feelings about an era which is by some measures very remote but by others startlingly close.
An excellent biography; entertaining as well as informative
—— Allan Massie , Daily TelegraphA fascinating portrait. At times, the reader seems almost able to reach across time and touch this man
—— The EconomistIn producing this fine biography, Mortimer has succeeded magnificently, and has gone a long, long way towards restoring Edward III to his proper place as one of the great makers of this nation
—— Alison Weir , Daily MailIan Mortimer...has virtually single-handedly put medieval history back in the hands of ordinary readers, combining scrupulous research with a wonderfully iconoclastic approach to storytelling
—— Dominic Sandbrook , Daily TelegraphSarah Wise has created an exceptional work, in that it is both scholarly and page turning - a genuine treat
—— Gilda O'NeillSarah Wise is too clever and considered a historian simply to give us a lurid, one-dimensional Victorian melodrama. Through painstaking archival work and readable empathetic prose, she has instead sought to evoke the texture of life here
—— Daily TelegraphThe account is both moving and engrossing, and its tendency in places to become a litany of misery and despair is redeemed by Sarah Wise's light and occasionally humorous touch
—— Literary ReviewAs with her previous book The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise is superb on statistical detail... In every respect this is a note-perfect work of social history, thoroughly researched, charitable in its sympathies, and sadly still embodying lessons for today
—— IndependentCarefully researched... a wide-ranging study
—— Sunday TelegraphHer achievement is remarkable... This engrossing work shines a light not only on a turbulent period in London's history, but on humanity itself. Only the best histories can claim as much
—— GuardianSpilling facts, lives, conditions, intolerable burdens and the spirit expressed by spontaneous dancing in the streets, The Blackest Streets is a little masterpiece
—— HeraldExtraordinary scholarship and rare sensitivity
—— Ophelia Field , Daily TelegraphSarah Wise mines the archives to bring the local inhabitants back to life, and makes particularly brilliant use of the interviews that historian Raphael Samuel conducted in the 1970s with Arthur Harding.
—— LRBAs in her wonderful book The Italian Boy, she explores a milieu that was hungry, dirty, threadbare and exploited
—— Christopher Hirst , The IndependentSarah Wise animates the horrors in fascinating detail
—— Toby Clements , The Telegraph
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