POWERS AND THRONES

A NEW HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES DAN JONES

Head of Zeus, 720pp, £25 ‘This is one of the paciest 600 plus page books I have ever read,’ exclaimed Richard Foreman in

Aspects of History. ‘The book touches upon the rise and fall of empires, pandemics, religious conflict, the failure of a two-state solution in Jerusalem .… The Middle Ages made us, but equally so the period makes for a cracking story,’ he continued. ‘Scholarship is wedded to storytelling — and flashes of humour exist on the same page as academic rigour, as Jones contrasts the medieval world with our own (and finds that there is more that unites than divides us).’ ‘A fine account of a distant era that still echoes today,’ Kirkus agreed. The book ‘is a rollercoaster ride through the Middle Ages … the sheer quantity of history addressed is astounding,’ Debbie Kilroy marvelled in Get

History. It is ‘nothing short of masterful’. Christopher Hart in the Sunday

Times noted the book’s focus on ‘the historical changes in climate’. For instance, ‘Rome’s years of greatest prosperity… remained pleasantly warm and enjoyed plenty of rainfall. Yet weather also triggered Rome’s fall.’ Similarly, the years preceding the Black Death in western Europe saw bad weather and ruined harvests, so that an undernourished population easily succumbed to the plague. Surviving workers demanded higher wages and revolted if they didn’t get them. Jones ‘explains the movements of the period with crystal clarity, but it’s as a sequence of potted biographies that it really excels … each vividly sketched in a few deft pages,’ Hart continued.

The book is beautifully produced, Foreman noted, making it ‘a great gift, as well as a great read’.

‘This is now simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages

there is, ‘Hart concluded, ‘a hugely impressive achievement, bustling and sizzling with life on every page.’